If you are in Shillong, try shrimp curry and vodka, black rice with whisky or pinewood tincture with white chocolate. These drinks — with ingredients dedicated to each State of the Northeast — feature on the cocktail menu of Meghalaya-based cocktail bar Shad Skye.
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Set on the rooftop of The Shillong Address, a boutique hotel, 80-seater Shad Skye narrates the story of the people, resources and flavours of the Northeast through ingredients. The menu lists 10 cocktails.
Shad Skye, which means a dance in the clouds (shad means dance in Khasi and skye means island of clouds), overlooks Shillong Peak. Larsing LD Sawyan, managing director of Centre Point Group Enterprise, who owns The Shillong Address, says, “We are a boutique hotel with the feel of a guest house and our main focus is food, especially authentic flavours. Since we wanted to offer something different, keeping in view the Northeastern essence, we decided to craft cocktails with ingredients unique to each State.”
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Pearls of Sikkim
After six months of trial and error, mixologist Rishot S Laloo, (formerly with the Oberoi group) and his team at Shad Skye, chose one ingredient from each State, and three from Meghalaya: pinewood, stone flower and orange blossom.
Stating that “Shad Skye is the first in the country to have a cocktail menu that represents each State of the Northeast,” Rishot explains how they worked with unexpected, and sometimes foraged ingredients for each cocktail. Stone flower, for example, grows in Meghalaya during monsoon. It is blended with beetroot juice and tequila to make the Terpenes cocktail.
The signature drinks at Shad Skye | Photo Credit: Special arrangements
Another cocktail, named Something Fishy, is inspired by Assam’s river island Majuli, which is known for shrimps. “For this cocktail, shrimp, with tomato, is made into a rich gravy, then pureed and strained. Next, alcohol is added, and flavours are balanced,” says Rishot, adding, “The resulting cocktail is fishy only when it comes to its name. The taste is complex, with this beautiful blend of ingredients.”
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The team at Shad Skye | Photo Credit: james pohsnem
With so many unique, relatively unexplored ingredients in the Northeast, the team had a tough time picking just one from each State. Rishot says, “We started with what is most popular. Like, black rice from Manipur, which we blended with jaggery, coconut and whisky to get a heady-yet-sweet drink. We consciously keep our drinks low on sweetness, as people in the region usually don’t consume extremely sweet things. This is also why our sweetening agents are cherry liquors, jaggery and local fruit preserves.”
Delicious black
He says that the bar is also experimenting with seasonal indigenous berries like Soh Shang (Bastard oleaster) and Soh Phil (which resembles raspberry) for their seasonal drinks menu. Apart from the 10 signature drinks, Shad Skye’s classics include a Pinewood Old Fashioned, Ghost Pepper Picante and Cilantro Mojito.
Other cocktails on the menu include Living Roots and Cherry Blossom from Meghalaya, Dong Valley from Arunachal, Tuaite from Mizoram, Krypo Tzu from Nagaland, Chire Doi Aam from Tripura and Pearls of Sikkim from Sikkim.
Stating that the team had fun understanding the ingredients, combining them with various spirits and learning and owning something that is completely local to the region, Rishot says that while the process was challenging, it made them all the more determined to get it right. He adds, “Now, anyone who takes a sip keeps guessing how we did it.”