APRIL was just one hot day after another, so we were thankful to meet the Pirata Group’s Beverage Director Tiziano Tasso in The Peninsula Manila’s refreshingly cool and elegant The Bar. Mr. Tasso had flown in from Hong Kong for a bar takeover at the hotel on April 25.
Mr. Tasso was a bartender for over 30 years, and his father, a bartender himself, got him started. “I do this for fun,” he said since he now works with one of Hong Kong’s trendiest restaurant groups.
For his takeover at The Bar — sponsored by Volcan Tequila and Hennessy Cognac — Mr. Tasso made four drinks: the Tropical (Hennessy VS, tropical tea cordial, lime juice, palm sugar, and guava foam), Blossoming (Vanilla, Hennessy VS, chocolate-infused Volcan Blanco, white port, lemon juice, and egg), Hennessy Garden (Hennessy VSOP, Timur pepper cordial, eucalyptus essence, and bitters), and The Eruption (Thai rhubarb-infused Volcan Blanco, orange Curacao, pear and peach cordial, lime juice, and bitters).
In keeping with the mixologist’s heritage, the bar chow was decidedly Italian.
The Blossoming, served in a tall glass, proved to be filling and tasted almost nutritious, like a spiked breakfast smoothie. The Tropical was pleasantly fruity, with a taste that reminded one of berries, and felt like a nice poolside cocktail.
The Hennessy Garden was served with some ceremony inside a glass box on a bed of leaves with a bite of chocolate on the side — it was refreshing and mild, but still with a kick, the pepper cordial leaving its trail on all the ingredients. The eucalyptus essence gave it a cooling and slightly medicinal taste, like a nice cup of cool herbal tea.
Finally, the Eruption was a real show: it was served in a little clay pot with basil, but atop it was a bowl of steel wool, lit aflame resulting in an eruption of glowing embers. The drink itself (once the smoking steel wool was removed) proved to be very refreshing; the tickle on your nose from the basil was a pleasant bonus.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COCKTAILSMr. Tasso has a few principles when it comes to making drinks: “I think a good cocktail needs to reflect what is a good life — and a good life is a balance of life. If you have too much of anything, even positive things, it’s no good.”
As an Italian in Hong Kong, he gave us an impression of the place and how it influences how he makes his drinks. “Hong Kong, it’s a place of contradictions. It’s beautiful in a way that you have access to nature. It’s very multicultural, but on the other side, it’s quite closed. Local people are very into their own thing. It’s very fast-paced in a way, and very slow in another way,” he explained.
“They don’t drink too much alcohol. There’s an incredible up(take) on zero-alcohol,” he says about his customers. “They really like the idea to have innovation,” he says, adding, “They don’t drink much, but when they do, they want something different; something unique.”
Of the drinks he made for The Pen’s bar takeover that evening he said: “Cognac is very strong and rich. Not many people drink it. So I wanted to have three drinks that are completely different from one another, and give you access to a spirit that is strong.
“You always try to create a story. It’s not just a list of drinks on a piece of paper,” he said.
The first bar takeover this year featured Awarzed Awarra, an Ulan Bator-based mixologist from the Nomad Bar whose drinks for the night of April 9 featured Mongolian vodka and absinthe.
Upcoming bar takeovers at The Pen seem to be hush-hush surprises: the next one will be on June 13, and will feature a female bartender from Japan. The next one will be in August and a final one in October. — Joseph L. Garcia
