50 Best Restaurants: Clio Bar Manager Todd Maul Goes Lowbrow with Blender Drinks


blender drink

Get yours at Clio this Sunday. (Photo courtesy of Flickr/TheCulinaryGeek)

While Clio’s bar manager Todd Maul is known for his complicated cocktails (and novel-esque 32-page cocktail book) he’s decided to go delightfully lowbrow once a week — with blender drinks! The idea to serve blender bevs started last Sunday, Maul told me, and the event was so successful that it will be be a regular Sunday tradition at Clio, one of this year’s 50 Best Restaurants.

With Todd Maul behind the blender, of course, these drinks aren’t your standard Applebee’s pina colada variety. Last weekend, Maul served a classic tiki cocktail appropriately named the “Test Pilot,” which contains a heady mix of lime juice, falernum, Cointreau, Angostura bitters, Pernod and light and dark rum. This Sunday, he says he will blend up a drink called “Pieces of Eight,” which contains lime juice, lemon juice, passion fruit, light rum, and of course, copious amount of crushed ice.

He’s also crafted a high-tech topper for each drink, a lime “chip” made by mixing xanthan gum with clarified lime juice, spreading it out on clear acetate sheets, blast freezing it, and cutting out circles with a pastry cutter. The chip will have a luxardo cherry liqueur center (a touch more complicated then a curly straw, no?)

The drinks will be available on Sundays only, and cost $10 a pop, which is $4 cheaper than your average Clio cocktail. “Blender drinks are fun, so they should be more accessible,” Maul says. We know where we will be drinking this Sunday.

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