OP: The Aviary Cocktail Book

The Alinea Group, Chicago, 2018. Hardcover. Very Good. First printing.

“Once you’ve had a great cocktail, it’s almost impossible to go back to drinking lousy ones.”

It’s a perfectly true line from Nick Kokonas of The Alinea Group, but it reads as wry understatement if you know the bar (or food) programs across the group’s portfolio. “Great” hardly covers the whimsy, technique, and sophistication the team brings to its craft.

In 2018 The Aviary, their bar designed to function like a restaurant kitchen with a 5-course cocktail tasting menu and a brigade-like team behind the brass rail, published a cookbook documenting their monumental efforts at reimagining the libationary experience. The recipes are not for the timid but will reward anyone with the time, means, and creative exuberance to commit.

Take the first recipe: the gin and tonic. Any expectation of simplicity is quickly destroyed by the headnote, which explains the drink never made it onto the bar’s menu because of its unsustainability in a high volume environment. A glass full of cucumber alginate spheres will do that.

The Year in Kyoto, as another example, is a flight of four drinks developed to compliment the seasonal kaiseki menu at the bar’s sister restaurant Next. Each variation is astonishingly successful in representing its season visually before you even consider the expert flavor combinations which drive the point home.

Daunting for amateurs but great fun for serious professionals or armchair mixologists happy with some daydream fodder. 

Our copy is in excellent condition, clean and unmarked inside. Issued without jacket, the case shows minor wear and bumping to the corners. Stated first printing.