A Guide to Modern Drinking, Volume II by Tippling Club is liquid art

The new Tippling Club “A Guide to Modern Drinking, Volume II” cocktail menu reinterprets art masterpieces as modern cocktails.

With a name like “A Guide to Modern Drinking, Volume II”, the new cocktail menu at Tippling Club can make you feel self-conscious. Is my knowledge of cocktail culture lacking? Are my alcohol consumption patterns somehow archaic?

As it turns out, “A Guide to Modern Drinking, Volume II” is the second edition in the contemporary bar restaurant’s “A Guide to Modern Drinking” series. Volume I had reinterpreted cocktails as inspired by the classic French dishes as outlined in Auguste Escoffier’s 1903 culinary tome “Le Guide Culinaire”. Volume II instead borrows from art, drawing upon modern art and celebrated artists.

This tack, of course, offers Tippling Club chef-owner Ryan Clift and head bartender Andrew Loudon a veritable blank canvas to approach their own art. Each of the 12 cocktails in the first four sections of the menu is their liquid impression of an art piece.

There’s the champagne-based Ciphers & Constellations. This a flamboyant flourish of dill, calvados, Sudachi lime, champagne and sherbet, much like Joan Miró’s surrealist work. There’s Living Still Life, a wild concoction – made with vermouth, plum blossom, coconut, rambutan, and sugar cane – named after Salvador Dali’s work that will have you melt in your bar seat.

Or how about Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Skull)? The neo-expressionist piece is translated here into a rum-based tipple along with chestnut, green apple, sandalwood, and bitters. Then there’s Poker Game, a fancy twist on the Old Fashioned. This takes its name from American artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s seminal piece ‘Dogs Playing Poker’.

And for those with cash to flash, the Dollar Sign – inspired by the work of the same name by celebrated pop artist Andy Warhol – combines LOUIS XIII, champagne, Okinawan Kokuto sugar, and bitters – will have you reflect on the relationship between art and money.

Another section in “A Guide to Modern Drinking, Volume II” worth checking out is the one that explores the classic Vieux Carré cocktail in five different ways. There’s Control, which is the house classic; Wood is a version that’s aged with charred American oak, while Leather sees the base cocktail aged in a goatskin botarron. Otherwise Clay Pot ages it in a small amphorae, while Sonic runs the cocktail through a sonic homogeniser. All of them produce vastly different flavour profiles to that one cocktail. Even better? They are available as a flight.

It’s here that you quickly realise that Tippling Club’s “A Guide to Modern Drinking” series isn’t about teaching its patrons how to drink. It’s all about applying modern gastronomic techniques, experimental mixology, and unexpected ingredients to create an entirely new modern cocktail philosophy.

And that is utterly Tippling Club.

The cocktail is dead, long live the cocktail.

Tippling Club

Address 38 Tanjong Pagar Road, Singapore 088461 (Google Maps link)
Opening Hours 12pm to 10.30pm Mondays to Saturdays; closed on Sundays
Tel (65) 6475 2217
Web tipplingclub.com
Facebook tipplingclub
Instagram @tipplingclub