Hidden within Chicago’s bustling tropical bar Three Dots and a Dash, the Bamboo Room is an oasis that feels like the adults-only pool at a beach resort. It’s intimate and sophisticated, and its smaller scale offers the opportunity for cocktails to be delivered in a way that’s as novel as the bar’s bespoke glassware.
As a hideaway dedicated to celebrating the vast diversity of rum and rum cocktails, the Bamboo Room presents an impressive selection of more than 300 expressions of the spirit. Equally expansive is the bar’s approach to drink development: Applying modernist techniques to classic tropical recipes, they create an experience that is both familiar and fascinating. Take the Banana Daiquiri 2.0, for example, the latest iteration of a beloved drink that balances a rum blend with lime acid, banana cordial and “banana snow.”
Kevin Beary, beverage director at the Bamboo Room and Three Dots and a Dash, says the bar has been “pushing the limits on banana cocktails” for years. However, he laments the difficulties of incorporating ripe banana into drinks because of its starchiness. Many banana liqueurs on the market, on the other hand, “taste of candied or flambé banana, not fresh banana,” according to Beary. To circumvent these shortcomings, he uses centrifugal clarification, which creates a less mucky banana ingredient, while still tasting like the fresh fruit, to star in his latest rendition of the classic flavored Daiquiri.
Beary starts by blending bananas into a purée before treating them with pectinase and amylase to break down the fruit’s starch into simple sugars, priming the ingredient to yield a better banana juice. The purée is run through a centrifuge at a high speed to separate the fruit’s solids from its clarified juice. Beary combines some of the juice with white sugar to make a banana cordial; the sweetener replaces simple syrup in the Daiquiri. The rest of the juice becomes a “banana snow,” which is used as the cocktail’s dilution. To make the snow, Beary blends one part banana juice with one part filtered water, freezes the liquid into a block, and shaves shards of banana ice into a coupe glass using a kakigori ice shaver.
The rum for the Daiquiri is a blend of Real McCoy 3-year and Rum Bar overproof for a punchy dash of tropical flavors like overripe banana and pineapple. Finally, “lime acid” (a blend of citric and malic acid powders mixed in water) and saline solution help round out the drink, which Beary says was “finicky to balance.”
Instead of simply shaking the ingredients, Beary opts for a more bespoke serve, one that feels at home at the innovative Bamboo Room bar. The liquid elements are combined and poured into a slender, hand-blown glass in the shape of a banana, which guests can, much to their excitement, use to decant the drink into a banana snow–filled coupe. Finally, to finish the layered sour, the bar serves it with a side of freeze-dried banana, toasted coconut and macadamia nuts sourced from Chicago’s purveyor of fine and rare ingredients, Rare Tea Cellar.
Altogether, it’s a crowd-pleasing Daiquiri with panache—one that marries a cheeky presentation with an elevated flavor profile, perfect for the sleek tropical escape. Or, as Beary puts it: “It’s a light and refreshing banana monster.”
