Foodpairing as the Interplay between Bar and Cuisine

Challenge: bar at a restaurant

For Walter, this is the first time he has worked at a bar located within a restaurant – in 2017, he came from ‘Bukowski’s’ in Hanover to the ‘Amano Bar’. Two years later, he moved from the high-volume bar, (where Walter says “you can sometimes make 400 to 500 drinks in one evening”) to ‘Stagger Lee’. And now he has come to ‘Golvet’ taking over the sceptre from Andreas Andricopoulos, who switched from working nights to the daytime business and is now the Operations Manager at the restaurant ‘Ständige Vertretung’. So how is working at a restaurant bar for Walter? “It’s a personal challenge because I’ve never done this before. I used to think it was totally boring because most guests drink champagne as an aperitif anyway. Why do you need a bartender? But I talked a lot with Andreas and he assured me: At ‘Golvet’, people are open to that.”

"Tequila Boy"

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Drinks attuned to the current menu

Managed by Andricopoulos the Golvet Bar had made a name for itself with aquavit cocktails, to name but one speciality. These are still available, but Walter now has his sights on two new focal points. The first are cocktails that are – buzzword alert – “paired” or coordinated with the menu that the young chef Jonas Zörner and his team create every three months. “Our goal was to create an ideal drink pairing to go with the food. And also to pick up on the seasonal aspect of the cuisine,” explains Walter. In concrete terms, this means accompanying the current second course, ‘Burnt turnips’ with red cabbage, milk and camomile, the bar mixes ‘Chou Rouge’, a drink based on bourbon that has been infused with fresh red cabbage. What sounds strange turns out to be highly interesting and convincing in terms of taste. The sweetness of the whiskey and the cabbage harmonise. Hearty, powerful notes are added.

“I boosted the drink with cinnamon, allspice, Calvados and Cointreau. Add some vermouth and a homemade lime cordial for the balance of sweetness and acidity,” explains the bar professional. The ‘Celery’ course with hazelnut, tarragon and jalapeño is accompanied by a non-alcoholic Martini twist with Martini Floreale, infused with celery and carrot greens, with a fine dusting of dill on the glass. Puffed tuna skin is added to the glass as a garnish for the fish course, and in general: working with ingredients from the kitchen, creatively and sustainably, is the approach taken here.

Mixing with ingredients left over in the kitchen

“As a matter of principle, we use a leftover item from the kitchen as an ingredient for each drink with a view to working holistically on products. Sustainability is exemplified by the chefs. So why not at the bar, too? Many off-cuts or supposedly inedible parts contain exciting flavours,” says Walter. He illustrates this with three drinks from the new menu – which can be enjoyed as an aperitif before, after or during the meal. For the ‘Sakura Samurai’, for example, cachaça was infused with cherry blossoms from the previous year. Walter: “Our kitchen team collected them by hand and put them in salt to preserve them. We rinse them and infuse them via sous-vide. Additional cherry blossoms that we had preserved in vinegar, we boil together with a white tea, add sherry and carbonic acid.” The result is a highball with floral, grassy and almondy notes.    

With yoghurt left over from the staff breakfast

The second drink reflecting their proximity to the kitchen is the ‘Wood Stork’: Rye Malt from Stork Club in the Spreewald is married with orange blossoms and vanilla yoghurt. “The yoghurt actually comes from the staff breakfast,” Walter tells us. What’s left over is blended with the whiskey, strained and filtered. The orange blossoms, for their part, were left over from a previous food menu, dried, ground and boiled with sugar to make orange blossom syrup. A drink that gently rounds off the powerful rye whiskey with citrus notes.

Leftover Champagne for the cocktail

Drink number three is the ‘Beercules’ featuring a restaging of the capital’s classic Berliner Weisse. “We pick the woodruff ourselves, of course,” says Walter. It is dried and thus preserved. In addition, there is leftover Champagne (because of course, despite the great drinks we serve, many people still also order the gourmet classic as an opener or along with their drink). “Leftovers from bottles that were opened during the evening and not consumed, we then boil up with the woodruff as well as lemon juice from the last two days.” But it is not just added in liquid form; instead – as we are very close to the kitchen next door again – it is frozen and turned into a granité, infused with a Berliner Weisse. Great!

"Beercules"

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Ingenious interface, symbiotic teamwork

“It’s cool to cooperate with the kitchen,” says Yannik Walter. “It’s a brilliant interface. Jonas and I share the same approaches. When I’m standing at the servery and ask him for a flavour I need for my drinks, he advises me what to use. This creates a whole new dynamic.” Chef Jonas Zörner adds: “For me, a good pairing comes from perfect and symbiotic teamwork. Together we work out a harmonious interplay of dishes and cocktails, listening to each other, learning from each other, observing hand movements and techniques and appreciating every ingredient, every aroma. The basis for all of this is provided by the menu. A bartender’s art is to underline this well-considered creation with matching drinks, complement it or even challenge it in terms of taste – without overshadowing the food.”

"Wood Stork"

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