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CONTEMPORARY crafted cocktails aren’t simple affairs at all. Like a magician, the modern mixologist seeking to marvel their audience must mask the levers and pulleys of their tricks too. But there used to be a time when cocktails were just spirits, sugar, water and bitters.
A year into opening, Siren – a cocktail bar with an Asian edge – seasoned restaurateur AD Singh, founder and managing director, Olive Group of Restaurants, and his city partners Tushar Fernandes and Nikhil Chittiappa of Silverback Ventures, have decided to shake up the conversation again. Besides their offering of in-house speciality cocktails, they’ve launched a ‘Siren Passport’ that teases us into sampling over 75 classic cocktails from a bygone era to ones with a modern twist. And we’ve been incentivised into making these bad decisions; reach fifty drinks from this chalkboard menu and you’ll be rewarded with a workshop that unlocks your shaking, stirring and sipping skills with Akshay Singh, Siren’s head mixologist. Arrive at the end, and you would’ve earned a cocktail named after you on the menu for a month and a smashing night out for two on the house. Go big or go home; there’s no half-assing it here.
New Friends Silver, Old Friends Gold
While our peers have been zone training for HYROX for a year or two, my drinking buddy and I have been flexing our whole lives for this kind of drinking challenge. Our gym: the many infamous dive bars dotting the city. We decided to stay fair and stick to our lanes for this review – of course. He rotated through the Siren specials, and I cycled through the laundry list of classics from the chalkboard menu.
For round one, we got the Bang Bang and the Old Pal. Happy beginnings for sure, the Bang Bang was damn delicious; inspired by the Sichuan street-food bang bang chicken, it was a smooth mix of tequila, savoury notes and a solid spicy kick. And the Old Pal is a grown-up version of the Negroni, drier and snappier. These drinks got us into the groove – assisted by the music that glided between hits from Bieber and Swift to bangers from Kendrick Lamar to Tinashe.
We’re nestled in Siren’s maximalism: red leather high chairs, marble-tops with glimmering swirly grain, vintage-esque print on print madness, and an ancient boat – floating above – overflowing with light and lush plants. The bar – with the orchestrated moves of the mixologists – is stunning and guarded by two neon-light, red dragons overhead. We’re taking these notes on the interiors, sipping on our second drinks: a crisp, tart and punchy tequila-based Green Apple Salad and the Tuxedo, a delightful, heady gin-based blend with a wash of absinthe. Maybe it’s our liquor lenses, but we’re enamoured by the fringe detail of the light shades and take selfies in its warm glow, holding our thirds: a Peking Duck, a tantalisingly good sweet-savoury drink with a sharp nudge of umami and a Southside, clean, easy and refreshing.
Soak it up
We weren’t completely irresponsible. We ran through their complimentary bowl of pickled veggies; vinegary and tasty. We gobbled down plump, steamy parcels of chicken sui mai with a dipping sauce that we kept scooping with our teaspoons. We devoured piping purses of prawn har gow drenched in their yummy, in-house crispy chilli sauce. We crunched on little triangles of deep-fried prawn toasts dunked into a duo of sauces: a spicy hot chilli sauce and a honey chilli one speckled with slivers of red chilli for temperance. We tucked into our crispy, juicy prawn tempura.
We called it a night with a Five ‘O Five and the Corpse Reviver No 1. My friend wanted to end on a savoury note; his choice didn’t disappoint. It was tasty spikes of soy, tomato and miso snuck into three spirits, vodka, gin and mezcal. And my desire to be shocked back into the real world worked too: lulling warm brandy meets the sweetness of apple. Apparently, this version was conceptualised as a ‘morning drink’ – those were the good old days.
We find our sea legs, get our passports stamped, and promise ourselves to return to the mission of quaffing down their roster of classic cocktails. While parting the thick, velveteen curtains to the elevator, we marvel at our stamps. At this rate of consumption, I think I'll have to name my cocktail – The Rest Will Be Charged.
Siren - Cocktail Bar is on the 2nd Floor, 25/4, Lavelle Road, D’Souza Layout, Ashok Nagar, Bengaluru. For reservations, call 7718874933. Monday to Sunday, 5 pm to 1 am.
