Suburban bars bring on the heat with spicy sippers

By Samantha Nelson
Daily Herald Correspondent

When Blufish opened its third restaurant in December, manager Kelly Jang wanted to do something different with the drink menu at the Vernon Hills location and looked to Chicago for inspiration.

One of the ideas she brought back was to spice up the cocktail menu with drinks like the Bermuda Triangle, a twist on a margarita made with mango jam, fresh jalapeño and a rim of the Japanese spice shichimi, and The Waterford, a spicy and nutty drink with a mix of whiskey, lime and house-made allspice liqueur. Blufish is just one of the local spots serving spicy sippers as the trend heats up bar menus throughout the suburbs.

“I think restaurants and bars are really upping their game on cocktails,” Jang said. “They really want to do something different that stands out — not just your regular cosmo or margarita.”

Nick Roberge, co-owner of Geneva’s Barrel + Rye, said the restaurant’s beverage director Sarah Geist strives to put her own spin on classic sippers like the paloma, which she spikes with cayenne pepper.

“I think now more than ever people are doing spicy or infused, adding kick where it kind of works,” Roberge said.

At Sammy’s Mexican Grill & Barin Elgin, the El Diablo margarita — made with chipotle-infused tequila, orange liqueur, fresh-squeezed lime juice and beer — proved so popular that the restaurant launched a Las Bravas Margaritas menu this week, which features four more hot versions of the classic cocktail. General manager Alfredo Rangel designed the drinks by experimenting with his collection of 100 tequilas, often incorporating flavors he enjoys from food. For example, fish tacos with mango habanero sauce inspired a mango-habanero margarita.

Another popular sipper is the Hangover Margarita, which incorporates muddled cilantro and grilled jalapeño. It’s based on a Mexican tradition that eating spicy food can counteract a night spent drinking. Management consultant Victor Rangel, Alfredo’s son, said the drink won’t cure headaches, but it does win converts to spicy cocktails.

“The first time they come and they think about a cocktail with jalapeño inside they are kind of skeptical. But after they taste it, they see the balance between sweet and sour and spicy helps the cocktail,” he said.

Spice can be used to either complement or contrast the other flavors in a cocktail, said Alex Jones, head bartender of Mount Prospect’s Bar 145, where the menu contains examples of both uses. The Bulljala features Bulleit rye, fresh jalapeños, simple syrup, lime, vermouth and ice, with the hot peppers bringing out the spice in the whiskey. Inspired by a type of Godiva chocolate, The Red Hot Winter blends house-made Thai chili-infused vodka with Godiva white chocolate liqueur served with a cocoa and cayenne powder rim and topped with whipped cream and a chili pepper.

“A lot of people get kind of taken aback by it,” Jones said. “They see the cayenne powder and the chocolate and they’re like ‘I don’t know,’ but if they try it, they love it. You have to trust your bartender.”

A consideration when using spice is consistency, leading some bartenders to prefer spicy syrups to fresh peppers.

“I like heat in things, I’m a big fan of spicy food, but it can get out of control very quickly,” saidPunch Bowl Social beverage director Patrick Williams.

“When we make a syrup, we can control it behind the scenes, and if it’s too spicy we can add more simple syrup to the recipe.”

When the chain of bars was opening its sixth location, they wanted to make a signature cocktail using local ingredients. Williams fell in love with 5 Lizard witbier from Bedford Park’s 5 Rabbit Cerveceria and played around with recipes that would bring out the beer’s lime and coriander flavors. He settled on tequila and pineapple-fennel shrub, but “it was missing some element,” he said. “We were trying out different syrups and we use a jalapeño-cucumber syrup in one of our nonalcoholic drinks. We tested it and it came together.” The result was El Numero 6, the signature drink for the Schaumburg Punch Bowl Social.

The passion for spicy cocktails has also led to the creation of hot spirits like Fire-N-Gin, the serrano pepper-flavored gin Copper Fiddle Distillery in Lake Zurich launched last year. The spirit was inspired by a version of a hot and dirty made by lead bartender Travis Livengood incorporating crushed red pepper, gin, caper juice and pickle juice.

The customer, Livengood and the distillery’s owners loved the cocktail and wanted to make it the distillery’s drink of the week, but Livengood knew it would be too time-consuming to make on a busy night. He worked on infusing the spirit with heat and now you can try the Fire-N-Gin straight, blended with Bloody Mary mix or as part of the Mango en el Fuego, which also features mango nectar, triple sec, lime juice and cayenne pepper.

“It’s really taken off,” Livengood said. “We sell more of that gin than the regular gin.”