The tiki bar is undergoing a menu change that focuses less on mai tais and more on innovative ways to use ingredients
With old-fashioned airplane seats and skulls scattered about, the vibe is as if you had crashed your small aircraft on a haunted tropical island and were stranded, with nothing but your wits to guide you.
I’ve previously visited the bar at 718 14th St. as a customer, but it had been a couple of years. I remember thinking the cocktails were fine, if not standard tiki fare. I was more invested in the atmosphere. A little spookiness with my beverages goes a long way. However, bar manager Gabe Chavez has been in the process of transforming the menu since taking over in January. Now that the four-year veteran of the bar has taken the reins, he’s started to experiment, taking inspiration from fermentation and the terroir of certain spirits to design cocktails with nods to the classics as well as out-of-the-box flavors. Like a mad scientist crash-landed in the jungle, Chavez proudly showed off some of his “feral” concoctions with me on a recent afternoon. His lovingly created fermentation babies use ingredients such as honey, apricot, lemon, strawberry and geranium, and many gestated for weeks until he was satisfied with the flavor profile. “What I'm doing is approaching the program from three main ferments, or styles of ferments,” he said as he stirred each jar with a spatula before letting me sample. The first is a dry white wine style, which involves water, sugar, and fruit, and letting natural yeast ferment the ingredients. Then there’s his “heavy style” ferment, which uses a small amount of fruit — and much of the skin — with tannins and a dense honey. The last ferment is more in the vein of vermouth, using wild herbs and tea. When asked why he was so excited about fermentation, Chavez said that it opened up more possibilities for their ingredients. “It's like taking some beautiful strawberries or apricots and seeing where we can kind of push that or coax it to an entirely new thing, that's complex, and full of flavor,” Chavez said. I’ve never been much of a fan of natural wine, which is made using no additives and in a more simplified process than its traditional counterpart. It has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, but I’ve always felt like I’m sipping vinegar instead of a nice cabernet or Sancerre. Those are far more preferable at the end of the day. Chavez emphasized that his take on the method is about low intervention, or keeping his new experiments as simple as possible to stay true to the ingredients. “I've had the most fun creating flavors doing this, and I think the guests are way more excited about something that they've never tried before,” he said. Ex // Top Stories SF nonprofits fear for future in era of federal, city budget cuts They say philanthropy can’t fill in the gaps left by a loss of federal and city government investment How to spend the end of August in The City Learn how to play mah-jongg at the Ferry Building or take a guided stroll down Valencia Street to ease into Labor Day As Valkyries’ business booms, basketball boosts bars and breweries Before, during and after games, local establishments are riding the wave of women’s sports fans Perhaps it was Chavez’s preference for calling his creations “feral” rather than natural, or the nuances in the flavors he was crafting, but even I was more intrigued by his ferments than I would have thought. And that was before he walked me through how he used them in Last Rites’ cocktails. The goal is to balance the drinks’ tropical elements with locally sourced ingredients that also honor California’s rich agricultural diversity. “Where we're going is moving towards fully bespoke fermented ingredients in our cocktails,” he said. “Looking at tropical drinks as more of a celebration of the terroir of a place through a spirit, but contextualized with local produce here.” Chavez is still tinkering with the menu and says that the new updated version will likely be ready to launch early next year. It will include some classics, like martinis and negronis, but the new cocktails are the main focus. However, he’s visiting New York soon for a cocktail tour at a few bars out there, and in preparation for that, he created the “Fumar.” Named for the Spanish word for smoke, he said it would be a good example of Last Rites’ future menu. “This cocktail is kind of based around one of the first fermentations we did, which was a raw honey, and wild rose geranium, which is an herb, and then it's diluted with raw apple juice,” Chavez said. It has been fermenting since early May, and he just decided it was ready for use. Trying it, I was instantly reminded of mead, a fermented honey wine, with herbal notes. Not too sweet, with the raw apple juice balancing the honey. The Fumar started with a ¾ ounce of Late Embers Smoked Sunchoke and Honey spirit, which adds a slightly thicker, agave element to the cocktail. That was poured into a shaker, followed by ¾ of an ounce of Holmes Cay Reunion Island Rum Traditionnel, which is the style of rum most often used in mai tais. Then, I added ½ an ounce of Birdhorse Verdelho white wine, with ¼ ounce of Calvados, ¾ of an ounce of Last Rites’ housemade fermented apricot honey, and ¾ of an ounce of lemon juice, with a dash of saline. With a scoop of pebble ice, I shook the mixture briefly, just enough to combine everything, and all of that was poured into an old-fashioned glass. I added more pebble ice to round out the top, and then garnished it with a bushel of mint and a sprinkle of a spice blend that included nutmeg and cinnamon. The pièce de résistance, and what I was most excited to do, was to set a stick of cinnamon on fire with a blow torch. This satisfied my inner pyrotechnic, and the smoky cinnamon smell was fantastic, although it clung to my hair and clothes for hours afterwards. The cocktail itself was Last Rites’ attempt at creating something similar to a hard cider, Chavez said, and I got that immediately. It was crisp, tart, with a slight spice. But the texture was slightly more viscous than a typical cider, and the honey and herbal notes came through with the fermented ingredient, adding another layer of depth. While I will never likely be a natural — or “feral” wine — fan, I’m much more interested in the possibilities of this sort of process with the other ingredients and styles that Chavez is planning on experimenting with.
Cocktails Fermented Drinks San Francisco Bars Last Rites
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