Bar hopping with a Mojito

Bangalore is a city of heavy drinkers and closet alcoholics. After a heavy week of work or studies or lectures or projects, we all like to loosen up a bit. Some of us might have the stamina to endure a whole night of drinking. I ususaly reserve it for special weekends for celebrations. And what I like to do those times is bar-hopping; spending the whole night going from one bar to another drinking with buddies and passing the night away. Fortunately its not dine every night or at every reason to celebrate.

And my bar-hopping is generally restricted to 3 or 4 same happy places everytime. My friendly neighbourhood - TGIF (old airport road), the spacious halls of Hard Rock Cafe (St Marks road), if allowed at that time - into the heights of 13th floor (Church Street) and then to call a night - Tavern (Museum Rd). And the drink I hop around with is always the same - the great Cuban elixir - Mojito!.

I have introduced you to Mojito earlier. This is the most refreshing drink of the world - "as per me". Let me take you through my observations during bar-hopping, of the variety of Mojito preparations that Bangalore bars offer. The classic way is to muddle mint and lime in a high ball glass with sugar. Add Ice and white rum and top with soda water. TGIF and hard rock prepare them almost exactly this way. Except both use sugar syrup instead of sugar. I observed couple of times that the bar-tender at Hard Rock Cafe shakes it before topping with soda water.

Let me explain to you two very innovative ways to making Mojito in couple of other places in Bangalore. First - Take 5, a jazz bar in Indiranagar. Here the good bar-man -Sam muddles mint leaves and lime along with the ice-cubes. He basically crushes the ice along. He adds couple of tea spoons of powdered brown sugar. Empties the cocncoction into a glass and pours some rum and then tops with soda. Different take, but the problem somtimes with this is that you might over muddle the mint and lime , bringing out the bitterness from their peel rather than their oils. One more remark - I frankly dont like the glass in which the Mojito is served there. It just doesn`t fall under any category, looks like a juice glass.

The best Mojito that I ever had is in 13th floor. The drink is built in an old fashioned glass. Mint and lime are muddled with granules of brown sugar unlike sugar syrup or powdered sugar. This muddling brings out the perfect balance of oils and flavours of the ingredients. Crushed ice is added. White rum poured over the ice, soda water topped. This way the drink stays chilled as long as we are at it. The barman`s special comes here. About 5 ml of dark rum is dropped on top of soda, giving a sweet aroma. Now the drink looks, smells and tastes heaven.

Sticking to just one kind of drink when you are hopping bars will avoid mixing of different varieties and keeps the taste in the mouth almost similar and because of its refreshing nature, Mojito does the job just perfectly.