Allison Hadley Photos
A cocktail kit from Sherkaan.
As social distancing wears on, walls become conversational, watching movies featuring crowds becomes fraught, and masks are a necessary fashion accessory, life still finds a way. No coffeeshops open? Enter FaceTime coffee dates. No restaurants open to gather with friends? Zoom dinners!
But what of the deliciously crafted cocktail from a mixologist, presented just-so in a coupe glass with an artful garnish? How do we fill the void that happy hour left?
Sherkaan has found an answer, and it is sher-cocktails. Sharing cocktails, rather.
The Broadway restaurant featuring Indian street food — the author lives and dies by the chicken sandwich — has taken a different approach to the relaxed “alcohol to go” laws brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several restaurants in the area — from Geromino, 116 Crown, and Mikro to Tavern on State and Texiko — offer to-go iterations of potent potables. Sherkaan offers curated selections of bottles, bitters, and mixers to mimic a large portion of the restaurant bar’s original cocktail menu. In this, they place the proverbial power (barspoon) in your hands with their DIY cocktail kits, which make for a fun evening of social distancing.
Going to their takeout menu, one finds a cocktail to-go section that has nearly as much depth and breadth as the restaurant’s already formidable cocktail menu had in the halcyon days of a month ago. From the Bee’s Knees — a gin and honey concoction — to a trio of G&T’s, there is a cocktail kit for everyone. The power here lies in that they provide bottles, bitters, mixers, and a recipe — everything but the coupe glass.
Keeping the DIY cocktail menu robust, said Roger Gross, Sherkaan’s bar curator, was “part of taking the crisis and pivoting toward what’s best for company and best for the guests.”
Gross.
Why use full bottles instead of nips — the 50-mil bottles of liquor that would probably be enough for a cocktail? “We don’t sell nips normally,” said Gross. “I don’t want to bring something in just to maximize my profit.” Also, he said, “if we sell bottles we already have in inventory, and get creative putting it together, it serves our community.” Besides being a “value for the guests,” he added, “with a whole bottle, that provides at least 12 to16 drinks per kit. By the end you get to adjust taste to your preference. At the end, you get to have confidence in the cocktail.”
Meanwhile, he said, “it helps me move inventory. I’ve actually bought more bottles because things are selling well.”
Sherkaan has been in in business a little over a year, and the restaurant was planning an anniversary that has, of course, gone by the wayside. When the government-mandated shutdown of restaurants began, Gross said, “we had to furlough all employees,” except for a couple in the kitchen, Gross as bar curator, and the general manager. “Things have been going … pretty well,” Gross said. “Some days have been off, but then we take a day, we focus, and get back to it.” With takeout business of food and cocktails taking hold, the restaurant very recently rehired a couple staff for packaging and delivery.
In the food department, Sherkaan, like other restaurants, has also started offering family-style meals. Sherkaan’s pckage includes biryani, bhangan barta, and butter chicken, with naan, rice and raita. “People are looking out for us and sending orders. It’s really fun to be able to still serve the community,“ Gross said. It’s “our time to shine in times of crisis and be the rock and be the light.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” he added. “If we can grin and bear it we will definitely reap those rewards later.”
Stapled to the takeout bag containing sustenance for the evening was a brief recipe card explaining everything your intrepid author needed to construct the “Mother Wolf G&T,” a citrus-forward, summer-optimistic cocktail that features grapefruit as its linchpin flavor, disrupting the usual lime hegemony. In the kit, running at $60 (prices range for each cocktail, from $10 for the mango mimosa kit to $80 for the Corpse Reviver, a multi-spirited drink that delivers on its titular promise), one receives a bottle of botanical gin, a bottle of Giffard Pomplemousse liquor, a sort of grapefruit cordial with pizzazz, a small sauce container of housemade grapefruit bitters, and two bottles of elderflower tonic.
The recipe is simple and straightforward; the author recommends a jigger to measure out liquor amounts; barring that, a shotglass; and barring that, eyeballs (measure responsibly). With that, a simple stir in a tumbler (or mason jar) and one has embarked on a journey to the refreshing lands of the G&T, savoring the grapefruit’s balance between liquor and bitters, and the floral note derived from the elderflower.
All told, it takes about five minutes to mix a cocktail, and the price is very reasonable. Elizabeth Nearing, neighbor to the author, who witnessed this journalistic edition of DIY aspirational mixology at 10 feet, noted that the experience of these cocktail kits was “appealing to the same folks who might want a meal kit. You pay about what you would at the liquor store, but the experience is more curated.” Though initially skeptical of grapefruit, Nearing endorsed the cocktail, citing its summery taste.
With such cocktail kits at the fingertips of anyone 21 and over willing to pick up at Sherkaan, now is the time to hone a skill in isolation. Shakespeare may have written King Lear in a quarantine, but you, dear reader, can learn to make a mean cocktail.