Cocktails get playful for summer

You know summer’s nearly here when your cocktail looks like a snow cone. Or a lassi. Or an ice cream float. Or a fruity soda pop that comes in a glass bottle, complete with bubbles and twist-off cap.

A wave of new cocktails that hew toward the playful not only puts us squarely in summer but also is helping to make L.A.’s cocktail scene uniquely its own.

The snow cones at Son of a Gun on West 3rd Street are tiki-inspired crushed-ice cocktails served in paper cones that rest in julep cups. A new cocktail menu at 1886 Bar at the Raymond in Pasadena features bottled fizzy cocktails. And at Pour Vous, the French-themed bar that opened on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood two months ago, the menu is punctuated with lassis and parfait look-alikes and drinks that resemble something from your favorite juice bar. What’s up with all the fun drinks from serious bartenders?

“Our cocktail culture really reflects an evolution,” says Lindsay Nader, part of the Pour Vous team that helped realize a novel take on French-inspired drinking. “There are [craft cocktail] pioneers who are still kind of stuck in this rigid way of working and creating. They aren’t breaking free of the handlebar-mustache, buttoned-up attitude. In L.A., we’re moving out of that era -- it’s anything goes. We’re having fun with cocktails and stripping away some of that seriousness.”

Just read the menus at Hollywood’s Spare Room or Harvard & Stone. The Spare Room has all the markers of a devoted craft cocktail bar: classics, wry twists on classics and homages to trailblazing bartenders such as Julie Reiner. But there are also beverage director Naomi Schimeck’s milkshake and egg cream, and in the summer she plans to offer an expanded roster of bottled cocktails. “We’re definitely letting down our hair,” Schimeck says. And Harvard & Stone’s roster of “R&D;” drinks has included its own soda-fountain-inspired Crybaby (rye, Coca-Cola, maraschino syrup and lots of crushed ice) and Sundae Best (vodka, Fernet Branca and peppermint ice cream).

When Son of a Gun opened last year, “we started with the classics, and the classics helped us get a serious bar program going. Now we’re just going with the theme of the restaurant,” says general manager Daniel Warrilow (the theme might be described as upscale Florida fishing expedition). “You should make it fun for people.” So now he makes his own versions of shandies -- bottled, fermented beer and citrus cocktails -- and snow cones.

One’s a snow-cone version of a Sidewinder’s Fang, the classic tiki cocktail of rum and passion fruit syrup. His Lost Cause “tiki-cone” is rum and aquavit with coconut syrup and lemon and lime juice, poured over a paper cone filled with crushed ice (thanks to the machine in the kitchen that crushes ice for the oyster platters) and garnished with a flag of cherry and lemon. It screams summertime.

So do the “adult shakes” at Short Order -- thick, creamy, boozy milkshakes that go down easy (maybe too easy) with a juicy burger and fried spuds. Among Julian Cox’s creations is the Drunken Girl Scout with both vanilla and chocolate frozen custard, Tempus Fugit creme de menthe, Fernet Branca Menta and house-made thin mint cookies.

Meanwhile, the bottled cocktails at 1886 Bar are a collaboration between pastry chef Jeff Haines and barman Greg Gertmenian. The Rum Whistle (named after one of the first sodas from the creator of 7Up) is carbonated green apple and celery juices and Mount Gay aged white rum. It’s a labor of love, says Gertmenian. For the juice alone it takes 65 apples to make 15 bottles, and it takes two days to make one batch. They’re bottled in 10-ounce soda bottles and kept at near-freezing temperatures. And Gertmenian and Haines are creating a yuzu-watermelon bottled cocktail for summer -- “something bright and pink.”

At the new Sadie LA in Hollywood, director of spirits Giovanni Martinez is making his own alcoholic ice creams, inspired by a Chartreuse ice cream he tried at least year’s Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. “So I thought, ‘What if we made some liquored-up ice creams?’ Our eureka moment was the Peychaud’s bitters ice cream,” says Martinez. “Once we paired it with Sanbitter [bitter citrus] soda -- oh, my God, I can’t believe this already hasn’t been done before.”

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Lost Cause Tiki-Cone

Total time: 8 minutes

Servings: 1 snow cone

Note: Adapted from Daniel Warrilow of Son of a Gun. This recipe requires a snow cone or shaved ice maker.

1 ounce aquavit, preferably Krogstad

1 ounce rum, preferably Banks 5 Island

1 ounce coconut syrup, preferably St. Vincent

1/2 ounce lime juice

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1 slice lemon, for garnish

1 Maraschino cherry for garnish

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine the aquavit, rum, coconut syrup and lemon and lime juices. Shake quickly to chill. Strain over shaved ice in a snow cone cup. Garnish with a lemon and cherry flag.

Each cocktail: 216 calories; 0 protein; 22 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 20 grams sugar; 1 mg sodium.

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Drunken Girl Scout

Total time: 10 minutes

Servings: 1 cocktail

Note: Adapted from Julian Cox of Short Order. Thin Mints can be substituted with a similar type of chocolate-mint cookie.

2 scoops chocolate ice cream

2 scoops vanilla ice cream

1 ounce Irish whisky, preferably Powers

1/2 ounce creme de menthe, preferably Tempus Fugit

1/2 ounce Fernet Branca-Menta

1 ounce crushed Thin Mints

Chocolate sauce, for garnish

Mint spring, for garnish

Thin Mint, for garnish

In a blender, blend the chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream, Irish whisky, creme de menthe, Fernet Branca-Menta and crushed Thin Mints. Swirl chocolate sauce around the inside of a Mason jar and pour in the shake. Garnish with a mint sprig and Thin Mint.

Each cocktail: 910 calories; 11 grams protein; 104 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams fiber; 39 grams fat; 20 grams saturated fat; 103 mg cholesterol; 87 grams sugar; 308 mg sodium.

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Peychaud’s ice cream and Sanbitter float

Servings: 1

Total time: 10 minutes, plus freezing time for the ice cream

Note: Adapted from Giovanni Martinez of Sadie LA. Sanbitter soda is available at select gourmet and Italian markets such as Guidi Marcello in Santa Monica and at Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park.

Peychaud’s bitters ice cream

1 1/2 cups of whole milk

1 1/4 cups sugar sugar

3 cups heavy cream

8 1/2 ounces Peychaud’s bitters

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, sugar, cream and bitters. Freeze as directed in an ice cream maker. This makes about 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream, more than is needed for the remainder of the recipe.

Float assembly

2 scoops Peychaud’s bitters ice cream

1 bottle Sanbitter soda

Lemon peel, for garnish

In a Collins glass, place the ice cream scoops and pour over the Sanbitter soda to fill. Garnish with a lemon peel.

Each cocktail: 863 calories; 4 grams protein; 94 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 46 grams fat; 29 grams saturated fat; 171 mg cholesterol; 57 grams sugar; 83 mg sodium.