Booze Your Winter Blues Away with The Tiki Bungalow's New Warm Cocktails

Though the weather outside is frightful, The Tiki Bungalow's new cocktails are sure to delight you.

The offbeat Andingmen venue, which won Best Cocktails and Best New Bar at our Bar and Club Awards earlier this year, just launched a new drinks menu that features a several smouldering beverages to stave off Beijing's bitter chills and choking smog.

Upon on arrival, we tried the Smuggler's Cove hot buttered rum. Priced at RMB 60, this cocktail is fiery hot and more than a little intoxicating, the latter due to its generous helping of seven-year-old Costa Rican rum. But its key ingredient is the housemade butter batter, which owner and bartender Phil Tory made after studying the rendition from the awardwinning San Francisco cocktail bar Smuggler's Cove. That muse served Tory well because his new hot buttered rum will leave you with a deeply comforting buzz, as if a fuzzy blanket had just been draped over your shoulders, but the spicy aftertaste ensures that you won't doze off.

The two other hot drinks on offer are the eclectic hot mai tai (RMB 55, made with range of ingredients including two types of dark rum, orange curacao, almond extract, whisked milk, and lime zest) and the sweet and indulgent spiced hot chocolate (RMB 50, featuring tequila, hazelnut liqueur, hot chocolate, whipped milk, cinnamon, and a dash of chili). Tory points to the milk in the former and the tequila in the latter as examples of the unique twists he has put on these old favorites, and we can't help but agree, though these trio of hot drinks were so tasty that we wished many more such warm beverages were on offer. We can only hope that Tory turns up the temperature on more of his cocktails as the winter drags on.

Aside from the hot drinks, the new menu features several icier options that are no less creative, including the Applejack Sazerac (RMB 60, made with Calvados apple brandy, a splash of maple syrup, and Peychaud's bitters) and the Good Tidings (RMB 50, made with vodka, orangey Cointreau triple sec liqueur, cranberry and lemon juice, and some spicy Pimento dram liqueur).

However, we opted for the RMB 65 Bitter Winter (made with bourbon whiskey, zesty Cocchi Vermouth Amaro, dessert worthy sweet Dolin Rouge Vermouth and orange bitters). It lived up to Tory's description of being in the vein of mulled wine, not in terms of temperature since it's, of course, served on the rocks, but because of its flavor. "It's as if a negroni met a mulled wine," he says.

Such imaginative mixtures mean there are many "must-tries" on Tiki's new menu. And though we hope more warm cocktails are readied soon to see us through the chilly weather, the drinks we tried were otherwise successful enough to make Tiki live up to its awardwinning reputation.

Photos: TBJ, Kyle Mullin