Feature

Cocktail stories: Nasi Goreng, Danico

19 July 2023 By Alice Brooker

Nico de Soto of Parisian bar Danico tells us about the Indonesian inspiration behind the venue’s new menu.

Nasi Goreng, Danico — The cocktail is silky, creamy and spicy

*This feature was first published in the March 2023 issue of The Spirits Business magazine.

“If you read [our] menu, and you didn’t know it was Danico, you could ask people ‘what bar is that?’ and they would say, ‘Oh, it’s Danico’,” explains bar mogul Nico de Soto, who founded the Parisian venue in 2016.

The bar, according to de Soto, is easily recognised for its alternative cocktails and ingredients, and the Nasi Goreng is a prime example of this.

Created from a mix of barley shochu, tofu, milk, egg, and Nasi Goreng syrup, the drink’s closest relative in the book of classic cocktails is the Flip.

The concoction is silky, creamy and spicy, says de Soto, and makes for a great dessert cocktail. Featuring on Danico’s new menu, Xplorer, the serve is part of the drinks list’s Indonesian theme, having been inspired by de Soto’s travels around the world, and “street food or food in restaurants”, he explains.

The Nasi Goreng is intended to be a riff on the Indonesian stir-fry dish. Despite the impressive list of exotic ingredients included in Xplorer’s cocktails, de Soto explains that there were challenges in sourcing ingredients at times, with lots brought in from Indonesia “that you cannot find in France”, he says. “And even if you find some of them, they are just either too expensive or the taste is not great.”

De Soto found that spices and dry ingredients could be transported from Indonesia, and the team could take back a “kilo or two”, which can last for six months.

The next region for Danico’s Xplorer menu is yet to be revealed, with de Soto keen to try other continents, from South America to other regions in Asia.

For more acclaimed serves to craft from your own home, check out Hero’s Ode to Oat covered in the February issue.