Watermelon and Rosemary
WATERMELON AND ROSEMARY (NON-ALCOHOLIC) • 6 X PIECES FRESH WATERMELON • 20 ML LIME
• 15ML AGAVE NECTAR • 20 ML SODA WATER
MUDDLE WATERMELON IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SHAKER BEFORE ADDING ALL INGREDIENTS (EXCEPT SODA), AND SHAKE WITH BLOCKED ICE. STRAIN NEAT INTO STEMLESS CHAMPAGNE FLUTE, ADD SODA, AND GARNISH WITH A FRESH SPRIG OF WILD ROSEMARY.
As Whearty moves calmly between stations, constructing the drinks and engaging with his customers, perhaps the most noticeable thing about OOM is that there’s no crazed, surging scrum, preening of egos, and waving of cash or Amex cards. If you’re there, you have their undivided attention. Welcome to the modern bar. Gone are the days where bars and punters were solely focused on excess and the promised value of two-for-one specials, happy hour, sweet, sugary cocktails with umbrellas, and swizzly straws. Whearty is at the forefront of a new breed of bars and bartenders (or if you prefer the term, mixologist) who value quality over quantity, story over sugar, and creation over commercialism. Don’t expect him to flair bottles and set fire to punters eyebrows any more than you’d expect Heston Blumenthal to sling burgers. Like what you’d expect from a top restaurant, the drinks Whearty and his teams in Singapore and Cape Town
make are multi-layered and provocative; often nodding to both history and tradition yet modern in execution and innovative in their incorporation of ingredients both familiar and strange. This brings us back to Whearty’s wonder at the incredible natural produce available to him in South Africa. Dividing his time between Operation Dagger in Singapore and Outrage of Modesty in Cape Town (with a Melbourne project in the pipeline), Whearty sees a visit to South Africa as a chance to truly experiment with fresh indigenous produce from buchu to pelargoniums, nartjies to seaweeds.
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