Bar Flora New Menu Is Most Fun You'll Have With Tea + Gin
The menu is built around six varieties of tea, from matcha to darjeeling.
(SPOT.ph) With now a full year of operation under its belt, Bar Flora has revamped its entire menu of signature cocktails, refocusing around its concept of being a tea bar as well as a gin bar. The new menu is built around six varieties of tea: grey dragon white tea, matcha, dongding oolong, darjeeling, tisane, and pu-erh. Each variety gets three drinks each: a lighter cocktail, a more spirit-forward drink, and a mocktail.
That’s eighteen drinks in total, and a whole lot to try. And while the friendly bartenders at Flora will be more than happy to lead you down the right path, we offer here a guide to this remarkable new menu.
A guide to Bar Flora's new menu:
GREY DRAGON WHITE TEA- Delicate floral flavors
White tea gets pretty subtle, tending towards a mild earthiness that forms a base from which it springs these very light fruity or floral notes. It is certainly something that might disappear in a cocktail, but these drinks finesse the qualities of the tea in a set of drinks that try to really bring out those floral notes.
The GDT is a version of a gin and tonic, infusing the tonic water with the tea. This is a tall drink that goes down really easy, and is a great starter for the night. It comes with a fun garnish of mandarin orange tanghulu. On the spirit-forward side is Dragon Rouge, which pairs white tea-infused gin with Cocchi Americano, a quinine-flavored aperitif. It plays like a lighter Negroni, or maybe a much more substantial gin and tonic. But it is still floral flavors that rule the day, this time accompanied by a slight herbiness that gives the drink its weight.
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The mocktail is Jakarta Fizz, which has cold brew white tea mixed with palm sugar, pandan and star anise. It smells heavily of pandan, and tastes like a pandan cola. The palm sugar that sweetens it also gives it a slight tinge of salt that keeps you drinking.
MATCHA - Challenging familiarity
Most people are probably already familiar with the flavors of matcha, which is a staple in almost every coffee shop or milk tea place nowadays. This set of drinks challenges that familiarity by playing around with it within a culinary context, pairing it with flavors that one might not expect.
The lighter drink is the winner here: Soba Matchachism. It is a cocktail inspired by cold soba, and the first sip hits with all the aroma of sesame oil. Further down the drink, it is bright and citrusy while somehow still delivering a punch of miso umami. Matchacallit is the heavier drink, and it pairs a matcha foam with cream cheese liqueur, creating a rich, creamy drink.
Spill the Tea adds a sense of roastiness to matcha with the help of genmaicha, which is a Japanese green tea that has roasted rice in it, and a sesame syrup. This is one of the sweeter drinks in this new menu.
DONG DING OOLONG - Rich, buttery creations
You think you know what Oolong is but it’s likely you’ve never had Taiwanese Dong Ding, which has this unexpected buttery finish. The world of tea is just much larger than most people think, and having access to something like Dong Ding Oolong is one of the reasons Bar Flora has become a real destination.
The drinks in this series take inspiration from the flavors of Taiwan. Chillin in Shillin is very clearly inspired by Taiwanese milk tea, with its wintermelon syrup and boba. The spheres are made with pomegranate and blueberry, adding just a little bit more fun. The heavier drink Formosa Freeze is a version of a white negroni made with Taiwan’s Kavalan gin. It’s paired with a small plate of salty rice crackers that help soak up the alcohol and leave the palate clean for more flavor.
The mocktail is Pineapple Cake, and it is exactly that. It’s still a drink, but it is one that tastes exactly like a Taiwanese pineapple cake. There’s a brown butter syrup in this that really gives you the sensation of having cake, right down to the crispy edges.
DARJEELING - Flavors of the Raj
Darjeeling, with its lighter, more rounded dark tea flavors, can be tough to pick out. This series ends up borrowing flavors from India, where the tea is grown, and England, who actually established many of the tea plantations in India as a means of bolstering the supply of tea for their own consumption.
Florchata, the lighter drink, is inspired by Kheer, an Indian spiced milk pudding. There’s rice liqueur in it, transforming it into something that kind of tastes like horchata, but with more warm spices. Oh My Darjeeling is basically a martiini, with an added touch of pear. The slight smokiness from the tea rises up in the front palate, before going heavy on the spirit head.
Coco is very straightforward: a coconut coriander soda finished with a darjeeling foam. A super great drink for a hot day.
TISANE BLEND - For the classic cocktail enthusiast
A Tisane is a blend of herbal teas, which technically aren’t teas at all. Tea, if we’re being strict about it, is a very specific plant: camellia sinensis. But there’s stuff like peppermint and chamomile and rooibos that we call tea anyway, since we also prepare and consume them in the manner that we typically consume tea.
Anyway, Bar Flora has put together a mix that tastes particularly herbal, which makes the blend a good fit for the classic cocktail style. The provocatively named Pornstars are People Too is a version of a porn star martini, which uses passionfruit as an added flavor. Catch Me if You Can leans hard into the herbal qualities of the Tisane blend, adding aperol and fernet hunter to give it all an extra boost.
The mocktail, Capri Crush, is built on the flavor of strawberry, made to taste extra herbal thanks to the addition of rooibos soda. It’s a very refreshing drink that might remind some of strawberry flavored candies.
PU-ERH - For the adventurous
Pu-erh tea is a wildcard. This is tea typically fermented in caves in Yunnan, and the resulting cakes of tea will offer a wide range of flavors. It might be malty, or earthy, or taste straight up like mushrooms. This range of drinks doesn’t hide any of that, leaning into the odder qualities of the tea.
The lighter drink, Beets by Dr. Ced, leans into the earthiness by pairing it with beets. This ends up tasting something like a particularly dry red wine; the type with a rich, earthy aspect. What the Duck is maybe the wildest drink on the menu. It is inspired by Peking Duck, and uses a fat-washed liquor, hoisin, cucumber, and scallions. It is utterly delicious, though it will certainly test the boundaries of drinkers.
The mocktail is relatively simple in comparison, though very interesting anyway. Hello Guya mixes the tea with guyabano juice and goji berries. And this might be strange for a drink served in a cocktail bar, but it tastes positively healthy.
Bar Flora’s Volume 2 menu is now available, at 450 pesos per cocktail, or 300 pesos per mocktail. Any of the mocktails can be had with alcohol with an additional 150 pesos.