Introducing the Mermaid: Matthew Biancaniello Makes Us a Drink
Liquid tasting menus, omakase everything, the Forager Bartender, these are a few words to describe Matthew Biancaniello, veteran of A & E’s Good Spirits, and author of Eat Your Drink. What’s different with Matthew is his omnivorous curiosity and his deep connection to what’s ripe, what’s new in the market, in the forest, the fields, and even the sea.
Liquid tasting menus, omakase everything, the Forager Bartender, these are a few words to describe Matthew Biancaniello, veteran of A & E’s Good Spirits, and author of Eat Your Drink. What’s different with Matthew is his omnivorous curiosity and his deep connection to what’s ripe, what’s new in the market, in the forest, the fields, and even the sea.
Matthew got his start at the famous Library Bar in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a place he calls “an incredible laboratory.” It’s also where he built his reputation as a fearless mixologist who transformed whatever was ripe and farmers-market-fantastic into liquid bliss.
In 2018, he partnered with Calamigos Ranch in Malibu to create his first liquid tasting experience, Mon-Li, at their beach club bar. But then the Woolsey Fire hit and the whole thing burned down, devastating Matthew’s dreams for a good long time. Now, though, he’s enthused again with an intimate tasting menu he serves in his apartment to a clutch of lucky guests.
When we arrive on a recent Friday afternoon, the whole place smells like guavas. A giant crate of the fruits waits by the sink to be muddled into N/A drinks for his twin sons’ school fair. On every shelf are jar after jar of spices and fruit, fermenting into various liquors.
Matthew makes us a bespoke creation that goes with his new obsession, an entire tasting menu inspired by the rough and tumble Pacific ocean. In Matthew-verse, this means he takes trips to the Channel Islands (“the water’s cleanest there”) where he harvests long strips of kelp and spiny lobsters. He’s infusing a lobster spirit—of course—as well as an unusual briny liquor with the kelp.
After an Ahi tuna pairing with a lively squirt of passionfruit, Matthew shakes and muddles, slices and pops. The Mermaid is not only served spectacularly in a nautilus shell, but rests on a tiny beach with dried ume plums, and is adorned by edible flowers and pomegranate seeds. And the taste? Tart at first—from the limes—and mezcal-smoky before settling into a perfectly balanced concoction with the tiniest hint of ocean lurking in its sour-sweet depths.
