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Aviary Crosses a Gin and Tonic with a Bubble Tea

Thinking of a gin and tonic this morning? Aviary, Grant Achatz’s upcoming molecular gastronomy bar, just released the latest of its behind the scenes booze-drenched videos, this time tackling that bar standard. It looks surprisingly like a regular version of the drink, with one notable exception: The cocktail is a mix of a gin and tonic and a bubble tea. Are you with us? To make one of these guys at home, all you’ll need is Junipero Gin, Yellow Chartreuse, citric acid, simple syrup, tonic water, and…um…cucumber encapsulations.

Each drink features “96ish” of them, which you probably can’t buy in large bags from the Asian grocery like you can for tapioca pearls. Each one needs to be made in house, a fact that Achatz seems to relish.

I’ll tell you what prevents people from doing this: the labor. The fact that you have almost 100 balls in there. Imagine if you had to make 200 of those a night. That’s what, 20,000 balls? I mean, nobody is going to do that, because they think it is too hard.

But not for Achatz, who can also multiply large sums in his head on the fly. To be sure, we confirmed the ball count.

Also like a bubble tea, the drink is served with a massive straw to help suck up the pearls, which is great for tea but also means you could probably knock back one of these in approximately ten seconds. We can’t wait to test this hypothesis.

[@gachatz]

Aviary Crosses a Gin and Tonic with a Bubble Tea