STRAIT talking - Daisy

Written By Abi Nash

Okay, Daisy.

Hello.

How long have you worked at The Strait and Narrow?

I started at The Strait and Narrow in 2015, so that was 11 1/2 years ago. Since then I've been in and out a little bit, and then I've been the GM here for just over four years now.

How do you think the bar has changed over the years?

I think maybe because I was starting off as a cocktail bartender it seemed like it was definitely a lot more cocktail forward than other places in the city. Things like your classics were a huge hit, your Espresso Martinis, your Pornstars, your French Martinis, they were sort of the things that everybody was drinking back then. Since then we've hugely expanded on each of our categories. So maybe back then we started with 10 vodkas, now there's 20. Whiskies just keeps growing by the day. Every couple of weeks we're putting in new ones, swapping and changing. And different trends, since then things like Mezcal and Tequila have become a huge hit, so we've expanded our collection of those. As Tequila and Mezcal drinks have become more fashionable, we've incorporated a few of those onto our latest menus.

I know that you particularly love Beer.

I absolutely love Beer.

Tell me, what do you look for when choosing new Beers to stock?

So probably about 12 years ago, I actually drank my first proper Craft Beer here at The Strait and Narrow. It was the Omnipollo and Buxton collab, the Lemon Meringue Pie Sour Beer. I was so amazed that you could make a Beer in this style and you could have Breweries that didn't care about how much of an amazing ingredient they put in, they just did it. They did it because they believed in it, they did it because they wanted it, and whether that means they're sold at higher prices, the quality is there. So we're always looking for Beers and Brewers that are of high quality, that do what they want to do, that play by their own rules, that have consistency. You've got Brewers like your Yonder and your Vault City, they make a lovely base Beer, they're adding different fruits and flavours to them and they are consistently good. Things like that we really, really support. And then on the other extreme you've got your Canadian Brewers, your American stuff, they're pumping in all these amazing ingredients, they're a little bit more on the higher end, higher quality, but they're so worth it. We also look for Brewers that are using different hops. Hops have been created and cross-bred every week, nearly. So looking for those trends. At the moment, there's things that are really hot, like Superdelic. There's a dried grape skin powder that's been added to beers called Theol, which really accentuates your tropical flavours and your pine needles. And also things like Hop Kief, which is going along the trends of people eating a lot healthier, a little bit more of like your raw food, your superfood. It's a cold pressed hop juice, which is added into your Beers. It creates like a really grassy, fresh flavour. We're down for the trends. We absolutely love them.


Okay, so standout brewers. If I forced you to narrow it down to 3 brewers, who would you choose?

For Sour Beers, 100% it would be Funky Fluid. Imperial Stouts, it's got to be the Emperor’s, it's my favourite. I absolutely love their Beers! And if we're going to... Go broad. IPAs, I would probably say Arpus, which are a Latvian Brewery, and their IPAs are stunning.

You put a lot of hard work into creating the cocktail menu. Where do you even start doing something like that and where do you find inspiration?

It's my favourite part of the job. I love the creativity of it. When we start writing the menu, for me, my drinks inspiration comes from all different things. It could be a person I've met, it could be a scene in a movie. We did a pirate-themed one with a peated whiskey spritzed on top of it to give that smoke moment, when the pirate ship comes through the fog. One of my favourite styles of cocktails is anything that's savoury, anything that's food-based. We had like a Tom Kha Gimlet, fresh coconut, lemongrass, coriander, those sort of flavours. But I always think that your cocktails need to be made for a reason. You've got to have an inspiration. They've got to be tied into the theme of your menu. So, for example, on our new GTA menu, we have the Don Traegeri’s Dulche De Leche Old Fashioned. And that was inspired by one of the characters who's part of the Italian mafia. We've taken these sweet, smooth caramel notes to create a gentleman sort of style. It's garnished with a cinnamon stick, which brings that warmth, hinting at those family ties that Italian families are famous for. But also the smoking cinnamon stick looks like a cigar! So it pulls back to that Italian root and that's a local collab with an Italian deli called Nonna Juana. It's something that I try and explain to customers, but there are so many drinks on that menu, there's so many Easter eggs that are in the drinks and stuff like that are made maybe for my own satisfaction! But I love knowing there are those curious people who are checking your QR codes, who are listening to your Spotify playlist, who are finding these individual details.

Is there any cocktail that you have made that you are particularly proud?

Honestly, it was such a tiny drink and the inspiration came from a trip to Hungary. It was on the previous Cocktail Menu called ‘I'm a Huge Fan of the Way You Lose Control’. And going again with the style of drinks that I like, it was sweet but it was really savoury. And it was inspired by cucumber and dill, by pickles and European culture. And I didn't actually think it tasted like a pickle until the team drank it and they were like, this is the pickle drink! But it was actually fantastic and it hit every sort of clientele. It was light and delicate, but it was quite complex. And if you like sweet things, there was coconut syrup and then it nicely savoured off with green chartreuse. Yeah, that was stunning.

It's a long-running tradition that all the staff create at least one drink to be included on the menu. How do you work with the team to develop their ideas?

Everybody in the team actually really does bring something different. And we're all learning from each other constantly. We've got people that are super interested in the beer and the brewing and the science behind it. And then we've got other team members that are doing spirit trainings, doing whiskey trainings, getting certifications. And we're sort of always educating each other in that way. So when we build the menu, I always try and delegate a few styles of drinks, maybe some certain spirits that go to each team member and they start to build like that. On our latest menu pretty much every cocktail has been worked on together, it's been a connection between everybody. So we've drinks on there, like the Dolce de Leche Old Fashioned, that was made by Sophie and then we pull that together with, what's the garnish going to be? I feel like it should be like this. Let's take a look at this. And then we circle back to the original theme, which is your GTA at the moment. And then we're picking up those little things, that name, that style. What ingredients should be included. We’ve done a collab with Geek Out a local shop selling all things collectibles and comics creating a Pokémon themed drink, there’s 151 Pokémon’s so we put 151 Goslings in it and made it into a nice spicy Mai Tai sort of style of Cocktail. Everybody always brings something and whether that's individually where they're making their own drinks with their preferred spirit or maybe for myself I might even mix beer into a cocktail, but everybody always collabs together on the menu.

If you could go back to any menu, from any point in time, what one drink would you bring back?

The Key West cooler. I made one last week! It's a drink that actually holds a lot of memories for our customers, but also for me. When we made the drink, and it's 3 layers, everybody was kind of like, ‘I don't want to make this’, ‘it takes too much time’, and I would always volunteer to make it. It's green at the bottom, yellow in the middle, red on top, like a traffic light. When I started here when I was 18, I'd be just making them all night. I've got the patience to do it. To now actually recreating that for a customer who said, oh, I was in here X amount of years ago. I really love this drink. Can you make it for me? And it's always a pleasure to have those drinks that you remember from all those years ago. There's people that you realise have spent all their special occasions, their Valentine's, their dates, their nights out, they spent them here in this bar. And there's that one drink, and especially the Key West Cooler, that does it for me.

Okay, so I've got one more question. And this is the question that I'm actually really dying to ask because I'm really nosy… I want to know what your personal favourite drink is.

So, I've maybe got to stick to beer. If it's a beer, my all-time favourite drink would be a barley wine. Maybe something that's kind of got those sherry notes to it, something over 12%, preferably something from a Scandinavian or Baltic country, high ABV, notes of raisins, dates, figs, sherry, that sort of thing. That is my dream drink.

And a Manhattan as well.

Abi Nash
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Bottle shop launch