Above Sydney in its home on the 47th floor, O Bar and Dining has taken a healthy interest in brix. Not a poor spelling of a construction material in the city below but the sugar content of their cocktails. The revolving cocktail bar with its 360-degree panoramic views has recently introduced hedonistic yet health conscious cocktails, a new initiative by Chef/Owner Michael Moore and his bar team.
A long-time advocate of healthy eating and with a personal experience as diabetic, the seasonal Market Fresh Natural Cocktail menu is based on a philosophy of wholefoods and healthy choice while still having fun with drinks. Ingredients are sourced from the markets and make their way into the kitchen and bar in a marriage of natural sweeteners with fruit, spice and spirits along with wholefood ingredients.
O Bar and Dining is arguably the first bar in Australia to embrace the approach, a project that took six months in the making. The concept was inspired by the juice generation in Sydney’s eastern suburbs with people drinking pressed kale and spinach leaf, a trend that is not yet reflected in cocktails.
Many concepts stem from the kitchen and are put into use at the bar. Natural sweeteners with lower GI such as agave, maple, honey and stevia are used in syrup batching and matched with spices. Syrup recipes read more like jus recipes with the amount of spices and infusions. For example, star anise, clove and black pepper pair well with agave, while honey, being lighter in texture prevails with fennel seed, vanilla and white pepper, while maple goes with cardamom, whole vanilla pods, star anise and black peppercorn. These are subsequently married with a spirit to create a flavour profile that may not too familiar at first.
When using natural sweeteners in cocktails, the brix content of each ingredient is of vital importance, as in, honey and maple are sweeter than simple syrup. The bar team uses a Brix Refractometer to measure the sugar concentration in the drink as a function of the index of refraction of the solution. The value is then entered in a brix formula to determine the ABV of the liquid. The spirits along with the syrups are pre-batched in 10 litre containers with their brix levels marked before they are mixed with the fresh ingredients.
Some of the more unusual ingredients that have made it into the cocktails include wild lime kombucha, organic barley malt, black barley miso, wattle seed, nettle tea syrup and rooibos tea instead of bitters.
When it comes to taste, healthy ingredients need not be the primary flavour. They are introduced as base to produce original and balanced flavour combinations such as the Healthy Culture (pictured) made with Fairtrade quinoa vodka, freshly juiced honeydew melon as antioxidant, woodland honey, wild lime kombucha and fennel tips.
The Seeds in Spring, a creative take on the Bramble combines Shiraz barrel gin with wattle seed, native pepperberry, organic barley malt and lime, and comes served in a silver bucket. The nuttiness of wattle seed prevails at first followed by savoury notes of bay leaf with warm spices and cardamom on the finish – a perfect example of a harmony of flavours.
Another drink worth the mention is the fragrant Black Cherry Tree, a rum-based cocktail with Morello cherries, warm spices, rosemary, scorched agave and grapefruit as the sour component, a balance of cherry sweetness with spice and smoke that lingers long on the palate.
The cocktails are not claiming to be “sugar free” but offer a healthy choice using fresh ingredients and natural sweeteners. Neither is O Bar trying to change the drinking culture into embracing healthy habits. After all, alcohol is being imbibed but it’s about feeling good about what the person is drinking and trying a more innovative cocktail with less common flavours.
Perhaps the Green Fingers cocktail sums up the health conscious cocktails best. It’s a healthy spin on the classic Margarita with Mezcal, yuzu citrus marmalade, agave nectar, cardamom, white pepper, with smoked kale, dill and pink salt rim. It’s deemed to be the “healthiest” cocktail on the list but you can easily knock back a few.
O Bar and Dining
Address: Level 47, Australia Square, 264 George Street, Sydney
Hours: Nightly from 5pm and for lunch Wednesday to Friday from 12pm
Website: www.obardining.com.au
Photo Credit: O Bar and Dining, used with permission
