Cocktail stories: Eyes of Flame, Allegory
With history and civic duty so central to Washington DC, it makes the perfect home for Allegory, a cocktail bar that tells the story of activist Ruby Bridges through the lens of Alice in Wonderland.
*This feature was first published in the September issue of The Spirits Business magazine.
Bridges had her world upended, much like Alice, as a key civil rights figure central to the end of school segregation in the US in the 1960s.
“I joke that we’re half cocktail bar, half museum,” Deke Dunne, beverage/creative director at Mindful Management Group, says. “People come into the bar who aren’t even interested in staying for a drink, they just want to see the space.”
Allegory opened in 2018 inside Eaton DC. The hotel contacted Dunne to create a high‐concept cocktail bar with a Surrealist bent. Local artist Erik Thor Sandberg was the first to answer a call for bids with his Bridges idea, and, with everyone blown away by it, he was tapped to create a massive mural spanning the interior walls of the bar.
For the menu, Sandberg illustrated a children’s book that dove deep into Bridges’ story, while Dunne and his team created cocktails inspired by his art and her life. There is a throughline of Afro‐ Caribbean rum and other culturally significant ingredients that help tie the drinks back to the source.
And Dunne wanted visceral elements as well, ones that drew further reference to the concept, but also added a lightness to the experience. One drink is served with bubbles while another uses a flaming lime half to represent a narrative shift.
“We’re dealing with a very intense subject, a concept that for a lot of people might be distressing,” Dunne said. “So our job with the cocktails was to do something a little fantastic and do something fun and really thread the needle between serious and whimsical.”
For the Eyes of Flame, Dunne channelled his love of Mexico, deploying corn liqueur Nixta alongside mezcal and rum for a drink that captures the moment Bridges, as Alice, slays the Jabberwocky. It is garnished with two droplets of pumpkin seed oil meant to represent the creature’s eyes, and Dunne likes to reference the mural when he serves it.
“It pulls the guests into the art,” he says, “pulls them into the story.”
Eyes of Flame
Ingredients:
- 21ml Siete Misterios Mezcal
- 14ml Equiano Original Rum
- 7ml Altos Añejo
- 14ml Nixta Licor de Elote
- 7ml Mandarin oleo saccharum 7ml Clarified passionfruit
- 3.5ml Palo Cortado
- 1 dash Salt solution Garnish with pumpkin seed oil
Method: Combine all ingredients. Stir and refrigerate.
In September, Campbeltown-based Scotch distillery Glen Scotia created an Alice in Wonderland-inspired whisky.
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