Down the Rabbit Hole: Behind the Cocktails
If you’ve seen a production at Nordo, chances are you’ve noticed (and maybe even tasted) some of our legendary signature cocktails. Each one carefuly designed with taste, style, and even colors to compliment the food you’re eating and the show you’re watching on stage. But did you know there’s a story behind each one? Jaq has been our Bar Manager and cocktail crafter since 2017 and you might be surprised how much thought goes into every aspect of these delightfully delicious drinks. We’ve asked Jaq to give a little more detail behind the thought process on the 4 cocktails crafted exclusively for Down the Rabbit Hole.
Jaq, Bar Manager for Nordo
Building a cocktail menu is like any creative endeavor, in that one starts with a thousand possibilities and then distills them down to their most poignant form. Naturally this can be overwhelming, but choosing a structure helps. For this menu, rather than riffing on a theme in the production at large, I gave each character a cocktail based around their unique attributes. In some cases this is aesthetic, a nod to the color palette of their costume. In others, it draws on the actor’s interpretation of their role, be that dry or aggressive or whimsical. Often it overlaps, allowing a rare opportunity to both indulge my theatrical design background and experiment with the minutiae of flavor profiles. In this lies the joy of designing for Café Nordo: no other bar marries the art of cocktailing with Art as we know it like we do here. -Jaq
PARTY CRASHER
A drink for Alice, the uninvited, the unwelcome, but ultimately the life of the party. It began as a spin on the Naked & Famous, a classic mezcal cocktail, but the recent Chartreuse shortage meant reworking it with different ingredients, namely Strega (an Italian digestif that translates to “Witch”), while keeping it the teal color of our Alice’s tulle sleeves.
Better Than Croquet
To be honest, this started as a joke about rabbit food. I wanted to do a white Negroni with barrel aged gin from the aptly-named Rabbit Hole Distillery, but with celery bitters and a carrot garnish. It was a golden child drink that came together in a couple tries, and then our White Rabbit himself named it. To quote Bo, “the White Rabbit would absolutely think his cocktail is better than the entire sport.”
Short Sharp Shock
The Queen of Hearts’ drink was inspired in part by the menu at New York’s Amor y Amargo, a cocktail bar that emphasizes sustainability by forgoing any perishable ingredients, hence no citrus juice. To add acidity, I used Bittermen’s Orange Cream Citrate to create a fruity riff on the French 76, with a spicy pepper kick as an homage to our pepper tart appetizer. Bonus: the lemon peel and raspberry garnish looks like a tiny guillotine blade and severed head.
Folie a Deux
This one is a nod to a drink on our tea-centric menu from the first DTRH run, but adapted (perhaps optimistically) for a summertime palate. Named for a psychiatric term meaning “madness shared by two,” it’s the quintessential Hatter and Hare tea party cocktail. The oyster shell tincture is made in-house with Taylor Shellfish kumamotos as a reference to their Walrus and the Carpenter duet (Carroll’s poem set to original music by our beloved Annastasia Workman).
Down the Rabbit Hole is now playing in Nordo’s Knife Room in Pioneer Square. TICKETS >>