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10 eye-catching drinks for the summer

Cocktails from The Bamboo Club, The Delphi Lounge, Farmhouse at Roger’s Gardens, The Felix, Hongdae 33, Left Bank Brasserie, Queen Miami Beach, Silver Lining, Three Dots and a Dash, and Urban Hill

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

July 5, 2023

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No season is wrong for selling cocktails. If done right, they’re highly profitable, add to check averages, improve the customer experience, and improve engagement on social media, especially if they’re colorful and festive looking like the ones in this gallery.

Summertime in particular is when guests like to celebrate small things, like a beautiful day or simply the fact that it’s Tuesday.

Often bartenders reach for vodka, tequila, gin, or light rum for cocktail development during the warmer months, but brown spirits can be enjoyed all year long, too, particularly in drinks like the Suckerpunch at The Delphi Lounge in Los Angeles, where Cognac is the base spirit for a clarified milk punch, or the Pho Wimme at The Felix in San Francisco, which is made with a tallow-washed rye.

Polynesian Spell #2 at The Bamboo Room, a section in Chicago’s Three Dots and a Dash that specializes in Rum, is made from barrel-aged cachaça.

But vodka and the aromatics of Persian cooking are behind Amalthea’s Last Regret at Urban Hill in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the clear Korean spirit Soju is used to make K-Shawty at Hondae 33 in Houston.

New Zealand Dry Gin is in the Kozmic Blue at Farmhouse at Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar, Calif., and light rum is the foundation of the Oh La La Sour at four-unit Left Bank Brasserie in California.

The Cloud Cutter at The Bamboo Club in Long Beach, Calif., is a variation on The Fog Cutter, which is normally made with Cognac and sherry, and is made instead with a botanical rum and pisco.

Gin and salted plum-infused shochu (the Japanese version of soju) are in the Idol’s Eye at Queen Miami Beach, and The Troublemaker at Silver Lining in New York City doesn’t have any alcohol at all, because you don’t need to drink to have a good time, and your customers don’t need to drink to enjoy a thoughtfully crafted beverage.

We hope these drinks will help get your own creative juices flowing as you develop your own cocktails.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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