Double Chicken Please brings back Liquid Dinners
New York’s Double Chicken Please will bring back its Liquid Dinner concept this week in celebration of its fifth anniversary.
The bar initially debuted the concept as a cocktail-to-go set for Valentine’s Day in 2021, as a way to deal with limited service during the pandemic.
This year, the Liquid Dinner menu will be served in the bar for US$48 per person. It features five cocktails, which guests experience through courses.
The cocktails are exclusive to the set menu, which is available from Wednesday to Saturday this week.
The experience is available for both prepaid reservations on Resy, as well as a limited quantity available for walk-ins on a first-come-first-served basis.
Speaking to The Spirits Business, Double Chicken Please’s in-house manager Em Pak, who oversees the bar’s programming and event production, said: “As painful as the pandemic was, it is part of our story and how we started, so we want to give it a nod in some way with the Liquid Dinner.
“We’re integrating this special item through our regular dinner service. We want the regular interactions that our servers are so accustomed to, which is storytelling for our guests to be taken on a journey, and for [guests] to be able to enjoy a full-course menu. They get to sit down for a couple of hours with us and have our server tableside telling the story of how this menu came together. It elevates the experience in a way that our typical dining experience does not.”
The bar’s tables will be decorated with taper candles and a vase of fresh flowers, which Pak says “restaurants are not doing as much anymore”.
Cocktails
The experience starts with the Ochazuke cocktail, which is based on a traditional Japanese dish where one pours green tea over rice.
The second course is the Vegan Oyster, made with sake, kombu, grapefruit, green Tabasco, sea salt and clarified milk. The cocktail is inspired by a dish served in the bar’s Free Range area.
The Green Papaya Salad is a spicy Tequila-based serve made with cherry tomato, kumquat, fish sauce and tamarind coconut.
The main course is based on a truffle risotto. The cocktail combines Scotch whisky with mushroom truffle honey, koji as the rice component, Riesling, walnut, egg white and Parmigiano, which is finely grated on top as a textual element.
The menu is then capped off with dessert – a pumpkin pie-inspired shot made with whiskey, cacao, brown butter and sage baking spices, with cream on top.
After the experience, guests will be able to take home a satin scarf, which features the bar’s rubber chicken mascot, Robert, and its four symbols – a cocktail, screwdriver, pencil and bar spoon – which represent its core concept of cocktails and design.
Other initiatives for the bar’s fifth anniversary this week include turning the Free Range area into an immersive photo gallery, where photos of the bar’s journey can be illuminated with flashlights. The area will also house a photo exhibition of guest photos.
“Over the past five years, we’ve been on a bit of a journey and our team has grown tremendously, from five people to now 38 full-time team members,” Pak added.
“We wanted to do something really special for this milestone. What we really remember are the people we’ve met and the connections we’ve made.
“We want to make sure that we honour these different relationships, whether it’s new guests visiting us for the first time, the regulars who have been dining with us for years, and all of our past partners and collaborators who we’ve invited for a number of projects, whether events, merchandise or menu collabs.”
Earlier this year, Double Chicken Please unveiled a US$400 cocktail with art collective MSCHF for Valentine’s Day.
The bar is known for its culinary-inspired cocktails, such as the French Toast.
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