PE’s cocktail scene: A time travelling machine

Written by Brice Decaux ~ Chief Mixologist at Honeybox

When I walk into a ‘cocktail bar’ in PE I literally feel like I’m in a beach bar in 2001!

The sticky extensive cocktail list (in some cases up to 15 pages!) will be handed to you, and will inevitably offer the infamous (and often incorrectly made) ‘Sex on the Beach’, the mind blowing ‘Long Island Ice Tea’, a blue cocktail called ‘The Wave’ or ‘Blue Breeze’ (with an umbrella), the sweet and watery Strawberry Daiquiri (which is more of a boozy slushy), 7 different types of Mojitos, a tequila-flavored sour mix called a Margarita and obviously plenty of crazy multi-coloured shooters made of 4 different liquors layered in any possible order!

All these drinks suit a certain time and place, like everything. The time is a summer afternoon of 2001 and the place is a binge-drinking island in Greece!

Since this dark era the cocktail industry around the world has evolved at an exciting pace. The bartenders are very knowledgeable, well paid and the profession is taken seriously as a career. They study products in depth, new techniques, flavor pairing and spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking homemade ingredients. They travel a lot, enter huge competitions and often become famous in this worldwide industry.

Cocktails are now described as fine drinking and have a very important role in the success of fine dining establishments. Actual cocktail bars are opening everywhere and are busier than ever – for instance in most of the major cities in the world you will rarely find a decent trendy restaurant or hotel bar that doesn’t have a signature cocktail list designed by the bearded and well-dressed head bartender or buy a well-known consulting company.

However, for some reason the stunning city of Port Elizabeth’s cocktail scene hasn’t evolved since the Spice Girls! On the flip side, the gastronomy scene is brilliant and many new restaurants are opening their doors and offering sophisticated, tasty yet decently priced food menus. The wines are great and the beers are cold but unfortunately the cocktail list is always lacking when it comes to complementing the quality of the food, and the bar team are often friendly but in need of some 21st Century craft cocktail training!

I have to give a high five to SoHo Fushin for being the only place in town where I can order a Negroni without getting the dead fish look from the bartender. Keep it up guys! And dear Port Elizabethans, don’t get fooled by the big “cocktails” signs! If they can’t do a Whisky Sours without blinking, on a busy night, it means there is a lot of work to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the PE cocktail scene is about to change. It’s time to put our city on the cocktail map!

The cocktail movement is happening all over the world, and when it happened in Paris for instance a few years later it was present in all major french cities. You can now find, in a city like Montpellier, (which is much smaller than PE) amazing little cocktail bars with internationally acclaimed drinks and bartenders. Often these bars are full, leaving the old school night clubs to struggle to fill up. A sign of the times, and an indication of what is trending in the nightlife industry worldwide.

The general public has developed an incredible taste for craft cocktails!

This phenomena has reached Cape Town, Johannesburg and even Durban. It is now just a matter of months before you have proper cocktail bars opening their doors in our beautiful bay and modern quality cocktail lists available in most of the trendy spots in town.