Cocktail menus can be confusing. Here’s how to choose a drink you’ll love

The best craft cocktail menus offer a fine balance of art and information. I want a menu that’s just right: an objet d’art that brings me into the bar’s culture, transporting me to a new world and helping me find my way through it. These days the guides can be digital – there are some beautiful menus I’ve accessed by QR code – but the bespectacled book nerd in me still loves something that I can hold and flip through, that makes me reluctant to return it, even after ordering.

But what if you need a translator for the menu? Like any subculture, cocktails can employ coded language and symbology that may feel intimidating to those not fluent.

A cocktail menu is first a communication tool. “There’s definitely a sweet spot – a threading of the needle,” said Deke Dunne, beverage/creative director at Allegory in Washington, D.C., which just won an award from 50 Best for best cocktail menu in North America for its ambitious, beautifully designed “Banned in D.C.” menu. “We think it’s important for bars to express themselves artistically, and I have ambition, but not at the cost of the guest.”

The staff play a critical role, too. A good bartender or server should shepherd you through the menu, whether the drinks are organized by base spirits, alcohol by volume, flavor profile or some other quality – and especially when the menu seems like chaos.

But it’s rewarding to be able to navigate the menu yourself. Here’s how to hold your own and end up holding a drink you’ll love.

The overview

Flip through the whole menu first to get a sense of the bar’s vision, its specialties and how the drinks are organized – there’s often a table of contents or a high-level guide. Menu fonts, colors and iconography convey a lot about what to expect from the cocktails and whether you should go fun and beachy, veer dark and complex or – this can definitely happen – stick to beer and wine. A lot of palm trees and carved totems tell you they’re going to lean toward the complex rum-and-fruit concoctions of tiki. Lots of Italian-sounding ingredients suggest that bittersweet is likely to be a common flavor profile. Knowing the bar has an Indiana Jones theme this month, you may be more likely to order the drink called Bad Dates. A perusal of the menu also helps you develop an ordering strategy – you know your drink limit best, and a full scan keeps you from missing a gem in the later pages.

What’s in a name?

Drink names can be straightforward, but often they’ll be funny or punny, or allude to other cocktails or broader culture. Some of these names have a poetry that tells you a lot about what the drink will be like. Sometimes a name is an in-joke, and if you don’t get it, it’ll reveal little about the flavors in the glass. So look for other hints: On many cocktail menus, the drink name will be followed by a list of ingredients, typically starting with the base spirit, often the largest ingredient by volume, followed by a number of modifiers – fruit juice, fortified wines like vermouth and sherry, and liqueurs. If you put them together in your head, you can start to imagine what the drink might taste like. Look for clues in names and descriptions that suggest what the drink could be similar to – cocktail menus are loaded with riffs on classics such as the martini, old-fashioned and Negroni.

Liquor brands matter. Sometimes

Base spirit listings will often include the brand. This matters inasmuch as gins, bourbons, rums, etc. are distinct, and you may have favorites, but (shh!) the brand of the base spirit often is not quite as important in a cocktail context. Think about the whole of the drink: In a martini, an elegant drink of minimal ingredients, the gin choice will make a big difference; in a complex concoction with multiple modifiers that take it further from the base, not as much.

Supporting players

Aside from citrus and other fruit juices, some common additions include:

• Vermouth (dry or sweet aromatized wines used in martinis, Manhattans and a roster of other drinks) or sherry (cream and PX are very sweet, others lean dry and nutty).
• Liqueurs, such as “crèmes de” various fruits and flowers; maraschino (which tastes more like almonds than cherries); curaçao/triple sec (orange); Chartreuse and other herbal liqueurs; red bittersweet liqueurs such as Campari and Aperol; and darker digestivo amari such as Averna, Cynar and Fernet.
• Bubbles, which can mean sparkling wine or club soda, or that the whole drink has been carbonated.
• Nonalcoholic mixers such as grenadine (red syrup traditionally made from pomegranate) and orgeat (almond syrup). Sour mix that’s not house-made can be a warning signal.
• Bitters do not mean your drink will be bitter – these are used in drops and dashes, little accents that help bring the other flavors together. Absinthe, herbal and anisey, is typically used in small dashes or rinses

as well

• .
• Egg white. Drinks with egg white are shaken to create a pillowy white froth over the surface.

Guess that flavor

The drink descriptions will offer clues: “Dry” should indicate a less-sweet drink, “rich” a sweeter one. “Bright” and “citrusy” cocktails tend to run tart and lighter, but will have an element of sweetness for balance. “Smoky” often conveys the inclusion of a peaty Scotch whisky or a mezcal, “herbal” may tell you that Chartreuse or a similar liqueur is in play, and “balanced” typically speaks to harmony across the ingredients (the correct proportion of sour, sweet and boozy elements in a daiquiri, for example). “Dirty” martinis have a strong briny note from the olive juice.

How boozy is it?

Menus often start with the lighter drinks and move toward the boozier ones, but not always. “Spirit-forward” usually means that the cocktail is not only high-ABV but also centered on the flavor of its base. (A gin martini, for example, is spirit-forward, and if you don’t like gin you shouldn’t order one.) “Sessionable” and “light” will usually guide you toward drinks that are lower in alcohol, and most good cocktail menus these days have a section of “zero-proof,” “spirit-free,” “N/A” or “temperance” drinks.

Glassware

Some cocktail bars will show a little image of each drink on their menu, and others use the shapes of specific glassware in their listings to help guests understand what to expect from the drink.

Once you get to know cocktails, you’ll recognize that these silhouettes convey meanings: The outline of a tall highball or Collins glass usually indicates a drink served “long,” over ice and supplemented with a fair amount of tonic water, club soda or fruit juice. A short rocks or old-fashioned glass tends to convey the opposite: a boozy, strongly flavored cocktail, these days often served over one large cube of ice. When you see the shape of a martini glass or a coupe, you usually know your drink is being served “up” – that is, first shaken or stirred with ice to chill and dilute it, then strained into the glass for service (so there won’t usually be ice in it). A champagne glass usually indicates a serve including sparkling wine, and curvy tall glasses often mean tropical or frozen drinks.

Preparation and techniques

Bars may be muddling (mashing a fruit or herb at the bottom of a drink to obtain its flavors) or rimming (coating the edges of a glass with salt or other flavor components), but they may also be doing more. Modern cocktail bars can be technique-heavy, and some of those techniques can be jargon-loaded. “Infusion” won’t require an IV – it means soaking an ingredient to get its flavor into a liquid. “Fat-washing” sounds icky but is not to be feared: This technique involves adding a fat, such as coconut oil or brown butter, to a spirit. The spirit takes on some of the fat’s flavor, and it’s then chilled so the fat can solidify and be removed. No lard chunks involved! A “corrected” juice is one that has had its acidity levels adjusted, usually increased, to better achieve balance in the drink. A “clarified” cocktail is one that’s been processed, often with dairy, to remove the opacity that often comes from the addition of citrus. The resulting drink is often not only clear but smoother and silkier in texture.