By Raul Dias
Notorious for incubating trends of all kinds, never mind how over-the-top or outrĂ© they may seem, New York City always manages to shock me silent. But I couldn’t have been more surprised a few months ago, when on a short layover there, a friend insisted I try the jet-black hued perla negra (black pearl) cocktail at Slowly Shirley—a virtual ‘subterranean cocktail sanctuary’ in Manhattan’s hipster haven of the West Village.
Served up in a crystal skull receptacle, this aged rum, orange juice, ginger, sorrel and arrack-redolent libation has a dark little secret ingredient—activated charcoal powder. Little did I know then, that charcoal—an integral part of filtration systems the world over—would become one of early 2017’s hottest new bar essentials. Used for millennia in both Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine as a detoxifying agent and as a superfood that boosts digestive health, activated charcoal powder is enjoying an outing like never before!
And yes, this cocktail micro trend has reached India as well, as I was to recently discover at Kolkata’s Bodega Cantina-Y-Bar. This hip, new restobar that sits languidly along busy Park Street serves up a charcoal-coffee martini that has been enticing the trend loving lot with its caliginous countenance. All this, while relying on a double coffee kick, thanks to a generous splash of Kahlua coffee liqueur, and a rather potent espresso shot to lend that extra zing to this vodka-based cocktail noir, blackened up with the powder of crushed activated charcoal pellets.
(This column first appeared in the 19th March 2017 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/charcoal-coffee-martini/article17526868.ece)
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