Denis Bykov prepares his veggie cocktail, an espresso carrotini at Meo in Vancouver, B.C., on April 2.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
For years, the sweet flavours of fruit have been a go-to for bartenders mixing up cocktail recipes. Think: the strawberry daiquiri, citrusy tequila sunrise and grapefruit-forward paloma, among others.
But these days, there are more savoury vegetable-based cocktails making their way onto bar menus. At Toronto’s Library Bar, in the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, the Last of Us cocktail incorporates candy cap mushrooms and morels with tequila, cognac, brandy, Prosecco and maple. And at Montreal’s Bar Nacarat, the Lady in Red drink mixes up pickled beet juice with honeysuckle bitters, Prosecco, gin and bee pollen powder.
One reason for this shift is environment, says Evelyn Chick, founder of Evelyn Chick Projects, a hospitality agency, and owner of Simpl Things, a Toronto cocktail and snack bar. “We are going through quite drastic weather changes in the last couple of years,” she says. “Vegetables, especially root vegetables, are a little bit more resilient than, say, a berry crop.”
Because of their toughness, vegetables can be a more sustainable choice over fruit. Not only are certain vegetables – such as cucumbers, beets and carrots – more accessible (especially in Canada), they can often stretch further.
Take celery, for example. You can use its juice, stalks, leaves, seeds and root. “Veggies have a lot more yield in terms of ingredients used for flavour produced,” Chick says. This helps eliminate food waste, too. “I would use the food scraps from the kitchen to make something for a cocktail,” Chick shares. “And it makes a lot of sense because we’re trying to pair them together in a lot of ways.”
In cocktails, unaged spirits – vodka, gin, tequila, mezcal – lend themselves best to savoury vegetable flavours, says Chick. Denis Bykov, bar manager at Meo in Vancouver, agrees: “Barrel-aged spirits can often have a lot of complex flavours in itself. In order to taste and/or enjoy the essence of vegetables in a drink, an unaged spirit is definitely a better canvas.”
When it comes to which vegetables to put in your glass, Bykov opts for ones with higher sugar content such as carrots, beets, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. (Botanically, tomatoes are considered fruit, but in the kitchen, they’re deemed vegetables.) Chick likes snap peas and celery. “People love celery salt, which goes on Bloody Marys and Caesars,” says Chick. “So, people don’t realize they’ve been drinking, you know, savoury cocktails forever.”
When it comes to which vegetables to put in your glass, Bykov opts for ones with higher sugar content such as carrots, beets, sweet potatoes and tomatoes.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
For those trying to curb or cut out alcohol, there are, of course, vegetable-forward mocktails, too. Beyond losing the spirit, they put veggies front and centre. And while opting for a vegetable-rich mocktail isn’t going to radically transform anyone’s diet, it is in step with a bigger shift toward healthier lifestyles.
In fact, in 2023, Benefits Canada reported that 70 per cent of Canadians said they’re more conscious of their health in the past few years. Dr. Digvir Jayas, a Lethbridge, Alta.-based university president and professor with a research background in food preservation and quality monitoring, says in a culture where “people are becoming a lot more health conscious,” the popularity of veggie-based mocktails and cocktails makes sense.
And these mocktails are not just your standard cold-pressed juices. “Juice is usually a single fruit or single vegetable,” says Jayas. Whereas cocktails add other ingredients to the liquid – such as salt, spices, bitters, herbs and perhaps non-alcoholic spirits – to bring out a “complexity of flavours.”
At Meo, you can taste that complexity in Bykov’s Espresso Carrotini with home-brewed coffee, carrot reduction and an unaged spirit. His Cosmo Fizz has a beet shrub reduction. Chick’s Easy Pea-sy Rickey from her book For the Love of Cocktails is a spin on a Gin Rickey with snap peas. Her Sonic Boom cocktail on the menu at Simpl Things mixes a blueberry-infused cachaça, a distilled spirit made from sugarcane juice, with a jalapeno green pepper syrup. Last summer, she made a Heirloom at High Noon, a heirloom tomato water martini.
“The introduction of veggies, something that’s more herbal, gives cocktails a short and intense flavour,” says Chick. “So, it’s a smaller drink you get to sip and savour.”
But the real question: Is the trend of putting vegetables into our cocktail glasses here to stay? “I think the growth potential is quite high,” says Jayas. He says that food and beverage trends often stick around when there’s consumer demand, creative folks working in the industry, as well as external societal factors such as a movement toward better health or zero waste. Check, check and check.
Bykov's espresso carrotini.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Recipe: Meo’s Espresso Carrotini by Denis Bykov
Ingredients
Peel of one orange
1 cup home-brewed coffee
2-3 carrots (or 1 cup of store-bought pure carrot juice)
1 ½ oz vodka, gin or blanco tequila
Directions
Place orange peel in home-brewed coffee for about eight hours in the fridge.
Boil carrots in one-and-a-half litres of water for 15 minutes in a medium-sized pot on high heat. Then, put carrots in an ice-cold water bath to cool them down. Juice the carrots.
Boil the juice until your liquid is reduced by half. Cool the liquid in the fridge.
Pour spirit, 1 ½ oz of orange-infused home-brewed coffee and 1 ½ oz of carrot reduction into a martini shaker. Add ice and shake. Strain and pour into a coupe glass.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Inspired Dining section.