appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

David Evans

James Pollard  lays out the  tools of his trade  in front of him: a wooden mallet, a blowtorch, a nitrogen pump and some long-handled metal instruments. But the 28-year-old  isn't about to plumb in a new tap or replace someone's hip. He's going to mix a cocktail.

Molecular gastronomy - the  art of combining foods with  different chemical and molecular compositions, made famous by chefs such as Ferran Adria  of El Bulli in Spain and Heston Blumenthal   of the Fat Duck in  Britain - is   gaining a foothold behind the bar. Professional bartenders such as Pollard are throwing out  the sweet, syrupy, rainbow-coloured Sex On the Beach and Tequila Sunrise  in favour of drinks that owe as much to chemistry as they do to taste.

Standing behind the fruit blenders and spirit bottles at Armani/Bar HK,   Pollard discusses the  skill of changing the DNA structure of fruit  as he singes  a quarter of a lemon  with  a blowtorch.

'A lemon contains citric acid, water, sugar and pectin,' he says. '[By torching the fruit] I drive the water and pectin out and change  the structure of the sugar. There's more of a scientific approach now, changing the molecular structure  of the ingredients and therefore the DNA of the drink.'

Molecular mixology is still a developing science.  A taste of things to come was provided by  the umbrella- and fruit-stacked  drinks of the 1980s, which  played with the viscosity and density of different liqueurs to  produce multi-layered tropical concoctions that were more pleasing to the eye than the palate.  Bartenders are now incorporating foams, gels and mists  to  vary the textures of a drink.

Part of the drive for the new generation of drinks comes from the demand for fresher ingredients from increasingly health-conscious and environmentally aware consumers.

Thirty years ago, a tropical cocktail would have  combined a shot of Captain Morgan dark rum with pineapple juice straight from the tin. Today,  the pineapple juice would  be from fresh pineapple reduced on  a stove to a  pulp free of artificial sweeteners or flavouring.  Mixologists now spend much of their time in the kitchen watching over bubbling pots of fresh fruit puree, steeping ingredients in vanilla or saffron syrup  and extracting less co-operative flavours such as lemongrass, coffee  or red chilli  by soaking  their ingredients in vodka or gin overnight.

As with any other science, molecular mixology is about  trial and error and pushing the boundaries of experimentation.

'Before, it used to be bang in  the alcohol and try to get drunk,' says Phil Murphy,  bar manager at Lumiere in the IFC Mall.  'This isn't about the alcohol, it's about flavours and textures. You put a green tea  bag in a bottle of vodka and leave it overnight and you come back with  a really good flavour. You just need to find out what works. We steep peppercorns for about three days  in alcohol, but you have to be very careful how many days you leave them,  otherwise it'll be too pungent. We have to leave a big note for the person  who comes in first thing in the morning to strain it.'

As with any new gastronomic development, it can take time for perceptions to change.  According  to Mark Walker,  a  mixologist who designed the new cocktail menu  for Opia Bar at the JIA hotel in Causeway Bay,  some  patrons  will order what they've always ordered.  But he  says that about  one in three customers  at  bars that serve  the  new style of cocktails is willing to  try something different.

'It all comes down to your floor staff and their ability to up-sell,' he says. 'It depends on how your bar is pitched and  you should be able to question, quiz and educate your customer. People love learning about food and drink. It's making them think about what they're drinking - like serving  up a simple gin and tonic, but with lemon and lime foams.'

Back at Armani/Bar, Pollard  is 'muddling' a quarter of charred lemon. (That's mixology speak for extracting flavour from an ingredient by pounding it with  a  pestle or spoon, but without pureeing it). He says that for years his profession has  suffered from an image problem because of its association with  the cheesy  cocktails  of the 70s and 80s, but that perceptions are changing. Drinkers are becoming more  sophisticated and better travelled, and people are more interested in what goes into preparing a meal or a drink than they were 10 years ago.

Upmarket bars are also realising that alongside decor, music and image, drinks  have become

a focal point.  It can be as simple as topping off a coffee daiquiri with  egg-white foam  or as  sophisticated as the bar-top laser that Moto, a restaurant in Chicago, uses to entice smoke out of a vanilla pod into a glass  for red wine.

Some bar owners are going even further. Minibar,  in  Washington, DC,  offers a dirty martini. Olive  juice, vermouth and gin with xanthan gum  and calcium chloride are blended  and dropped into a sodium alginate- and water-solution to form  olive-shaped blobs. The blobs, served alone in a clear alcohol, revert to a liquid state when popped into the mouth. Although this kind of extravagant cocktail trickery has yet to reach Hong Kong, local mixologists are nonetheless experimenting with flavours and techniques.

'It's a shame to add ingredients to something and not be able to taste them,' says Pollard. 'It's important to be able to taste a whole new flavour, while recognising as many of the individual flavours as you can.'

Where to try your tastebuds on  a dash of molecular mixology:

Armani/Bar HK

2/F Armani/Chater House, 11 Chater Road, Central, tel: 2805 0028

Lotus

37 Pottinger Street, Central, tel: 2543 6290

Lumiere

Level 3, IFC Mall, Central, tel: 2393 3933

Opia

1/F, JIA Hong Kong, 1-5 Irving Street, Causeway Bay, tel: 3196 9100



The alchemists