Anthony Parks

Anthony Parks’ bar program at Mourad, the downtown Moroccan restaurant, may represent the most innovative cocktail list in San Francisco today.

The list itself is deceptively minimalist: Like Mourad’s food menu, it identifies only core ingredients, rejecting proprietary names and omitting any mention of techniques. With drinks like Shiso + Hops, Carrot + Coriander and Maize + Hogo, it’s tempting to think that Parks is going for shock value — the drinks just sound so weird — but each one, in the spirit of the larger ethos at Mourad, evokes both the thrill of novelty and the satisfaction of balance.

“My palate has exploded here,” says Parks of his 15-month tenure at Mourad. “When you come to Mourad, you’re experiencing food you’ve never had before. I’m trying to do that with my drinks.”

It’s the first time running a bar for Parks, whose previous posts include BDK, Bourbon & Branch and Bergerac. He consults on the side, under Fifty Fifty Cocktail Co., with partner Anderson Pugash.

Rather than pairings for the food, the Mourad cocktails are kind of stylistic analogues to the food — inspired by the same families of flavors and similarly impelled toward intricacy. The ingredients of Parks’ Cherry + Sarsaparilla, for instance, are taken from a duck liver mousse preparation formerly on the menu, featuring Urfa chile. The dish and the drink wouldn’t do well together, and that’s the point: They stand apart, harmoniously.