With a menu consisting of modern takes on traditional pub grub and Asian-inspired dishes, one NoFo bar has a new item on its cocktail menu that’s got customers asking, “What’s the Night Market?”
“Night markets in Asia are my favorite way to experience food, culture and flavor,” says Charmaine Strange, bar manager at Industry Standard Bar, a Greenport gastropub. “They’re full of interesting people, and the vendors are always phenomenal.”
With this in mind, last year she asked her executive chef, Greg Ling, to pick up pandan leaves — commonly used to flavor many Southeast Asian dishes — the next time he was in Chinatown. He obliged, and she infused the pandan leaves in Absolut vodka for a month.
“Pandan leaf is a really interesting flavor profile I [had always] wanted to use,” Strange says. “It’s nutty with a vanilla fragrance, which is really what makes it unique.”
She then combined coconut milk, simple syrup and butterfly pea tea, “which is bright blue and very earthy,” into a stainless steel cocktail shaker with the pandan-infused vodka.
“Butterfly pea tea is super cool too,” she says. “It’s a brilliant blue when steeped, but if you add an acid to it, the color changes. It also has a nice light flavoring similar to green tea — herbaceous but not overpowering.”
After shaking the ingredients, she strained them into a highball glass with ice and black tapioca pearls, also known as boba, resting at the bottom.
“Adding the tapioca just makes it a grown-up boba tea!” Strange says. “The cocktail works really well,” she adds. “The fragrances don’t overpower, and its complementary to the Asian dishes on our menu. It’s light, refreshing and easy to drink.”
When asked how she’d describe Night Market to a curious customer, without hesitation, the bar manager replied, “Something like you’ve never tried before but very Asian.”
“When I make drinks I always try to make something that is exactly the right drink for the person in front of me,” she says. “If I can evoke a memory, then I’ve done my part.”
Industry Standard is located at 45 Front St. in Greenport. They can be reached at 631-333-2500 or industrystandardny.com
