The Southern to Preview Spring Cocktails for Cheap

By Roger Kamholz in Food on Apr 8, 2011 7:20PM

The bar team at the Southern has been tinkering behind the scenes with a brand new cocktail menu for spring brimming with fresh ingredients and cooling flavors. And now they want to test it out on you. On Tuesday, April 12, from 6 to 9 p.m., the Southern will preview all the new cocktails for 5 bucks apiece.

"It's kind of like a soft opening," explains head mixologist Matthew Lipsky, who goes by Choo. The handsome discount is their way of saying thanks for being a willing test subject. A week later, the spring menu will officially go live, perhaps with a tweak here and there based on the feedback Choo gets on Tuesday. At that time, all the fall/winter cocktails will be retired - so if you loved, say, their infused Apple Pie Bourbon as much as we did, better run and have one last glass before it's gone.

"All the new cocktails are more refreshing," Choo says. "They've got fresh fruit juices - carrot juice, blackberry juice - and fresh herbs like thyme and sage. Something you want to drink on the patio when it's 80 degrees."

The Gunsmoke cocktail is based on a drink Mark Twain once raved about in a letter to his wife, measurements and all. "It was pretty much a Scotch sour," Choo says of the author's favored tipple. "I tweaked it so it was balanced correctly." Choo rinses a glass with smoky Laproaig 10 Year Old single malt Scotch, then adds a mixture of blended Scotch, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup and Angostura bitters, and finishes the drink with flamed lemon zest.

Replacing the Southern's hot coffee cocktail is an intriguing spiked iced coffee. It combines iced Metropolis coffee with horchata liqueur and hazelnut rum, which is all topped with housemade Amaretto whipped cream and shaved orange zest. Horchata liqueur was new to us, and Choo claims the Southern is one of just a few bars in the city toying with the rich, rum-based spirit.

Vodka drinkers will gravitate toward the Cucumber Royale, which includes Effen Cucumber vodka, lime juice, simple syrup and fresh muddled mint. "It's almost like a mojito," Choo says. "Instead of topping it with soda water, we top it with prosecco." The new list will also sport other bubbly options, like a cocktail featuring Farmers Botanical organic gin, lemon, sugar, soda water, housemade blackberry juice and muddled sage. (The suds are changing, too; only locally made and Southern beers going forward, Choo says.)

Two new infusions also join the list: reposado tequila infused with fresh pineapple, tarragon and agave nectar; and Templeton Rye infused with fresh strawberries and Rishi black tea leaves.

Choo will be the first bartender to tell you that a good cocktail need not be overly complex. Take the new Texas Toast - simply bourbon, orange marmalade and bitters, shaken - an easygoing drink that seems perfectly in tune with comfort food. "It's laid-back, it's hospitable," he says of the Southern. "I want to make craft cocktails accessible to people who aren't into craft cocktails."

The Southern is located at 1840 West North Avenue.