CHICAGO ? More restaurants are stirring up their own sodas to the delight of summertime crowds, the Chicago Tribune reports. These small batches of handcrafted carbonated beverages have found their way into fine-dining establishments, gelato shops and burger restaurants.�
Fresh ingredients and cane sugar combine with fizz to make the drinks. For example, Chicago restaurant one sixtyblue (that?s not a typo) is serving homemade rhubarb and strawberry with mint and blackberry with ginger and lime sodas.
Executive Chef Michael McDonald hit upon the idea for handcrafted sodas after experimenting with citrus and sparkling water for his own enjoyment. ?If lime is so refreshing, what if I added watermelon or strawberry puree. When I worked in Mexico, before our shift one of the guys would always grab some fruit, puree it and make a big batch of a fruit-flavored beverage,? he said.
Eli Boyer, general manager of DMK Burger Bar, traveled the country to visit similar concepts before opening their restaurant and saw the popularity of homemade sodas. ?We decided to focus on fruit flavors and use pure cane sugar,? he said. His creations have a filtered soda water base and fruit syrup.
Terzo Piano added handcrafted carbonated drinks to its menus. ?We like to focus as much as possible on local, organic, sustainable foods, and we even followed that concept in our bar and beverage program,? said Ryan Paykert, who manages the beverages. ?We found a lot of beers and spirits that matched that initiative, but at the time there were no local sodas.?
The restaurant features all-natural sodas tied to the season, such as carrot and caramel, cranberry fennel and pomegranate thyme. The summer menu will have cantaloupe and watermelon sodas.
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