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The Latest Trend in Cocktails: Kale and Spinach?

The Ojos Verdes, featuring muddled avocado.
The Ojos Verdes, featuring muddled avocado. Photo: Melissa Hom/Grub Street

As cocktail writer Camper English notes in a new trend piece in Details, California’s bartenders have long been accused of mixing “salad in a glass” with all the muddled herbs and farmer’s market fruit they like to throw into their drinks. Well, there’s a new round of roughage that’s been showing up in craft cocktails lately in the form of kale juice, arugula syrup, snap-pea syrup, and spinach, turning cocktails in bars across the land quite brightly green. As examples, he calls out the American Pastoral drink at San Francisco’s AQ, the spinach and cucumber martini at Filini in Chicago, the Jolly Green Machine at Napa Valley Grille in L.A., and the arugula-enhanced margarita called the 5 Points at the Living Room Bar & Terrace in New York. (See also this Times bit from this week, with more examples.) We would also point you to the Ojos Verdes at The Gibson in D.C., which we featured in this week’s national cocktail tour, and which gets its greenness from muddled avocado. [Details]

The Latest Trend in Cocktails: Kale and Spinach?