Sipping on Singapore
Inspired by Chennai and Singapore, these cocktails use modern mixology techniques and a splash of sea water
When we raise our glasses to Pandan Club’s first cocktail menu, the bartenders laugh. “Finally! This is the first time someone has said cheers at this bar,” one of them chuckles. It has been a long wait.
Pandan Club, a Peranakan restaurant helmed by Chef Sashi Chelliah of MasterChef Australia fame, launched in Chennai in December 2022. Over the last year, cofounder Manoj Padmanabhan worked on their nonalcoholic menu, creating a line of craft drinks as they waited for their alcohol license to come through.
This week, they announced the launch of their fully stocked bar (operating under Chennai Best Recreation Club) with a new cocktail menu. Named The Shortest
Route, it is a cheerful, flavourpacked journey between India and Singapore.
Discussing how Pandan Club’s nonalcoholic craft drinks came together, Manoj says he decided to move away from soft drinks and sugary mocktails and instead build drinks from scratch using fresh, vibrant ingredients, then adding an Asian twist. “For example, we make sugarcane juice with galangal and yuzu instead of ginger and lemon,” he says. The same philosophy has been carried into the cocktail menu, which features six specially crafted drinks, in addition to the classics.
“I don’t like to ‘cut copy paste’ ideas, so I spent months building each of these cocktails, making sure each is unique,” he says, ordering a Serangoon Smith. A tribute to the many Indian goldsmiths on Singapore’s Serangoon Street, the golden cocktail, served in a long stemmed glass, is a refreshing and potent blend of lemongrass gin, young coconut and gula melaka, a type of palm sugar. It comes with a sugarspun Singaporean stamp, pressed on a flat square of kamarkattu.
Fun Chennai elements abound, as Manoj has focussed on story telling with this menu. His most quirky move is incorporating sea water in a steamy cocktail called Affair. “How hard is it to get a bucket of it from Marina beach?” he chuckles, adding that the water is distilled and then added to pandan scotch and palm jaggery. “It gives an elevated taste, instead of just adding salt,” he says.
The cocktails use a slew of modern mixology techniques like sous vide, fat washing and infusion. Cocktails are clean and spirit forward. But what makes them really stand out is their sense of humour.
The savoury Instant Noodles cocktail, admittedly an acquired taste, is a good example. Gin is steeped overnight with a pack of noodles and nori, then distilled. It is served cold, with a umamirich noodle broth, along with addictively salty crackers. “Maybe not everyone will like it,” says Manoj, “But if you want to make an impact, you have to have the courage to be different.”
Pandan Club is at 39, Bazullah Road, Parthasarathi Puram, T Nagar, Chennai. Cocktails start at ₹575 plus tax.
If you want to make an impact, you have to have the courage to be different MANOJ PADMANABHAN
Cofounder, Pandan Club