Sable's New Cocktail Menu Is Inspired By The CTA
By Anthony Todd in Food on May 19, 2016 6:37PM
The Sotol Square, one of the new drinks at Sable. Photo courtesy of Sable Kitchen & Bar.
Since it opened in 2010, Sable Kitchen & Bar has been known across the nation for excellent cocktails and an encyclopedic drink list. For the first time since that opening, they're totally changing up the format of their menu, and what they've come up with is pretty cool.
The new menu, created by lead bartender John Stanton, looks like an antique train map, and the drink list follows train "lines." They don't quite match up with the real CTA; instead, they've created a fictional world of neighborhoods, with tons of fun descriptions, that occasionally interact with the real CTA.
On the fictional side of the ledger, one of the drinks, which is somewhere around Clark/Division on the map, is called the Violet Beuregarde, "named after a politician's competitive, gum-chewing daughter." As any good nerd knows, this is actually the character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the menu reminds us that " You don’t have to fear the blueberries here." The drink is a combination of cognac, lemon, cream, cinnamon and blueberries.
On the more close-to-home side, check out the "Neverland Triangle," "nicknamed for its residents’ refusal to abandon their youth." Uh huh.
The menu is split into four lines, each of which follows a theme. There's a modern cocktail line, a list of beer cocktails, a list with local spirits, and a list with international spirits from across the americas. Unsurprisingly, the latter is the line that goes through Pilsen and includes plenty of mezcal, tequila and pisco. The complete menu is below.
The drinks themselves range across spirits and styles. We're particularly excited to try the Loki Lane, an aquavit martini made with two kinds of vemouth, and the Abbey Road, a mezcal/chartreuse cocktail with cynar and egg whiltes.
For a bar recently-nominated as best hotel bar in America that's followed the same format for a long time, this new menu is a radical, whimsical shift, and clearly the creators put a ton of energy into creating this fictional world. We can't wait to check it out.