Cocktails signature
With or without alcohol, but made up of local products. Five mixologists offer you an original cocktail, to be reproduced this summer.
The huge quartzite table that acts as a bar is Alexandre Besnault who drew the sketch. And it was there that he realizes, in front of the guests, the drinks granted to the menu dishes. Engaged just before the transformation of the Pic Au Beau-Rivage Palace restaurant in Lausanne, he immediately had the mission of hoisting mixology in the gastronomic firma dear to the doubly star French head. Cocktail panel chords, sometimes with and often without alcohol, have become as successful for a few years as those of wine. To the point that during a six -course menu, each table moves at some point at the bar, to attend the ritual of the preparation of the drink. “This moment of demonstration and exchange is the consecration of my bartender journey,” rejoices Alexandre Besnault.
From the age of 25, this Frenchman from the north of the Gironde, gamer and passionate drummer when he is not at the service, considers himself today as a creator of culinary drinks. In a laboratory located at the back of the restaurant, he handles liqueurs, juices, spices, syrups and aromatic plants with the same dexterity as chopsticks or gamepals. But with immense reflexive work in addition. “The challenge is to succeed in transposing the gastronomic universe of the chief in the glasses, at the level as much of its know-how as of its inspirations,” he continues. All means are allowed. The laboratory is, for example, equipped with a rotary evaporator which allows distillations or manufacture hydrosols. “Thanks to him, I can transform foods that cannot be used into drinks because of their texture or appearance, such as pea pods, to keep only a highly aromatic translucent juice,” he explains.
