Hamish Smith wonders if the dessert menu is increasingly a growth opportunity for cocktails.
The dessert cocktail could be accused of many things, but never of being cool. Traditionally, it’s conjured the image of insurmountable swirls of squirty cream, dreary chain restaurants and drunk aunties.
More recently, though, sweetness has started to repair its reputation. The fetishisation of bitterness that dominated the discerning drinker’s discourse in the 2010s has waned to the point that now it’s OK to say you have a sweet palate without people assuming you watch romcoms. Drier styles still dominate menus, but we’ve seen a slow creep of sweet, thick and luscious drinks, as if we’re witnessing the start of a stealthy coup of cocktails.
But what if the dessert cocktail could be itself again, without having to be slimmed down and off-dry? What if the dessert cocktail has an unlikely role to play in the new age of low-frequency, situational drinking? Could it be – as we’re hearing – that restaurant diners are starting to swap pudding for after-dinner dessert cocktails?
The AA-Rosette restaurant The Club House on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast has seen such scenes and has put its Chocolate Martini where its mouth is, with six dessert-inspired serves – from a drink based on tiramisu to ones inspired by lemon meringue pie and apple crumble. These types of drinks are nothing new but, posed as an alternative to favourite puddings, they have found traction. They satisfy that after-dinner hankering for sweetness, but crucially come with a discount on calories.
Dessert cocktails, positioned like this – not as an alternative to drier drinks, but as an alternative to pudding – are another way cocktails can prosper in an otherwise challenging market.
Just keep a steady hand – as The Club House has – on that squirty cream.
Three dessert cocktails from The Club House
1 Lemon Pie After-Dinner Drink (Black Cow vodka, Frangelico, Limoncello, Lemon juice, Vanilla syrup / For the Italian meringue: Caster sugar, Glucose Water, Egg white)
2 Tiramisu Martini (Hive Dibar Coffee vodka, Cocoa Brun, Amaretto, Frangelico, Chocolate dust to garnish)
3 In The Orchard (Shipwreck brandy or calvados, Hive Dorset Apple Cake gin, Crème de cassis, Lemon juice, Cinnamon syrup, Blackberries, Dehydrated apple slice to garnish)