To say that cocktails are difficult to pair with food—anything from chocolate to steak to salad—is an understatement. Usually meant to be sipped before or after dinner, a cocktail isn’t a subtle affair. “The major flavors and the intensity of a cocktail can fatigue the taste buds and it can be exhausting to be hit with bold flavors from both a cocktail and food,” explains Tristan Willey, one of New York City’s most influential bartenders. In short? There can be too much sugar, too much acid, too much pure alcohol to successfully pair many cocktails with food. But that’s not the case with all cocktails—or, strangely enough, liquor on its own.
Willey has had a relatively quick and prestigious rise in New York City’s cocktail scene. Cutting his teeth at the famous PDT—by way of working at next-door greasy hot-dog spot, Crif Dogs—he became a barman at the postage-stamp sized East Village spot, Amor y Amargo, a bar dedicated to all things bitter. He also joined Kings County Distillery as a distiller making whiskey and brandy to gain a deeper understanding of spirits. Then, David Chang and Dave Arnold came knocking: Willey was asked to be the opening bartender at the Booker & Dax, the Momofuku team’s high-concept temple of mixology.
Now, six years after having started down this boozy path, Willey is the founder and CEO of a new, currently secret distilling project and the bar manager at Long Island Bar in Cobble Hill. Housed in an old ‘40s diner, Long Island Bar place focuses on classic cocktails and simple, drinking-friendly food.
Tristan Wiley’s ideal pairing is a mezcal old-fashioned with dark chocolate.
“The cool thing about pairing cocktails with food is that you get to truly tailor a drink to the flavor profile of what you’re eating,” says Willey. “There’s this whole range of ingredients laid out before you. You can really fine-tune the end product. His favorite food-and-cocktail pairings? They tend to skew simple: “My favorite pairing has always been martinis and oysters. Bourbon-based drinks with barbecue, with those big brown-sugar flavors, work really well together, too. A good French 75 is the crispest thing ever, especially with a light summer salad.”
Dessert, however, is a different story. “Dessert is easy and hard,” says Willey. “There’s a lot of complementary flavors that go on at dessert. While you have to balance out the sweetness of the dish, cocktails and sweets really go hand-n-hand. Chocolate can pair well things like orange liquors and older whiskeys. There are cognacs that are so pretty and velvety that can go well with a lot of dessert flavors, too.” But his ultimate chocolate pairing is a lot more surprising.
With Lindt EXCELLENCE 85% Cocoa, his ideal pairing is reposado tequila or mezcal. “Both of those make a great old-fashioned.” What he loves is that the chocolate draws out flavors in the liquors that you otherwise may not taste. “The creaminess, sweetness, and bitterness of the chocolate brings out the more green pepper flavors in tequila. It has a real bright-green flavor with a bite of this chocolate. The chocolate pulls together the mezcal’s mineral and gasoline-tasting side with its smoky side. It fills in that gap—it really blends those weird, petrol-style mezcals.”
Green pepper flavors are more heightened when dark chocolate is paired with a mezcal old-fashioned.
Willey says that bourbons and scotches work very well with chocolate, too—it’s just a more traditional pairing. But with cocktails and liquor, drinkers aren’t looking for delicate, subtle flavors you might find in coffee or wine. They’re looking for something a bit stronger, a bit more curious and interesting flavor experience. So why not make cocktails pairings a little more curious, too?