Thursday, May 10, 2007

Shut Up and Drink Your Sushi

Do you remember this Reeses peanut butter cup commercial?

“You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!
You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”


Now, substitute "sushi" for "peanut butter" and "cocktail" for "chocolate" and you are close to describing the concept behind Mixologist, Cameron Bogue’s new cocktail.

It is one of the most crazy (as in crazy cool) things I have seen, heard about or tried in a long time.

As Grand Prize winner of Smirnoff Vodka’s cocktail competition, last year, he became their official company Mixologist for a 12+ month term. With that time drawing to a close, I was intrigued to hear some of the cocktail trends he has come across during his travels around the world.

Among the many fun things he is trying out, his Deconstructed Mixology is particularly intriguing.

A Vegas resident, Bogue was in LA a couple of weeks ago. During our meeting at a divey bar in Los Feliz, Cameron asked if I’d like to try one of his new cocktails and referenced a sushi tray which has been sitting on the table throughout our chat. Baffled, I watched him pull off the plastic lid, and hold it out to me, offering me a piece of what looked like tuna.

“This is the cocktail?” I incredulously marveled.

Ok… I apologize in advance for not being able to explain all the technical jargon Cameron pulled out while he was explaining how he did this. Frankly, I was so busy being blown away at how neat (yes, NEAT) this was that I only half heard. (Lord knows, I don't intend to try it at home, anyway…)

Basically, the “rice” is lychee puree, the tuna is made from Smirnoff’s new blueberry (antioxidants!) vodka. He used other flavored vodkas for the other kinds of sushi. He even used alcohol-soaked apple slices to create something that looks like ginger. The ingredients all together make one big martini – type drink.

All I can say is “Wow.”

Reeses ain’t got nothing on this guy.

*Photo courtesy of Sminoff vodka

2 comments:

Shawn said...

I have a confession. I have been playing around with deconstructed cocktails since the fall, but was always concerned they were too much trouble. I just put one up on my blog -- what do you think? (Admittedly, it's not alcoholic sushi!)

Anonymous said...

Hooray for Jello shots!