NOTICED: Cocktails That Feed You.

Swedish Fish, Beef Jerky, Fried Chicken, and Caviar get into the cocktail "garnish" game.

The cocktail is such a beautiful ritual, isn’t it? A proper drink, prepared with care, stirred or shaken, and poured into a heavy cut glass tumbler over a solid rock of ice, or strained into a petal-thin coupe shaped like the perfect B-cup, garnished with a peel of something citrusy. Cocktails, not only the drinking of them, but the beauty of their preparation and presentation, are a balm to the woes of our world.

At Guild Bar, a (very) Dirty Martini comes with a big beautiful bowl of briny olives.

While I’m not a cocktail expert like my friend Amanda Schuster, or the great BT Parsons or Robert Simonson, I do have a great appreciation for them. And I’ve noticed something lately, while appreciating them, a little trend among the bar folk of our city who are going above and beyond, adding a little somethin’ somethin’ to our delicious drinks, which is nice to see considering they usually set you back at least an Andrew Jackson these days.

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At Hildur, the new Scandinavian-French DUMBO bistro from the brilliant ladies behind Colonie and Pips, Bathtub Gin alum Abraham Zumba is leaning into the restaurant’s Swedish roots with the “Lingon Baby.” It’s pretty in pink — a mix of whiskey, lingonberry, alpine liqueur, lemon, and soda — garnished with housemade Swedish fish! Think about this — he makes the fish! (Beware, if you go with your kids, you will not stand a chance at those red candy swimmers and the kids may be slightly buzzed at dinner from that bit of booze on the fish.)

At Gui, the stunning new Korean-American steakhouse in a former Staples in Times Square, the team behind Michelin-starred Mari and Kochi are not making candy fish, but they’re curing they’re own beef jerky. Their Gui-tini ($34) has all the essential food groups: Adray blended scotch whiskey, Tres Tribus Cuishe Mezcal, orange bitters, steak dripping infused-Bodegas Barbadillo Atamàn vermouth, and a nice bit of protein thanks to the jerky.

Beef Jerky accompanies the Gui-tini at Gui, the newly opened steakhouse in Times Square (photo be Dan Ahn).

The Dirty Rich Martini ($40) at the newly opened Huso in Tribeca is a (very) dirty martini that’s served with an ample caviar bump and an olive. The tasting menu restaurant is from executive chef, co-owner and two-time Top Chef winner, Buddha Lo, and nestled within Marky’s Caviar’s new retail space on Greenwich Street, so the caviar is a natural sidekick.

If you love the olives that come with a Martini as much as the drink (yes, I am looking at you, Dana), then you must go to Guild Bar. Have you been yet? It’s probably the only cocktail lounge where each drink comes with its own one-of-a-kind glassware hand-crafted by Roman and Williams. Their Guild Martini ($24) is prepared with three gins and two vermouths (fancy!). It’s served in an elegant Patrician Champagne Cup by J. & L. Lobmeyr, accompanied by a glass bowl filled up to the top with fat green Martini olives.

The Self-Care Kit at Metropolis includes a classic martini with 1/2 oz osetra caviar, snapper tartare, hot honey fried chicken, and a Fulton Street hash brown potato.

My favorite cocktail-and-a-side is served at Metropolis, Marcus Sameulsson’s city-inspired restaurant in the Perelman Performing Arts Center. There, in the David Rockwell-designed theatrical space, the bar does something called a “Self Care Kit” ($50) that features a classic martini with 1/2 an ounce of Osetra caviar, snapper tartare, hot honey fried chicken, and Fulton Street hash brown potato. Yes, this is my kind of self-care.

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