Novel Cordials and Mindful Mixology With Kitty Bernardo of NYC’s Paradise Lost

Walk through the nondescript door marked only with a creepy green glyph on Second Avenue in New York’s East Village and you’ll encounter the greatest entryway in modern bar history. Immediately, you’re bathed in neon and surrounded by foliage, drawn to the glowing letters “PARADISE LOST” like a thirsty mosquito to a bug zapper. Pass one more door and you’re trapped in uber-kitsch tropical hell (think: “Jaws” meets “Hellraiser.”) I’ve spent hours in this bar and every visit I notice something new and delightful artfully staple-gunned to the walls or ceiling. This joyful, spooky collage would be enough to keep me coming back again and again — the drinks could be an afterthought and I would still sing its praises. Fortunately for all of us, the drinks happen to be not only phenomenal, but thoughtful as well.

Along with Sunken Harbor Club, Paradise Lost represents the new generation of tropical bars in New York that take a novel approach to the category and dive deep into what’s possible in a tiki-style cocktail. In addition to utilizing unexpected ingredients and classic flavors with unique methodologies, Paradise Lost isn’t shy about contending with tiki’s past.

Tiki bars rose to prominence after World War II to cater to American GIs who served in the Pacific Theater and developed a taste for tropical flavors. Rather than celebrate individual Pacific Island culture and heritage, these bars created tiki culture — an amalgam of reality and fantasy that promotes outlandish, and often offensive, stereotypes. European and American imperialism, with their thirst for fruit, spices, sugar cane, and labor, were devastating throughout the Pacific, and the classic tiki bar can be a painful reminder for children of these cultures.

Kitty Bernardo uses their role as head bartender at Paradise Lost to instigate bold conversations around these cultural truths, and share their own complex identity through delicious cocktails. The mindfulness on display in their drinks extends to each and every component, including a thoughtful cordial that rethinks an ingredient common in the tropical lexicon.

Drinks for Thought

Under the gaping maw of a life-size great white shark model, Kitty explains that the past few years led them on a journey toward intentionality when working on cocktails. Every drink they put on a menu needs to take up that space for a reason, and the considerations are myriad. “The cost of goods, the raw materials, the labor that was put into everything — especially on the back end, like the rum, the agriculture, everything,” Kitty explains.

Their concern is not just for the liquid in the glass, but the lives affected before it arrived here, as well as the statement it can make about their own first-generation-immigrant, Filipino-American, non-binary identity. Kitty’s latest creation for Paradise Lost’s menu, “Attack of the Banantulas,” exemplifies these ideals.

Credit: Jeff Brown

The drink’s inspiration comes from banana ketchup, the tomato ketchup simulacrum invented by Filipino food scientist Maria Y. Orosa during World War II to satisfy the palates of American GIs stationed in the Philippines. It builds on tomato ketchup’s sweet-sour combo with the addition of ginger, alliums, cloves, and other tropical spices. The flavor profile is “a sensory memory that I want to bring to the forefront,” Kitty says.

From experience, I know that weaving together savory flavors into drinks can be difficult — just look at my failed attempt to make a “Garden Salad” after chatting with Moe and Juliette from Schmuck. Kitty threads this needle thanks to careful ingredient selection.

The boozy portion of Banantulas contains two white rums, including Paranubes, a funky pure cane juice distillate from Oaxaca; amontillado sherry; and banana liqueur. The choice to use Mexican rum and sherry together was purposeful, not just because the nuttiness of amontillado balances the vegetal rum beautifully, but because it gives Kitty an opportunity to tell a colonial story that mirrors their own experience.

Credit: Jeff Brown

Mexico shares a history of Spanish conquest with the Philippines so putting these two culturally specific ingredients in a drink that’s representative of a distinctly Filipino flavor profile gives Kitty an opportunity to engage with guests about the history of all three cultures.

The drink also includes ginger syrup, cinnamon syrup, passion fruit, and lime. Savory notes are handled by Kitty’s own formulation of allium tincture — a combination of raw onion and garlic macerated in Everclear that mimics the Filipino vinegar-based dipping sauce Suka — but the crucial component that ties everything together is an innovative banana cordial.

