Take a First Look at the New Trick Dog Cocktail Menu
Trick Dog, the Mission District bar with a menu that’s won recognition for being the best in the world not once, but twice, will unveil the 19th iteration of its list today, Friday, July 7 at 4 p.m. The new menu, dubbed Tantrick Dog, rolls with, as the name implies, a dog and yoga theme and was created in partnership with San Francisco studio Haum Yoga and Sacramento-based designer Lily Therens. It offers 16 fresh cocktails, each of which incorporates an ingredient the bar describes as offering “general health and wellness properties” — for example, turmeric, lion’s mane mushrooms, aloe, and ginseng.
Trick Dog general manager and beverage director Nick Amano-Dolan says the team is pretty much constantly bouncing around ideas for menu themes. “When you work at Trick Dog, you start to look a the world through a lens of, ‘Could this be a menu?” he says. “And we send more terrible ideas than good ones,” he laughs.
Before settling on this 19th theme, they also toyed with the idea of a Downward Dog menu, being hesitant to tackle the Tantrick Dog idea without having a firm understanding of the yogic tradition of tantra. But when Haum Yoga founder Danni Pomplum heard the two potential tracks, he encouraged the team to explore the tantra idea. “Most people understand tantra as just sex,” Amano-Dolan says, “but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” Tantra more broadly represents a way to achieve enlightenment, so the menu not only takes inspiration from familiar yoga poses like down dog, cat-cow, and tree pose, but also includes subheadings such as Breathwork and Chakras.
Of the 16 new drinks, Amano-Dolan says he’s particularly proud of the Tabletop, which started with one staff member’s idea to create a corn cocktail using a Korean corn tea as a base. The final drink is the result of that idea being iterated on and refined with help from the rest of the team, so it embodies the collaborative process throughout which all of Trick Dog’s cocktails come to be. “If you ask the team what they’re favorite cocktail is, 9 out of 10 would say the Tabletop is the coolest cocktail,” he says. He’s also excited about the Puppy Pose, one of three nonalcoholic cocktails mixed into the list. It’s a clarified cocktail made with a probiotic yogurt — and perhaps the most labor-intensive drink on the list. “I love this drink because it embodies another big principle for us, which is being really inclusive with nonalcoholic cocktails.”
The bar’s tight food menu — including that massive kale salad and Quick Dog Burger — remains available and as always, a portion of sales from all Tantrick Dog menus ($25) will go to the Bon Vivants Scholarship, which helps low-income students pay for college.
The Tantrick Dog menu launches on Friday, July and Trick Dog (3010 20th Street, San Francisco) is open from 4 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday and from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
Source: Eater SF
