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Delhi's favourite Sidecar, one of the city's best-known cocktail bars, has launched its sixth signature menu, Kalakaar – and it’s undoubtedly an ode to the people behind the bar and the craft that goes into every cocktail. It’s a menu about the people who rarely get top billing, but whose work is what makes the show worth watching.
The thought behind the menu reminds me of one of my favourite comfort watches: Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: a tale of an ordinary man with a mundane job who daydreams of a more exciting life, who learns that the greatest people aren’t necessarily those chasing adventure, but the ones quietly carrying on with their work, unnoticed.
In Sidecar’s launch of the Kalakaar menu, you see the same thing play out. Kalakaar roughly translates to a person who carries out a craft, and each of the 12 new cocktails is named after a distinct art technique, collectively paying homage to the people shaking, stirring and concocting them behind the bar. As owner Minakshi Singh puts it, ‘The hands that create these drinks are the true heroes, the ones behind the bar.’
You get a sense of what that means when Yangdup Lama, co-owner and bartender extraordinaire, makes Sidecar’s eponymous cocktail for us at the menu launch. The ingredients and equipment are the same ones anyone behind the bar could use, but somehow, nobody else could quite make it taste like his. There’s magic in those hands, which make even an ordinary cocktail taste nuanced and layered.
What’s on Sidecar’s new Kalakaar cocktail menu?
And then there are, of course, the drinks, which are perhaps the best way to understand what Sidecar means by liquid art. Kintsugi, named after the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold, is delicious and fruity, with gold in the form of the acacia honey weaving together the moringa infused vodka and fresh mulberries. The Fourth Wall, Sidecar’s take on a classic Michelada, comes with a startling list of ingredients, including chicken broth and worcestershire sauce, topped with cold lager and a crispy chicken skin garnish, that makes for a wondrously umami drink.
Double Exposure is their rendition of an espresso martini, with stout beer making a cameo instead of the regular coffee liqueur, making for a much, much lighter variation of the typically heavy dessert drink. Mudra, with tequila, in-house orange liqueur and a sweet lime saccharum is dangerous for how easily it goes down, and Ikat was a negroni hijacked by mushrooms and morels for an earthy punch.
My favourite, however, was Negative Space, with a giant globe of mint ice surrounded by a mix of vodka, white balsamic and tomatoes (imagine the scent of a freshly mowed lawn captured in drink form).
As with all signature menus here, the final drink is titled The Muse, Sidecar’s tribute to, well, a sidecar, the namesake cocktail, with bourbon, lime, home-made gooseberry syrup and orange liqueur coming together for a drink that tastes much more complex than it sounds, in the best way possible.
The verdict on Sidecar’s Kalakaar menu
There’s a certain je ne sais quoi that’s immensely pleasing about a bar doffing its hat to its crew, and when you first open the menu, there’s a photo of the whole Sidecar team, with beaming faces. All in all, Sidecar ke Kalakar looks to be a worthy successor to the immensely popular Around The World menu that it replaces, and continues to rule the roost as far as bars in the city go, with bustling crowds on almost all days of the week. It's also one of the bars that earns a place on our guide to the best places to drink in Delhi.
And Sidecar regulars needn’t panic: while there are indeed 12 new drinks, crowd favourites from the past five signature menus stay on in later pages.
Sidecar Delhi: Address, timings and prices
Address: M-29, GK2 M Block Market, New Delhi 110048
Timings: 10am–1am, daily.
Price for two: About ₹5,000 for two rounds of drinks