Neiburg: Craft cocktail scene a bit different at the beach

Mike Zygmonski knows things take a little bit longer to happen on the Delmarva shoreline. Trends in big cities, especially in food and drink, happen in those cities long before they become staples in Delmarva restaurants.

“We’re always three years behind,” said Zygmonski, sommelier for the SoDel Concepts group.

Talking with chefs, restaurant owners and bar managers around the beaches has me intrigued and wondering when the fads from the big cities will hit the ever-exploding Delaware beach scene, and if they’ll be the same?

Take the in-depth craft cocktail scene for example. Meat-infused liquor, smoked simple syrups and thai chili-infused tequila are all things that have become normal around urban food scenes.

But drinks like that aren’t and haven’t been overly common on Delmarva. It’s a summertime, watermelon crush kind of crowd, for the most part.

And that’s OK.

But as the restaurant concepts here evolve, drink menus are changing, too. The newly-opened Rare & Rye in Ocean City has a bourbon and whiskey heavy cocktail menu. Owner Sal Fasano said his team’s research showed that is what millennials are looking for. The whiskey and bourbon boom has been going on a few years now. The Manhattan and Old Fashioned are back and are here to stay.

The way Zygmonski, a native to the area, sees it, the craft cocktail boom is and has happened down here recently, it’s just a bit different, and there are reasons for that.

Unlike cities, the beaches, obviously, are seasonal. And restaurants, especially bigger ones, are usually operating on a wait and running through guest after guest. So you can’t really get too crazy.

“You can’t have those big, heavy drinks like you can make in a cool cocktail place in NYC,” Zygmonski said. “We’re not that busy in the winter time.”

So the area adapts. The craft cocktail scene will be different here. Even if the food scene gets more city-like as the region and beach towns are becoming more year-round destinations.

At SoDel’s newest restaurant, Bluecoast in Rehoboth, which opened recently, Zygmonski and general manager Wes Brooks got crafty and trendy but also kept it simple. They’re a year late, but they’ve got a frosé on the menu — the frozen rosé wine drink that had summertime drinkers going crazy in 2016.

It will go great on the outdoor patio. But more importantly, it isn’t a hard drink for a bartender to make.

“If you have a drink that has nine different components on it, it’s probably not going to fly in a restaurant that has 250 seats,” Brooks said.

“For us, it’s more about streamlining drinks, making sure they’re easy, flavorful, they pair with food. But the last thing you want to do is bog down your bartenders during a busy service muddling, torching fruit to put in drinks. And that’s all great, like I said, in a smaller setting.”

A smaller, less seasonally-focused setting.

But even still, like at Our Harvest in Fenwick Island, a beautiful bar menu exists.

Owner John Trader brought in a Philadelphia star in Heather Sharp for its throwback to the old days style of sophistication.

They get yuzu in from Japan and make a wonderful bourbon cocktail with it. Their take on a Manhattan features Rittenhouse Rye, Cocchi di Torino vermouth, Don Ciccio Amaro delle Sirene (instead of bitters) and a luxardo cherry. I finished every drop and wanted another.

Sharp comes to the region after having ran the beverage program at the highly-rated Laurel, Top Chef winner Nicholas Elmi’s tasting menu hotspot in Philadelphia.

Her mere presence speaks volumes about the burgeoning beverage scene on Delmarva.

“People want to drink more sophisticated alcohol now,” Sharp said last month. “People are drinking a lot more Manhattans than they used to because there’s a huge whiskey boom. That has a lot to do with the craft spirit movement, specifically. You’ve got local distilleries down here. You’ve got really great ones in Philadelphia.

“The food movement has happened down here. It’s been happening for a long time. The beer movement is already happening. The wine and cocktail are soon to follow. We’ve got 100 and some odd wines and almost every single one of them has been ordered in the first two weeks of us being open.”

Zygmonski said he understands, though, that in large part the clientele in the area isn’t young. So creating a beverage program takes some careful tinkering. There are plenty who just want a simple, classic cocktail.

And there’s always going to be a crowd for crushes.

So, how do they get progressive while still keeping it simple, regional and classic?

Frosés for all.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ll get my bacon-infused, nine different component drink somewhere else.