“More or less evident change in form, understood both in its external characteristics and in its structural data”. This is the meaning of Transformation, the theme of the new drink list of Folklore Laboratory, the cocktail bar-emporium where you can enjoy refined drinks and purchase artisan products from Campania owned by the bar manager Vincenzo Pagliara and the two partners and bartenders Francesco Manna and Vincenzo Monda, in Pomigliano d'Arco, in the Neapolitan province.
The concept of the new drink list
“Reduce the work behind the counter as much as possible, to make room for that done by local farms and artisans”. This was Vincenzo Pagliara's choice, who decided to abandon homemade products to deepen research in the area.
There are twelve companies and artisans selected in total, each of which has created a signature drink list. From the ancient variety of Slow Food Presidium cabbage torzella riccia grown by Casale Pietropaolo in Pollena Trocfchia (NA) to the water kefir of Wild Ferment in Naples,
up to the babà from the Pasticceria Antignani in Pomigliano d'Arco (NA) and the ketchup made from bitter Vesuvian oranges from the Azienda Agricola Poggio del Picchio in Aiello del Sabato (AV). Each of these natural or processed products is made the protagonist in cocktails of extreme research and finesse.
Torzella riccia is used in a pesto in the Eco drink, with Patrón Silver tequila, bergamot, lacto honey, verjus & rue, water kefir is mixed in Symbiosis, with Bombay Dry gin, sweet potato, Monte Somma cherry, Annurca apple & Achillea, babà is used in the Trionfo cocktail with Picaflor Wild Mezcal, oloroso sherry, buffalo yogurt,
pinnata pear and black cardamom and bitter orange ketchup in Nuvola, with 42 Below Vodka, Ratafià Rossi and neroli, an essential oil obtained from the distillation of bitter orange flowers.
Each product is an explosion of flavors and the story of the DNA of a reality, reported on the menu below each signature. The bartender's intervention is therefore reduced to a minimum, because the products are already complete in themselves and do not require any adjustments. By working with almost entirely processed raw materials, it is possible to control waste on raw materials more easily than in the past. In the future, not only could this theme remain central in the menu, alternating from time to time the raw materials and the companies that produce them, but it could also lead to a more profitable and tailored collaboration with suppliers, leading to the creation of tailored products for Folklore Laboratory.
If the project of Vincenzo Pagliara, Francesco Manna and Vincenzo Monda it was already avant-garde before, when the focus was counter-seasonality and forgotten fruits, now it can only be even more so, given the role of mediator it plays, like a restaurant, between the territory and the public.
