Cocktail Masterclass, Gallery Mess

The lovely people over at Rhubarb invited me to a cocktail making masterclass to celebrate the launch of their new bar and cocktail menu at Gallery Mess. 

With PetiteFolle in London during the week these days, I asked her to come along. Big mistake. Like mid-week mac'n'cheese at midnight mistake.

But before everything went downhill, we were treated to a very cool little evening.

Tasty little morsels of food were tucked into eagerly - smoked salmon blinis, wild mushrooms in brioche with hollandaise (foodgasm), rosemary tinged rare seared beef, and courgette and ricotta wraps - before we kicked off the main event: cocktail making.

Mike took us through a crash course on how to make three of the new cocktails: White Truffle Martini, Tommy's Margarita, and Fig & Liquorice Caipirinha.

I don't know if it was the bubbles on arrival, the continuous cocktail sipping while learning,  cachaca shots, or the killer cocktails themselves, but I don't think any of my cocktails turned out the way they were supposed to.

So this is what I learnt:

• If James Bond was a real man, he would have stirred, not shaken
• The twirly spoon type thing is called a "muddler"
• Counting to 6 on a free pour is 50ml
• And when you shake up a cocktail, you can't help but do a *ahem* "sex face"

Um, yeah. Scary.

Very responsibly, we were served up a few more delicious treats to help soak up the cocktails - but I fear the damage was already done.

After that, there was nothing for it but to drink more and share laughs (and a few tears) with our fellow cocktail makers.

A smashing night.

Oh, and this is what the cocktails were supposed to look like:

Yep. Think I'll be sticking to serving wine, and going to Gallery Mess for the cocktails.