Delicious: cocktails with your meal
Wine pairings are perfectly normal, and tea and beer pairings are also becoming increasingly prominent on menus. But what about cocktails and spirits with your starter and main course: daring? Absolutely! But we’re seeing it more and more often. In fact: cocktails and food are having quite a moment lately.
A cocktail on the side
Just a few weeks ago, I found myself in a field full of rye for a cocktail dinner with Belvedere Vodka. Now, I do enjoy a vodka (or two, three) from time to time, but usually not alongside my plate. I couldn’t be more wrong. Cocktails are so much more than an aperitif or digestif. They work perfectly well at your dinner table.
In wine glasses
With wine and beer, you’re often limited to bitter, sour and sweet, while cocktails offer a broader palette of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savory). And so, this week, there was yet another glass of vodka next to my plate. This time at restaurant THE DUCHESS, which has teamed up with Grey Goose for an impressive cocktail and food pairing. With an added gimmick: the cocktails are poured straight from the vodka bottle into a… wine glass. Not only is it a link to wine country France, where Grey Goose comes from, the joke is mainly that it looks as if you’re drinking (classic!) wine with your food, but—mindfuck!—there’s something else in your glass.
At the bar
What is very cocktail-style, however, is eating at the bar. The fun part is that you get a front-row view of how not only your cocktail, but also the other cocktails of the evening, are made. The menu consists of three courses and five cocktails. We start with a ‘Rosé Wine’. At least, that’s the name of the cocktail, which consists of Grey Goose, strawberry shrub and prosecco. A deliciously refreshing opener!
Organic Wine
Next comes a glass of cloudy ‘Organic Wine’. If you didn’t know better, you’d believe it. Until you take a sip, because the Grey Goose cocktail with passion fruit and soda goes down even more easily than a glass of children’s champagne. The tuna tartare served alongside it is designed for sharing and pairs perfectly.
Bar bites
The ‘Lambrusco Rosé’ is another sweet one. Even too sweet to drink on its own, but it works wonderfully with the crispy (fried) gnocchi with spicy sauce and the duck breast with hibiscus. The portions are modest, at bar-bite level, so take it easy, because it’s not as if you’re laying down a foundation throughout the evening to keep drinking heavily.
Dessert with dessert wine
The advantage of the small portions is that you’ll definitely have room left for dessert. It consists of apple-Calvados ice cream with wafer-thin, crispy pancakes filled with parfait. An amazing combination, and the same goes for the refreshing ‘Chenin Blanc Dessert Wine’ we drink alongside it, which forms a beautiful contrast with the sweet and creamy dessert. And with the Grey Goose Espresso Martini as a finale, you’ll head straight into Amsterdam’s nightlife.
A vodka cocktail with your meal too?
The special Grey Goose wine style menu is available at THE DUCHESS through Sunday, September 15, and costs 72 euros per person.
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