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4 Weird Things That Showed Up in Our Cocktails This Year

Say cheers with ... cyanide?

Written by Ike Allen
| Published on December 11, 2023
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Bresca's Passion for the Run. Photograph by Rey Lopez.

4 Weird Things That Showed Up in Our Cocktails This Year

Say cheers with ... cyanide?

Written by Ike Allen
| Published on December 11, 2023
Tweet Share
Contents
  1. Bee Larvae at Silver Lyan
  2. Cyanide at Pineapple & Pearls
  3. Leather at Bresca
  4. Oxtail Fat at The Saga

Bee Larvae at Silver Lyan

location_on 900 F St., NW

language Website

Photograph by Haydon Perrior.

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.

 

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Cyanide at Pineapple & Pearls

location_on 715 Eighth St., SE

language Website

Photograph by Aphra Adkins.

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.”

 

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Leather at Bresca

location_on 1906 14th St., NW

language Website

Photograph by Rey Lopez.

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.

 

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Oxtail Fat at The Saga

location_on 1190 22nd St., NW

language Website

Photograph by Deb Lindsey.

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. 

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Ike Allen
Ike Allen
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