Prep sheet 002 — the bar
Add a mixologist to any session and three cocktails get built round the menu, at your table, from the bottles already in your kitchen. Ice, glassware, mixers and the bar kit arrive with them, and every build has a zero-proof version so nobody is handed a glass of orange juice as an afterthought. Fridays and Saturdays — there is one mixologist, and the diary fills about three weeks out.
No bar tab. No bottles bought on your behalf. No licence, because none is needed for what we actually do.
The drinks
This is the part people expect us to be shifty about, so here it is plainly. We do not sell alcohol, buy it for you, or put it on a bill. You own every bottle before our mixologist touches it, and you still own what is left at the end of the night.
You
From the shop, the supermarket, the wine merchant on the corner — wherever you already go. Tell us what you have bought and the builds are designed round it. Tell us what you would like to drink instead and we will send a short list to buy from, which is advice, not an order form.
Us
Ice that is not from your freezer tray, glassware that matches, mixers, citrus, syrups, bitters, a jigger and a proper strainer. All of it is inside the supplement, and all of it goes home with them afterwards.
Neither
Selling alcohol needs a licence, and billing it “at cost” is still selling it. We hold no licence and want none, so the arrangement is simple: you supply the drink, we supply the person who knows what to do with it.
Three builds
Three cocktails across the evening, chosen once the menu is settled and the bottles are known. These are examples of the thinking, not a fixed card — your mixologist will ask what you like and build round that.
Point at a corner
Handing someone a cocktail list and asking them to choose is how bars do it, and it is the wrong question in your own kitchen. Two answers do the job instead: sweet or bitter, refreshing or strong. Tell us the corner you live in and what is already in the cupboard, and the three builds get designed from there. What follows is what each corner tastes like — examples of the thinking, not a card to order from.
sweet · refreshing
For: anything fried, anything with chilli in it, and the first drink of the night.
Daiquiri
Rum, lime and sugar with nothing to hide behind. A gram out and you can taste it, which is exactly why it is the one to learn.
You buy: white rum
Bramble
Gin and lemon built over crushed ice, with the blackberry poured down through it at the end so it bleeds rather than mixes.
You buy: gin, crème de mûre
Elderflower, lemon and sodano alcohol
Long, cold, mint clapped rather than torn, lemon squeezed to order. Built like a drink, not poured like an apology.
Nothing to buy: cordial, citrus and soda arrive in the crate
bitter · refreshing
For: opening a rich menu, where bitterness does the job a starter would.
Americano
Campari, sweet vermouth, soda and a fat wedge of orange. The Negroni’s sensible sibling, and the better call at six o’clock.
You buy: Campari, sweet vermouth
Paloma, salted
Tequila and grapefruit, salt worked round the rim, because the salt is what makes it taste of more than grapefruit.
You buy: blanco tequila
Grapefruit, tonic and saltno alcohol
The same idea with the tequila left out and the seasoning left in. It was the salt doing the work anyway.
Nothing to buy: grapefruit, tonic and salt arrive in the crate
sweet · boozy
For: the end of the table, once the washing up is done and nobody is going anywhere.
Old Fashioned
Sugar, bitters, one big cube, stirred until the outside of the glass goes cold. Four minutes of doing very little, properly.
You buy: bourbon or rye
Espresso martini
Coffee pulled that minute rather than poured cold from the pot. That difference is the whole drink, and it is why this one gets made in your kitchen and not in advance.
You buy: vodka, coffee liqueur
Manhattan
Rye and sweet vermouth, stirred, with a cherry that has never been near a jar of glacé. The vermouth does the sweetening, so the measure of it is the argument.
You buy: rye, sweet vermouth
bitter · boozy
For: one drink, taken slowly, while somebody explains what you just cooked.
Negroni, stirred
Equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth until you say otherwise. Stirred over one cube for dilution you can taste, never shaken.
You buy: gin, Campari, sweet vermouth
Boulevardier
The same three-part trick with bourbon in the gin’s place. Rounder, warmer, and better in October than in June.
You buy: bourbon, Campari, sweet vermouth
Sazerac
A glass rinsed with absinthe and then emptied, then rye, sugar and bitters stirred into it. Aromatic rather than sweet, and stronger than it tastes.
You buy: rye, absinthe — a rinse lasts years
Both zero-proof builds sit along the top, and that is not an oversight. Nothing without alcohol in it can honestly sit at the bottom of this map; what it can do is be bitter, long and properly seasoned, which is most of what the top half is for. Every build on the night has a zero-proof version regardless — these two are simply the ones designed that way from the start.
Each you buy line is a shopping list and nothing more: buy it where you already shop, or tell us what is in the cupboard and the builds are designed round that instead. Ice, glassware, mixers, citrus, syrups and bitters arrive with your mixologist, which is why the buy lines only ever name bottles with alcohol in them. We do not sell you any of it, and we never buy it for you.
What it costs
A supplement on top of a session, never a booking on its own. The mixologist comes with a chef, because the drinks are built round a menu somebody is cooking. Prices are placeholders until commercial sign-off.
Adding a mixologist to any tier is +£140. Adding front of house as well is +£210 for all three, which is £20 less than adding the two separately. The tiers themselves are unchanged — the three session prices are here — and sessions in PL10–PL21 carry the same £20 travel charge as any other, with a morning start adding £25.
One drinks specialist per session, not two. A mixologist or a sommelier, whichever suits the evening — two people whose whole job is the drink cannot work one home kitchen without doing each other’s. Cocktails are Fridays and Saturdays; a sommelier is any day of the week.
Ingredients are invoiced afterwards at cost with the receipts. Alcohol never appears on that invoice, or on any other, because we never bought it.
The night
One mixologist at launch, so anything with a mixologist in it runs on Fridays and Saturdays and books about three weeks out.
The bar goes wherever the people are — a kitchen island, a sideboard, the end of the table. Ice, glassware and kit come out of a crate, the bottles you bought come out of your cupboard, and the first build lands while the chef is still talking you through the first dish.
Three cocktails across the evening, spaced to the courses rather than poured all at once. Between them your mixologist is clearing glasses, keeping water on the table, and — if you want it — showing you the builds properly: why the Negroni is stirred, why the lime is cooked, what a jigger is for. Same deal as the kitchen: you can watch, or you can do it yourself.
At the end, the glassware is washed and packed and the crate goes home with them. What is left in the bottles stays with you, because it was always yours.
Questions
Anything else, email hello@forkingchefing.com and a person answers.
Next
The booking questions ask which service level you want, so pick the mixologist there. Fridays and Saturdays, about three weeks out, confirmed once we have spoken.