Sip, sip, hooray! The no-waste cocktail trend shaking up South Africa

At Edge, a rooftop restaurant in Cape Town, chef Vusi Ndlovu runs a sustainability-focused no-waste kitchen.

One use for leftovers and offcuts is the restaurant’s bar. It’s where sommelier/mixologist Jaycee Kondo comes up with unusual mixed drinks, such as his slightly fiery Jollof cocktail. It’s made with repurposed jollof rice, a dish Ndlovu makes in the Senegalese style but using Nigerian spices. Kondo’s invention might remind you of a clarified Bloody Mary — beautifully softened, but with a decent spice kick.

Meal-flavoured cocktails are big globally. Whether it’s the Waldorf salad-in-a-glass at New York’s Double Chicken Please or a Jellyfish Martini (made with jellyfish-infused gin) at Fura in Singapore, many bars are taking umami ingredients to new heights.

Around the world, bartenders are opening up space for creativity. Mixologists use techniques such as fat-washing (infusing alcohol with a flavour-enhanced liquid fat that is then frozen, so the solidified fats can be removed, leaving the unfrozen alcohol with all the flavour but none of the food texture).

The resulting clarified cocktails are intensely flavoured drinks of crystal-clear consistency that might have been augmented with everything from heirloom vegetables to shaved meat.

“A lot of our kitchen ingredients — leftovers, offcuts, even the green stems of certain vegetables — go to the bar,” says Edge’s co-owner Absie Pantshwa.

Once there, Kondo dreams up imaginative uses for dehydrated vegetable leaves and herbs, some of which are used to dust savoury libations.

Then there are Kondo’s place-inspired cocktails: his brandy-centric Vannie Kaap gets some chutney syrup and a bit of chilli tincture, while his shout-out to Durban (called eThekwini) is made with toasted coconut rum, hazelnut and pineapple.

Giving the cocktail scene a recent boost is Ajabu (“wondrous” in Swahili), a cocktail and spirits festival in Joburg and Cape Town. Founded by Colin Asare-Appiah (co-author of Black Mixcellence: A Comprehensive Guide to Black Mixology) and Mark Talbot Holmes (founder of U’Luvka Vodka), the festival brings bartenders from overseas to collaborate with South Africans. The hope is to encourage the local uptake of international cocktail innovations and send foreign bartenders home with a broader understanding of what’s happening at the tip of Africa.

Bars that have previously sent delegations include Mexico City’s Handshake Speakeasy, ranked number one by The World’s 50 Best Bars. At the heart of Handshake’s operation is an on-site laboratory where advanced culinary techniques are used to extract fresh food flavours from raw ingredients and then experimentally combine them in cocktails that defy logic.

Ajabu’s most recent iteration, attended by mixologists from bars such as Tommy’s (San Francisco), Panda & Sons (Edinburgh), Library (Toronto) and Atwater Cocktail Club (Montreal), was held last month. Asare-Appiah tells the FM that part of Ajabu’s mission is to improve the visibility of South African bars and local mixing talent on the global stage — and to stimulate what he calls “cocktail tourism”.

At Smoking Kills, an edgy bar in Melville, the mad cocktails include Atchar Lipgloss, made with vetkoek-washed whisky, mango atchar and mango chutney syrup

It’s working, too. Earlier this year, Cape Town’s Talking to Strangers on Loop Street shifted onto The World’s 50 Best Bars’ “Discovery” list alongside a handful of African bars.

Among the bar’s cocktails is Mielieeees, made by fat-washing reposado tequila with caramelised bourbon butter, combining the spirit with a syrup infused with the flavour from charred corn on the cob, then adding a dash of chilli oil and fresh lime. It’s shaken and served with tahini on the rim and a side shot of popcorn.

At Smoking Kills, an edgy bar in Melville, the mad cocktails include Atchar Lipgloss, made with vetkoek-washed whisky, mango atchar and mango chutney syrup — it’s guaranteed to transport you back to one of those dodgy nights when you might have found yourself scoffing vetkoek and spaza slap tjips on the side of the road. The mouthy bartenders also make a memorable Moer Koffie Martini using condensed milk and Ouma rusks.

And not every bar is leaning into the maximalist cocktail movement. At Obscura, a lavishly designed spot in Rosebank, you can order just about anything from the realm of alcohol, but owner and cocktail purist George Hunter forecasts an old-school resurgence. “Cocktail culture is returning to the classics,” he says, “albeit prepared with fresh, wholesome ingredients.”