FLAVOUR HUNTER
TASTE BUZZ
S’MORES
TRY IT In Brooklyn, diners at Olmsted keep things traditional, melting homemade vanilla marshmallows and Hershey’s chocolate over charcoal-filled cans in the urban farm at the back of the restaurant. Adding a twist to the classic, Los Angeles’s Take a Bao replaces the crackers with a cinnamonsugar bun – cramming in brûléed bananas and chopped hazelnuts too. At Buttercream Bakeshop in Washington DC, a s’mores biscuit bar is made with cracker crumble, ganache and vanilla fluff. And cronut creator Dominique Ansel has brought his frozen s’mores across the Atlantic from Manhattan to London’s Belgravia, where honey marshmallow cubes are filled with Tahitian-vanilla ice cream and chocolatewafer crisps, torched to order and served on a smoked willow stick. Meanwhile, in San Juan in the Philippines, surfers come to El Union Coffee at the end of the day to dunk biscuits into a cast-iron skillet filled with molten mallows alongside gooey Nutella. KATHARINE SOHN
128 Condé Nast Traveller April 2018
SIP TRIP
UMESHU TAP INTO JAPAN’S THIRST FOR THE HOME-BREWED SPIRIT Booze is all about balance. (Its own balance – not yours after a few, jelly-legs.) A good drink is a balanced drink: the chemical reconciliation of opposing forces. This is equally true of wine, spirits and cocktails. (Why, I sometimes wonder, is life itself not more like a well-made Gimlet, in which the bitterness serves only to give depth and dignity to the sweetness?). To which wild and ultimately unprovable assertion I shall add another, by suggesting that nowhere is the concept of balance more thoroughly understood or more elegantly expressed than in Japan, an island nation obsessed with nuance. Umeshu is as essential to Japanese drinks culture as sake, though less well known abroad, where it is usually misidentified as plum wine. It is not made of plums and it is not a wine. It is a simple infusion in a neutral spirit of sugar and ume – a fruit related to the apricot and the plum but distinct from both. Commercially produced versions are available, but the best of it is made at home. There is nothing to it. Three ingredients in a jar. Time is the variable. The final flavour depends on how long the ume is allowed to steep. Broadly speaking, the longer you leave it, the more subtly delicious the drink becomes: the more balanced. STEVE KING
PHOTOGRAPHS: MYLENE CHUNG; XAVIER GIRARD LACHAINE; DAVID WILLIAMS/REDUX/EYEVINE
THE trend You no longer have to pitch a tent and light a campfire to feast on toasted marshmallows and chocolate sandwiched between honey-flavoured graham crackers. Now, top restaurants around the world are creating their own take on the all-American treat.