Hoppers restaurant shares an unusual cocktail from its new menu – a concoction of tequila, mezcal, grapefruit and goraka salt.

As diners become an ever more discerning bunch, and owners look to increase their profit margins, decent restaurants increasingly look to ensure their drinks offering is as exciting as what’s being cooked up in the kitchen. And it’s not just about having a thoughtful wine list. Whether it’s fine whiskies or interesting, well-made cocktails – the appetite for eclectic drinking goes hand in hand with the rise of informal dining. Consider Mr Jason Atherton. He all but invented relaxed fine dining in a bar-like setting with Pollen Street Social, and has subsequently built a global empire on it. Indeed, people don’t just go to restaurants to eat.

Hoppers, a Sri Lankan street-food restaurant in London, got the “eat” part spot on since, well, it opened 9 months ago. If you don’t want to stomach the queue (it’s in Soho, where queuing is mandatory) and find out for yourself, then listen to the revered restaurant critic Ms Fay Maschler who gave it five stars, or the London Evening Standard – which recently named it Best New Restaurant.

To complement the traditional karis and sambols it serves up, Hoppers has recently announced a new cocktail menu, which benefits from interesting Sri Lankan spirits such as Ceylon Arrack (distilled from the sap of the coconut flower) and Colombo Gin. To learn more about how to drink Hoppers style, we asked bar manager Mr James Stevenson to select a drink from his menu and teach us how to make it. It may require a little effort, as we doubt you’ll have these ingredients lying around, but there’s nothing wrong with adding a bit more variety to your drinks cabinet, is there?

Ingredients:

15ml lime juice Goraka salt (see below) 25ml Tapatio Blanco (tequila) 10ml La Venenosa Raicilla (mezcal) 30ml white grapefruit juice 20ml sugar syrup (made by dissolving 2 parts sugar into 1 part water by weight in grams) Soda water

Method:

Coat the lip of the glass with a slice of lime and cover the rim with goraka salt (see below).

Add all ingredients to the glass and add ice all the way to the top. Top with soda water and give it a good stir.

**For the Goraka Salt:

Ingredients:

1 goraka fruit A sheet of dried seaweed Rock salt

Method:**

Grate ¼ piece of goraka and rip apart ½ piece of dried seaweed. Place in a pestle and mortar and add three times the amount of rock salt.

The spirits can be purchased online, but you can always replace the main ones with a blanco tequila and a smokey scotch, Hoppers reassures us. Goraka is a fruit native to India which can be found in most Indian and South Asian fruit and veg shops or online.

hopperslondon.com