drinks arrive in beautiful glasses, pots, and mugs or with glass straws (there’s no way Whearty would use eco-unfriendly plastic straws), you’re likely to spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out just what it is you’re tasting. If you’re a local, the scents, flavours, and even textures trigger long-forgotten sense memories—a walk on the mountain when you were a kid, aromatic indigenous bush underfoot; a road trip pitstop through South Africa’s semi-desert Karoo where cold air and frosted scrub met the warm naartjie skin from your palm; running down a forested beach path with the sweet corruption of saltwater and seaweed growing stronger—all these experiences brand minor neural pathways that whether we’re aware of it or not and reinforce a sense of home. For Whearty, the process of creating new drinks is neither random nor haphazard. Continuing the chef-bartender connection, when it comes to idea generation at Outrage of Modesty and Operation Dagger, Whearty draws heavily on the approach of revolutionary Spanish chef Ferran Adria of El Bulli.
Whearty says, “Some of these botanicals may have a specific scent now but when we dry it out and make a tea out of it or use it with a gin or a tequila, it takes on a life of its own. Instead of people picking up a drink and saying, ‘this is an old fashioned or a mojito,’ they will say, ‘wow what is that?’ That’s the experience we want people to have. Not ‘ok, I’ve had that before’ or ‘it’s a mojito with this instead of mint.’ It becomes a whole new experience.” “I’ve got the existing bar in Singapore, this is the second one and there are plans to open a Melbourne one soon. What I’d love is things that tie in with all those venues, but they’re all unique in their own right. It doesn’t make sense
Luke in action— from grinding spices in a mortar and pestle to harnessing liquid nitrogen, a drink at Outrage of Modesty involves various other contraptions and equipment you’d expect to see in a Michelin star restaurant.
to make something with yuzu in South Africa. Aki and I tasted naartjie for the first time and we went wild. A beautiful highball for summer is Caperitif, a vintage Cape spirit, naartjie, and soda. It’s all new for us which helps it become new again for the people we work with.” The creations coming out of Outrage of Modesty (the term cocktails does not do them justice), are so outlandishly different to anything else available in South Africa yet at the same time weirdly familiar, as Whearty manages to provoke minor epiphanies from our gustatory and olfactory pasts. As the
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