Anatomy of a menu: Jigger & Pony, Singapore
Part menu, part magazine — take a look at the annual menu from one of Singapore’s finest cocktail bars.
This story appears in the second issue of Boothby magazine — to subscribe to the magazine, click here. To the read the full piece below, you’ll need to be a Boothby email subscriber.
A great cocktail list is a statement of intent; the best examples speak to a bar’s reason for being, and they show rather than tell.
Jigger & Pony’s annual cocktail list, delivered in a large format magazine style — one we’re fond of here at Boothby, obviously — shows you just what this Singapore bar is about.
It’s a good time, frankly. The menu is bright, designed with an updated early 1980s kind of aesthetic; modern and yet familiar at the same time. Big colour photography of the cocktails appears throughout the 68 page menu, as well as photographs of the team and a magazine-style introduction to the issue from the bar manager.
There’s a quick reference section at the front of the book, so you can see all the cocktails at a glance — essential, if you ask us, when you’re putting together a lengthy menu. There are 24 cocktails on the list, with riffs on classics, Singaporean staples like the Sling, and crowd pleasers like a Nuclear Daiquiri (that isn’t nuclear — it’s a winner) and an Espresso Martini. There are more expressive and technique driven drinks, too.
Three non-alcoholic cocktails are found up the back, as well as four bowls of Punch, including an update on the Chatham Artillery Punch, which dates to the 1700s.
Jigger & Pony is the kind of place where that Punch bowl serve works. There are two bars within: the main bar, as you walk through the door, caters to a crowd on low couches, high tables, and seats at the curved bar; step up into the mezzanine at the back of the room and duck round the corner for a more intimate space, with its own bar too. You can have an intimate night with a partner here, or get a little rowdy in a group — Jigger is a place to do it all.
Bar manager Uno Jang has been with Jigger & Pony for eight years now, and here, he talks us through the menu, its development process, and why the Champagne Ramos Gin Fizz is his favourite drink on the menu.