U.S. cocktails mix it up with molecular gastronomy

By Deborah Jian Lee

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Xavier Herit stands before his customers holding a syringe mid-air. But he is not a doctor and it doesn't contain any medication.

The syringe is filled with strawberry-infused Cointreau and sodium alginate and is part of an arsenal of tools that are pushing Herit's cocktails to drinking's cutting edge.

The head bartender at New York City's Daniel restaurant is one of many mixologists who are reinventing drinks by infusing non-traditional flavors into alcohol or altering the physical properties of drinks to form gels, foams and mists.

"The bar is like a theater," Herit said in an interview.

After delicately pushing drops of his strawberry-liqueur mix from the syringe into a calcium bath, minutes later they emerge as tiny pink caviar-like beads.

At Tailor, another New York restaurant, bartender Eben Freeman tosses rice crispies in Kahlua, dehydrates them and repeats the process. He adds them to a vodka milk mix for a White Russian breakfast cereal.

Molecular mixology is a movement inspired by molecular gastronomy, a science-meets-cooking trend popularized by chefs including Ferran Adria of El Bulli restaurant in Spain and Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck restaurant in the English town of Bray.

Molecular mixology blurs the line between food, drink and chemistry. The drinks are not cheap and can cost up to $29. But the hours of experimentation, meticulous preparation and elaborate presentation offer curious cocktail lovers and gastronomes a completely new experience.