Bee Larvae at Silver Lyan

The migration-themed cocktails here are full of oddball ingredients, from Douglas fir to emu neck. The most intriguing? Hay-smoked bee larvae, which go into a tequila drink inspired by the almond harvest in California–and the pollinators that make it happen.

Cyanide at Pineapple & Pearls

This tasting room’s glitzy and audacious spirit extends to one particularly shocking bar ingredient: poison. The Pick Your Poison, a Sazerac riff presented in three bottles, contains denatured cyanide syrup. “Don’t worry, you’ll live to talk about it,” reads the menu. “Probably.”

Leather at Bresca

The mod bistro’s beverage menu includes the Passion for the Run, a pisco-and-­Spanish-vermouth-based cocktail inspired by legends told by Andean morochuco cowboys. The concoction is aged in a leather bota bag, which imparts a complex, musky aroma.

Oxtail Fat at The Saga

The New Fashioned at Enrique Limardo’s Spanish eatery makes the most of a meaty ingredient that also tops the restaurant’s calamari sandwich. Bartenders use the fat rendered from oxtails to “wash,” or infuse, bourbon, enriching the pairing of whiskey and bitters.

This article appears in the December 2023 issue of Washingtonian.