Golden Ratio

According to Piper Kristensen, co-founder of Redwood Hospitality, "if you can smell it, you can distill it." And so, quite often you can find him nose deep in housemade syrups made of pine needles or clarifying mandarin juices via centrifuge. The apex of his quest to create complex, interesting drinks: Golden Ratio. 

The Clinton Hill bar is all about maximum exploration of unexpected ingredients. Forget muddled strawberries; here they’re turning purple shiso, parsnip and even pine needles into syrups, aromatized waters and proprietary spirits. Much of what is used is rescued from sustainability-focused sister restaurants, sourcing tubs of Meyer lemon rinds from Place des Fêtes and leftover loaves from Laurel Bakery. What can't be spun up in-house is handed over to partner Joe McDowell, local distiller at Acid Spirits, who creates all kinds of concoctions, including bottles of olive brine and smoked grapefruit spirits.

It is a highly involved endeavor, one that you'd need a thorough lesson and copious notes to fully grasp. But for the drinker at the bar, it comes off as entirely pleasing: a nastrium cocktail that tingles the nose and tongue with floral and peppery aromas, and a woody, fennel-y purple shiso-based tippler. Even better, all of the 16 or 20 or so cocktails that rotate get a soft, non-spirited counterpart, one that echoes the other as opposed to mirroring, meaning you won't see vodka swapped for Seedlip here.

You may walk away with a new appreciation for something fresh. But you may also leave with more questions than answers, as it is hard to define what it is you just drank. Do as we did and lean on the waitstaff to parse through the menu, starting with our favorite question of the night, "So, what is a toothache tree, anyway?"