If you've already worked your way through Lost Lake's second menu, great news—the Logan Square tiki bar has a new secret "whisper menu," with 107 cocktails, greatly expanding the variety of tiki drinks you can try.
"I have this database of every drink we’ve ever made throughout the years—some are ‘one-night only’ drinks that we created for special occasions or pop-ups offsite, and others are just staff favorites that have gotten lost over time," beverage director Paul McGee says. "We wanted to make a physical menu that guests could browse and order off of, as a way to give these drinks new life and expand people’s options a bit."
The special menu has an alphabetized list of $12 drinks, from Aikau Aikau, a pair of rums mixed with blue curacao, falernum and pineapple, to the Zombie Dark, with three rums, falernum, pomegranate, cinnamon, absinthe and Angostura bitters. In between are a wide range of tiki drinks, some of which might be familiar. All the drinks from the debut Lost Lake menu are on here, as are drinks McGee made for Three Dots and a Dash. Plus, a few tiki drinks from McGee's tenure at the Whistler are available again, including Cap Haitian Rum and Honey, a take on a rum old-fashioned, and Dr. Funk, rum struck through with pomegranate, lime and absinthe. And some are brand new—they're "just drinks we had created that didn’t fit the scheme of the current menu," McGee says. "'Eloha’s Coconut Daiquiri for two,' for instance, is a mighty fine drink that somehow slipped through the cracks for this most recent Lost Lake menu."
I've slowly been working through the list (I've had 45 of the 107, though most of those are drinks from Three Dots and early Lost Lake), and it's great to see old favorites again, like the refreshing gin and passionfruit-laced Saturn, as well as other tiki classics, including a Jet Pilot and a Mai Tai. A new favorite is Blackbeard's Ghost, based on a recipe from tiki master Beachbum Berry. It's made with two aged rums, falernum, lemon and Angostura bitters, while curacao and apricot brandy add bright fruity notes.
Want to try the drinks? Just ask for the "whisper menu" the next time you're at Lost Lake.