Sauce editor dishes on savory cocktails and Gramophone sandwiches

New restaurants in the St. Louis region are enticing customers with a bevy of savory cocktails and fresh flavor combinations. It’s a trend that began with a boom in dry martinis, but it didn’t stop there — curry, crab and cheese are also in the mix.

“You still want a cocktail to be balanced; it's going to have sweet, sour, salty, savory, all of those notes,” said Sauce Magazine Executive Editor Meera Nagarajan.

As examples of the trend, Nagarajan highlighted a pho-inspired cocktail at Frazer’s Restaurant & Lounge and a cocktail from New Society that reveals its caprese salad influence with flavors of roasted tomato water and mozzarella foam.

“It’s fun ingredients that you’re looking at on the menu, and you're definitely going to taste that when you're drinking it,” Nagarajan said. “But it still has to work as a cocktail — and they do.”

Also on Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air, Nagarajan shared insights from Sauce’s ranking of all 40 sandwiches at the Gramophone, as well as the publication’s latest hit list of new restaurants and bars. She also discussed the magazine’s new local ownership and the return of its print edition.