Use the Whole Fruit

The cordial was borne out of R&D collaboration between Ray Sakover, beverage director and partner at Paradise Lost, and Chris Stanley, the brilliant prep mind responsible for the hundreds of sub-ingredients used at the Dead Rabbit. “What they landed on was something that mimics the technique of a traditional oleo saccharum but adding in more of the flavor and mindfulness of using the entire fruit,” Kitty explains.

In practice, the banana cordial starts as two separate oleos. Equal parts by weight banana flesh and sugar are sealed in one Ziploc bag, while equal parts washed, sliced banana peels, and sugar are sealed in another. Both bags are agitated and left at room temp for a day. “After 24 hours you’ll have an oleo from the skins and a syrup from the flesh,” Kitty says.

The syrups are strained together, and the combination is dosed with lactic acid and malt vinegar. The extended maceration in sugar dials up the overripe candied banana flavor so adding acid brings back the fresh, bright flavor of a banana, with just a touch of green remaining.

Kitty gave me the opportunity to sample the syrup on its own and it was like tasting a banana at every stage of ripeness all at once, with an earthy, slightly tannic funk from the peels. It took my strongest willpower to not steal it to spoon over ice cream or make banana Daiquiris at home.

Credit: Jeff Brown

This type of whole-fruit-driven, zero-waste cordial has been a running theme throughout Kitty’s career. During their tenure at Sunday in Brooklyn, Kitty made the bar’s redeemed fruit cordial — a way to reuse citrus that had been peeled or cut for garnish. At many bars these fruit remains would be headed for the garbage can. “You can take any citrus, cut it into smaller pieces, and massage it with an equal weight of white sugar,” Kitty explains. The flesh, juice, and oils released from the peels hydrate the sugar. The final product is a syrup redolent of citrus oil and shelf-stable for weeks in the fridge. Through minimal work and a little mindfulness, something that’s typically discarded is transformed into a value-added product. It’s delicious, good for the bottom line of the bar, and good for the planet.

Mindfulness at Home

I decided to try my hand at this mindful approach using a summer staple that always generates a ton of volume in my compost bin: watermelon. The addition of vinegar in the banana cordial inspired me to pickle the watermelon rind, yielding something delicious to snack on as well as spiced pickling liquid to add complexity to a watermelon syrup. The trial was a wild success. I ended up with a refreshing Margarita variation perfect for the doldrums of summer. The watermelon rind pickle recipe is adapted from Alton Brown’s recipe to include more cocktail-friendly spices and a slight bump in sweetness.

Watermelon Rind Pickles

Credit: Jack Schramm

Ingredients

1 pound bite-size watermelon rind pieces (rind should be peeled and the pink flesh should be sliced away so only white remains)
½ cup white sugar
½ cup apple cider vinegar
½ cup water
2 teaspoons salt
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise pods
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (more if you prefer heat)
15 coriander seeds, crushed

Directions

Add all ingredients except rind to a small saucepan and bring to a boil.
Carefully add rind pieces. Return to a boil and hold for 1 minute.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
Add entire contents to a canning jar and seal.
Sit at room temperature for an additional 90 minutes. Move to the fridge and store refrigerated for up to a month.

Pickled Watermelon Syrup

Credit: Jack Schramm

Ingredients

200 grams ripe watermelon flesh
200 grams white sugar
Watermelon pickling liquid

Directions

Add watermelon and sugar to a plastic bag.
Squeeze/squish/agitate and let sit at room temperature until the sugar is hydrated.
Strain through fine mesh.
Add 20 percent of the weight of the strained watermelon syrup in pickling liquid. (For instance, if you made 200 grams of strained syrup, add 40 grams of pickling liquid).
Stir to combine and store in a resealable container in the fridge.

Pickled Watermelon Margarita

Credit: Jack Schramm

Ingredients

2 ounces additive-free blanco tequila (I used Cascahuín)
¾ ounce pickled watermelon syrup
¾ ounce lime juice
5 drops 20 percent saline solution or tiny pinch salt
Garnish: watermelon rind pickle

Directions

Add all ingredients except rind to a shaking tin.
Fill with ice and shake until chilled.
Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.
Garnish with watermelon rind pickle.

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