When a customer orders a martini at Bar Chimera, which opened in April in Midtown Manhattan, the bartender slings liquid nitrogen across the bar to freeze the glass.
At Sip & Guzzle, a West Village bar that was recently ranked 14th on a list of the 50 best bars in the world, a dirty martini is served topped with charred negi (green onion) being smoked on a stick as if it were part of a campfire outing.
What Holds Value Here, a cocktail at the spaghetti western-themed speakeasy Four Walls in Nashville, is served on a tray full of edible sand, adorned with edible succulents and filled with edible gold that customers can pan for.
Across the world cocktails are no longer just about ingredients and taste. Presentation has become key, with bartenders using interesting glassware, underlighting, smoke, branded LED ice and even bubble blasters, to surprise and delight customers. It’s a long way from the days of the Cosmo and the Appletini, when a whimsical pop of color counted as showstopping.
“In the old days the only place you would experience a truly beautiful cocktail would be these tiki bars that had over-the-top garnishes,” James Bowker, a longtime bartender, said. Now, as the global advocacy manager for House of Suntory, the Japanese portfolio within Suntory Global Spirits, he trains bartenders to incorporate craftsmanship into their drinks.
His job reflects what he said was the hospitality industry’s changing relationship with those actually making the drinks. “Bartenders are getting paid properly and treated with the respect that the craft is due,” he said, and there’s more attention being paid to the artistic input than ever before.
“Now bartenders are artists, and they are placing a great emphasis on entertaining customers.”
Posts by appreciative customers of their experiences on social media have resulted in a sort of creative arms race among bars, according to Lawson Ballinger, the head bartender at Four Walls. He makes a drink with a leaf that comes garnished with perfectly cylindrical raindrops made of rice wine vinegar gel.
With greater visibility into high-end cocktails, customers accelerated the trend, Mr. Bowker said, becoming more knowledgeable and more willing to traverse their cities — or the world — in pursuit of the best experiences.
Julie Warner, a 35-year-old lawyer who lives in Boston, is one such drinker. She said she loved traveling to bars with over-the-top cocktails both in her hometown and when she travels.
“I remember seeing this martini on Instagram,” she said of one served in an ice-coated glass that resembled an ice sculpture at Grill 23 & Bar in Boston, “and I was like, I have to go there,” adding that she had since visited two or three more times.
The demand has created a cycle where bars need to stand out on social media to pursue a clientele that desires ever more from its drinks.
“These days there are more consumers happy to spend a premium to have beautiful cocktails,” Mr. Bowker said. “That means there are more venues providing them.”
As the approach has spread, it has also raised questions about the costs of making cocktails that are so beautiful. Is it practical for bars to keep one-upping the competition? Can consumers bear the expense? Is all the attention to style sacrificing the substance?
“There is this bar where every cocktail is a big presentation, and every cocktail is expensive because of it,” said Simon Abrahms, the New York-based founder of Chesterfield Gallery, which specializes in glass art. Still, he said, “I don’t go there, even though I live 12 blocks away because the cocktails just aren’t good.”
Next year Mr. Abrahms is bringing his own twist to the trend, intending to open his own cocktail bar, where every drink comes in its own handblown glass vessel.
In Mexico City, Oscar Valle, who is one of the people behind the well-known bars Despacho Margarita and Licoreria Limantour, worries that some of the techniques being used to beautify cocktails are infringing on their taste. “It’s a little bit hard to be smoking every cocktail in front of customers and get the same quality,” he said. “The standardization is going to be different.”
So he prefers to glamorize cocktails by leveraging ingredients, like adding dehydrated vegetables. “You can just let them be there,” he explained.
Many of the cocktails that emphasize beauty cost more than $25, yet it’s hard to get a reservation at a lot of the bars serving them. For example, tables for Sip & Guzzle become available for reservation 10 days in advance and often get booked in seconds for prime-time slots like Saturday night. The fact that guests are working so hard for the privilege of paying a steep price for a cocktail means bars must perform on a higher level, according to Sam Morris, the beverage director of Sip & Guzzle.
“Ten years ago you didn’t really hear about bars doing their own distillations, using superfreezes and liquid nitrogen,” he said. “Now it feels like that is a starting point.” He added that he was “really trying to do things people haven’t tasted before.” His concoctions also include a cocktail that is served in a teapot and a tincture that changes color as you drink it.
Mr. Ballinger said that Gen Z’s habits — the cohort is said to drink less and place greater value on interesting — also contributed to a sort of arms race. “I think Gen Z in particular places a lot of value on the experience surrounding a cocktail, rather than simply the alcohol itself,” he said. “It’s no longer just about what’s in the glass, but how it’s presented, the story behind it and how it makes someone feel.”
Mr. Morris says he sees younger customers enter the bar, order one elaborate drink and spend significant time taking photos and videos of it. Because they are sharing everything online, bars have to emphasize grabbing people’s attention on social media. Mr. Morris admits that when he invents a new drink, he automatically starts imagining the reels of it.
“I am a creative person, so it’s fun to go out and get a cocktail that someone has really put creativity into and not something you could make at home,” Ms. Warner said. “It’s not like going to all the other bars that now serve vodka sodas in a can. That is not an experience.”
But those dramatic presentations can heighten customer expectations and lead to disappointment if those high hopes aren’t met, according to Miki Niu, the owner of Wonderland Bar, a whimsical bar in the East Village known for theatrical cocktails. “They say, ‘This isn’t what I saw online.’”
She said it was challenging for bars to buy the ingredients like liquid nitrogen that are needed for drink presentations and to employ the number of professionals required to make such elaborate products.
And then there’s the difficulty of coming up with fresh ideas. Impressive techniques become too pervasive. “I think the era of smoking cocktails is kind of waning,” Mr. Abrahms said. “I think that is just a move that has been played out in so many places.”
The pressure to deliver something truly novel can ultimately yield some stagnation. Ms. Niu said that Wonderland updated its menu only twice a year because executing on fresh ideas takes time. One of her cocktails is Spring Air, which is set on dry ice and sprayed with a lemongrass aroma, so patrons “feel spring before they take a sip,” she said.
At the Paradise Lost tiki bar in the East Village, Kitty, the bar manager, who declines to use a surname, said it took her team six to nine months to nail down a new cocktail. “We play with texture, color, height, volume,” she said. “We use paper fans, swizzle sticks and fire. With tiki cocktails, customers eat with their eyes first.”
But a feast for the eyes that leaves a subpar taste in a customer’s mouth can worsen the overall experience.
“I hear bartenders say all the time that they went to a certain spot and the cocktails were beautiful, but you know, they just didn’t feel balanced,” Mr. Ballinger said. “As a drinker myself, it’s very hard when the cocktail is so beautiful, and it kind of ups the ante. It has to taste really good when it looks so pretty. Taste comes first.”
