The Whisky Library’s Delicious Solution to Cocktail Indecision

Choice paralysis often sets in when a bartender hands you a new cocktail menu. Parsing unfamiliar liqueurs, including cordials and tonics made in-house, one would never have an idea unless one asks for a sample, and wondering whether the drink you are about to order will be worth the gamble while dreading the last time you ordered by “takaw-tingin” and the next table’s Instagrammable cocktail does not deliver on taste.

At The Whisky Library at Newport World Resorts, master mixologist Edu Zamora has taken on the challenge of creating a new cocktail menu every one or two weeks. A lover of historical non-fiction and film, he is inspired by a book and movies club concept, so that menu items have an immediate anchor to familiar shared vicarious experiences. The problem, of course, is that the more frequently a menu changes, the less useful latching on to favorites becomes. Just when you think you have found your favourite, the next round of experiments may be waiting.

Zamora's answer, at least for the Edu’s Book Club Cocktail Series, is to make the menu something you can taste before you order it.

In the meantime, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland inspires cocktails. But the menu arrives like the caterpillar’s mushroom, where you must pick a side. As circles go, there are no sides, so any side is the right side, right? The series comes with a little silver tray of gummies corresponding to five cocktails. Read from the top and moving clockwise, the edible bar list offers a playful introduction to The White Rabbit, Down the Rabbit Hole, The Mushroom Effect, The Mad Hatter, and Queen of Hearts. Each has its own combination of spirits and flavours, from rum, coconut, citrus, orange, and prosecco to bourbon. But how does one measure artichoke liqueur without familiarity with artichoke? Maybe the booze nerd of the group can tell one amaro over another, but it's not something one expects of most people.

Instead of relying entirely on a printed description, a customer can sample a gummy and let the palate do some of the work. The edible menu becomes less a document to decipher than an experience to explore: simply find out what appeals to you.

The idea is especially apt for a bar where the menu is always changing. The list keeps the creative process alive, but it also asks something of the customer: to keep up. Memory is of limited help when last week's favorite may already have given way to this week's invention. Zamora's edible menu offers a sensory shortcut, letting guests approach an unfamiliar selection through curiosity rather than commitment.

There is something appealing about this inversion of the usual bar ritual. A conventional menu asks you to imagine a drink from its ingredients and trust that the combination will work for you. An edible menu offers a preview. It turns the act of choosing into part of the evening's entertainment, and gives the indecisive drinker permission to experiment without having to order five full cocktails to discover which one they like.

For future iterations, Zamora has also envisioned perfumed paper strips that would let guests sample the aromatic profiles of the cocktails. If the gummies offer a taste of what is to come, the scented strips would invite the nose into the decision-making process. The menu would become a small sensory laboratory, one in which the customer can explore the possibilities before settling on a drink.

Yet The Whisky Library's approach to choice is not limited to giving guests more ways to make up their minds. Almost monthly, they have a whisky masterclass with food and cigar pairings. This October, the guided whisky flight featured Australian Lark whisky with Davidoff cigars (like the perfume! Alas... I do not smoke). Whereas the gummies offered freedom, this settles indecisiveness with a railroad through the scenic route and a guided tour.

The pairings moved from foie gras with a creamed cauliflower tart to surf and turf with morel and beets, finishing with chocolate. Rather than asking guests to navigate a list and construct their own experience, the flight provided an itinerary. Each course and pour became part of a larger journey, inviting attention to the experience rather than the mechanics of ordering.

Put the two experiences together and a curious philosophy emerges. The edible cocktail menu is a choose-your-own-adventure, with Zamora supplying the possibilities and leaving the guest free to follow their appetite. The guided whisky flight is a railway, with a route already plotted and the pleasure lying in watching the landscape unfold.

At The Whisky Library, indecision need not be an obstacle to pleasure. You can taste your way toward a choice, or leave the route to someone who has already mapped it out. Either way, the point is not to make choosing easier for its own sake. It is to ensure that choosing—or choosing not to—becomes part of the experience.

Edu's Book Club, a rotating selection of five cocktails curated by Edu Zamora, is available at The Whisky Library, Newport World Resorts, Pasay City.

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