Tableside Cocktails Are Here to Entertain You

The next time you go to dinner, you just might get a show to go with it. Tableside cocktails, or drinks prepared in front of guests at their seats, are having a bit of a bit of a moment. Often incorporating dramatic flourishes like fire and smoke, liquid nitrogen, or contraptions like ice luges and brass pour-over containers, the interactive drinks make a strong case for dining out. At a time when Americans are eating out less and becoming choosier with where they go, restaurants are upping the dramatics of ordering a drink, with tricked-out bar carts rolling right up to your table.

“People aren’t eating out as much and aren’t spending as much,” says Patrick Shanahan, co-owner of Peregrine in Raleigh, North Carolina, something that was on his mind when the restaurant was opening last year. For a while, he says, restaurants went all-in on creating beautifully designed spaces to attract people, but that’s become a baseline requirement at this point.

“No one’s building non-beautiful places, and if they are, we don’t hear about it for a reason,” says Shanahan, who introduced a choose-your-own-adventure Old Fashioned cart at Peregrine that lets guests customize their drink with whichever spirits, sweeteners, and bitters they want. “Now it’s these curated experiences and how you can engage with guests more, because you want them to have an experience that sets you aside from everybody else.”

A little tableside razzle dazzle isn’t just fun for guests—it’s often central to a restaurant’s strategy to both entice people in and to leave a lasting impression.

Why Restaurants Are Trying to Create Drama to Get Butts in Seats

“Today’s guests want something interactive, personal, and worthy of the investment,” says Evan Sewell, beverage director at Capolinea at Signia by Hilton, an upscale Italian restaurant in downtown Atlanta. The restaurant introduced its high-tech martini cart “to differentiate ourselves from the many great Italian restaurants in the city.”

After rolling a sleek trolley tableside, a bartender pours liquid nitrogen into martini glasses, creating a billowing white fog that swirls around the glasses and spreads across the trolley. It’s intended to chill the glasses to an impressive -350 degrees so that the martinis are ice cold, but the greater effect is creating a sensorial experience that’s so memorable it keeps guests coming back (and gets new ones in the door.)

View this post on Instagram

Rocco Whalen, who opened Fahrenheit in Charlotte in 2011, introduced his bourbon tower tableside cocktail three years ago to cut through the noise of the city’s growing F&B scene.

“You’ve got to go big or you kind of get lost by the masses,” says Whalen. “Any dollars you can spend on inventiveness are ways for [owners] to invest and reinvest back into the business to keep people wanting to come back for more.”

// Create the element
var script_69431d315172f = document.createElement(“script”);

script_69431d315172f.innerHTML = `
window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []};
googletag.cmd.push(function() {

var adType = “leaderboard”;
var mapping;
var lbmapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1024, 0], [[970, 250], [970, 90], [1, 1], [728, 90]])
.addSize([728, 0], [[728, 90], [1, 1]])
.addSize([320, 0], [[1, 1], [300, 50], [300, 100], [320, 50], [320, 100]])
.addSize([0, 0], [[1, 1], [320, 50]])
.build();; // Size mapping for leaderboard ads
var medrecmapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1024, 0], [[300, 600],[300, 250]])
.addSize([728, 0], [300, 250])
.addSize([320, 0], [[1, 1],[300, 250]])
.addSize([0, 0], [[1, 1], [300, 250]])
.build(); // Size mapping for med rectengle ads

if(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’
|| ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’
|| ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_3’) {
mapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1920, 0], [[728, 90]]) // >= 1920px
.addSize([1440, 0], [[728, 90]]) // 1440px-1919px
.addSize([730, 0], [[300, 250]]) // 730px-1439px
.addSize([0, 0], [[320, 100], [320, 50], [300, 100], [300, 50], [300, 250]]) // Up to 729px
.build();
} else {
mapping = adType == ‘leaderboard’ ? lbmapping : medrecmapping;
}

googletag.defineSlot(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’, [],
‘div-gpt-ad-69431d315172f’).addService(googletag.pubads()).defineSizeMapping(mapping);
googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs();
googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-69431d315172f’);

});
`;
// Append the script to the body
document.body.appendChild(script_69431d315172f);

His six-foot-tall bourbon tower contraption looks like it belongs in a science laboratory. A bartender pours two or three gallons of bourbon into the top chamber to aerate it at the beginning of each night. When someone orders a drink, the tower is rolled over to the table, where the bartender carefully opens a valve on the tower. The bourbon slowly swirls into a chamber filled with aromatics like pear and cinnamon before making it into a glass. From there, customers can choose for the bartender to make a cocktail from the drink, or sip the bourbon as-is.

Many of these tableside cocktails include a smoke element for dramatic effect. At Maison Nur in New York City the smoked mezcal margarita (aptly named “The Smoke Show”) is prepped at the bar, covered with a glass dome, and delivered to the table, where the bartender uses a butane torch to light bourbon-soaked wood chips. Smoke builds up in the glass, creating a smoky show for guests when the dome is removed.

Photo by Lizzie Munro

Labor-Intensive Drinks That Market Themselves

Beyond making a regular night out more memorable, these drinks generate their own buzz, both inside the restaurant and beyond. Seeing someone else getting a tableside experience typically sparks a domino ordering effect, says Shanahan. “Someone’s seeing something fun and different and they’re like, well, I want that experience.”

At Baltaire’s brunch in Los Angeles, this effect was so strong that the team had to put a second roving Bloody Mary cart into service. The oversized trolley comes stocked with your standard ingredients for the brunch cocktail, but ups the ante with strips of candied bacon, giant shrimp, meat and cheese skewers, and a plethora of hot sauce options.

“We sold over a hundred Bloody Marys in one service,” says general manager Patrick Hickey, who is always hearing from guests who saw the cart on Instagram and felt compelled to visit.

View this post on Instagram

Sewell says the same happens at Capolinea. “The martini cart has actually brought people in on its own—several guests have visited specifically because they saw it on Instagram.”

Will we see more tableside cocktails in the future? Hard to say, but for these restaurants and others, they’ve been a source of much-needed excitement.

// Create the element
var script_69431d3153ad5 = document.createElement(“script”);

script_69431d3153ad5.innerHTML = `
window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []};
googletag.cmd.push(function() {

if(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’
|| ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’
|| ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’ == ‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_3’) {
mapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1920, 0], [[728, 90]]) // >= 1920px
.addSize([1440, 0], [[728, 90]]) // 1440px-1919px
.addSize([730, 0], [[300, 250]]) // 730px-1439px
.addSize([0, 0], [[320, 100], [320, 50], [300, 100], [300, 50], [300, 250]]) // Up to 729px
.build();
} else {
mapping = adType == ‘leaderboard’ ? lbmapping : medrecmapping;
}

googletag.defineSlot(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’, [],
‘div-gpt-ad-69431d3153ad5’).addService(googletag.pubads()).defineSizeMapping(mapping);
googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs();
googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-69431d3153ad5’);

});
`;
// Append the script to the body
document.body.appendChild(script_69431d3153ad5);

“Tableside cocktails are another opportunity to touch a table and let the guests know that we’re there for them and care about them,” Shanahan says. “I really do believe in the cart.”