in focus

Liquid muses

From surrealists to expressionists, artists and their creations have unwittingly been the source of inspiration for bartenders and their menus. Millie Milliken takes a look at how the two worlds collide on menus – past and present, at home and abroad

“Sometimes when you’re drunk you can see better,” once said British artist Damien Hirst, perhaps most famous for suspending a tiger shark in formaldehyde. A quick Google of artists on drinking throws up plenty of quotes on their (oft over-) consumption of alcohol, but artists and cocktails can also come together to create some of the bar world’s most playful and good-to-look-at menus.

In recent years, the theme of art has appeared regularly as a source of inspiration for both menus and bars alike – from the Elements of Art menu at Hong Kong’s Artesian at The Langham through to London’s A Bar With Shapes For A Name. (p. 28).

Of course, the joy of menus being inspired by painters, illustrators, graphic designers and sometimes tattooists often means the menus themselves look like a piece of art. In 2019, the mavericks at San Fran’s Trick Dog launched a menu in collaboration with Idle Hand tattoo studio. The artists designed and named 13 original pieces of traditional tattoo art, the bar team created 13 matching cocktails and the menu was presented as a sheet of tattoo flash. Fitz’s bar at the grand Kimpton Fitzroy in London bought the rights to Jazz Age artist John Held Jr’s famous illustrations, while another London favourite, Scarfes Bar, is named after cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe, whose work adorns the walls and menus. Head to Vegas and the aptly named Art Bar has created menus featuring drinks inspired by Salvador Dalí’s The Burning Giraffe, Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Damien Hirst himself has been the inspiration behind cocktails, alongside peers including Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo and Takashi Murakami. In 2017, Joaquín Simó and his team at New York City’s Pouring Ribbons created the Revolutionary Artists menu. “Great art can be just as inscrutable at first glance as your typical craft cocktail menu,” started his brief to his team. “Surely there must be a secret decoder ring that allows you to instantly understand how all these elements (most of which you are completely unfamiliar with) are coming together into something not only coherent, but brilliant.”

Gerald Scarfe

“In recent years, the theme of art has appeared regularly as a source of inspiration for both menus and bars alike”

“A bolder take on Dick Bradsell’s famed Vodka Espresso”

‘Damien Hirst’ at Pouring Ribbons. Photo by William Aaron

Featuring 22 cocktails based on 22 artists, the menu splits the artists into groups such as Iconoclasts & Provocateurs, Pop & Lock and The Main Event, using the artist’s name for the drink accompanied by illustrations from designer Dieter Cartwright. The Damien Hirst is described by Joaquín as “a bolder take on Dick Bradsell’s famed Vodka Espresso”, created at Fred’s Club in the 1980s. The drink was renamed the Pharmaceutical Stimulant when Bradsell consulted on the bar menu for Hirst’s Pharmacy restaurant in 1998. Pouring Ribbon’s version substitutes two oak-aged spirits for the vodka and a spiced coffee amaro for the espresso shot. Elsewhere, Jeff Koons is represented with a colourful twist on an El Presidente as a nod to his pop art style.

For Joaquín, Revolutionary Artists “might just be my favourite menu we’ve ever done in our nearly decade of operation”. He likes it so much that when the bar reopens in September this year, a new menu comprising some of the bar’s greatest hits will no doubt feature some of the art-inspired creations.

Back on this side of the pond, and coincidentally in the same year, the team at Edinburgh’s (now closed) Epicurean bar at the G&V Royal Mile Hotel launched a menu inspired by the Scottish Colourists, four post-impressionist painters who brought French and Mediterranean influences into the Scottish city. Julian de Féral, then drinks consultant for the Gorgeous Group, worked with the team to create the menu – although the theme didn’t come easy. After being briefed by the hotel team to create something akin to the hotel restaurant (itself designed using a myriad of colours and Mediterranean in style) and in line with its arty hotel vibe, Julian and co found themselves “racking our brains, and we came up with the idea that we wanted it to be based on art. We went away and did research, but we were struggling to find some connection of art, local history and the Med without singling out one artist. We actually gave up and delegated it to Laura, our researcher/office manager, and a couple of hours later she came back saying, ‘Have you heard of this group called the Colourists?’ They were perfect.”

Ingredients were laid out in a colour wheel and cocktails created not just using flavour as a starting point, but also colour. Vibrant, standout ingredients included orange sorbet, peach wine, crème de violette, lemon and basil sherbet and celery bitters. The team found that often ingredients of the same colour ended up being flavour bedfellows, much to their surprise in some cases. They used a slow juicer to extract as vivid a colour and flavour as possible and even invested in an Evogro, their own little greenhouse, to grow some of the ingredients – sometimes even having guests pick their own garnish. The menu itself was illustrated by local Colourist-style artist Joanna Srokol and the photos of the drinks were taken by one of the floor runners who, it turns out, was pretty nifty with a camera.

Art, drinks and the people behind them, it seems, are a natural combination.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The tattoo menu at Trick Dog; colour in focus at Epicurean; cocktails from the ‘Elements of Art’ menu at the Artesian, Hong Kong

“Ingredients were laid out in a colour wheel and cocktails created not just using flavour as a starting point, but also colour”