Columbia Room Launches New Summer Cocktail Menu featuring the “Banana Republican”

Photos by Bobby Spero

From an email:

“Derek Brown’s new Columbia Room (124 Blagden Alley NW) ushers in summer with a new seasonal cocktail menu inspired by Central and South American flavors, cultures and countries, including traditional Latin American beverages and spirits from El Salvador, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and more.

Columbia Room Summer 2016 menu (PDF)

The new menu items launch Tuesday, June 28 in the Tasting Room, Spirits Library and Punch Garden, and are inspired by the heritage, lives and travels of Columbia Room staff — from kitchen cooks to bar assistants to Drink Company CEO Angie Fetherston, who is Ecuadorian.

“We drew inspiration from our team, CEO to dishwasher, and asked them to help us discover new flavors and new ideas,” Brown says of designing the new menu. “That’s one of the things Columbia Room does best, experiment, because our guests are generally a little more adventurous. We were interested in flavors and products that we haven’t really used, from floral teas in Ecuador to a drinkable salad in El Salvador.”

Known for impeccable attention to detail and unexpected presentation, Columbia Room incorporates a diverse array of spirits in the new summer menu offerings, including singani, pisco, rum, chicha and Chilean wine paired with fruit and vegetable ingredients such as guava, banana, iceberg lettuce and passion fruit.

The Tasting Room’s signature three- or five-course tasting experience features five exciting new summer cocktails, including the “Coctel de Tamayo,” made with singani, scotch, dry curaçao, banana, passion fruit, orgeat, cane sugar, lime juice and black-lemon bitters.

“We Came for the Gold,” served in the Spirits Library, is a mix of miso-infused pisco, ginger-lime cordial, honey, maraschino liqueur and red shiso leaf. And in the Punch Garden, the bottled “Jote” consists of Chilean wine, citrus oleo syrup, amaro ciociaro and sparkling mineral water topped with a lime wheel and seasonal berries.

Columbia Room’s new summer menu will be available until mid-September — just before the official start of fall.”