Drink This Now: Todd Maul’s Daiquiri Menu
Smoothest Daiquiri Evah, a new drink at Café ArtScience. / Photo provided
Inventive cocktails come easy at Café ArtScience. The science-savvy Kendall Square restaurant crafts mixed drinks with centrifuges, temperature-controlled ice, and even alcohol paints. Behind that beverage program is award-winning bartender Todd Maul, who has spent years honing his craft to offer a menu that pleases even the pickiest of drinkers. Now, he’s adding to his already-brimming cocktail list.
The first update comes in the form of eight new daiquiris. This list of rum-based drinks explores the evolution of the classic, spanning early iterations, to the Papa Doble made popular by Ernest Hemingway (add maraschino liqueur), and Maul’s own creative takes on the drink. All those daiquiris are available now.
But soon, Maul plans to up the game, this time doubling the entire list at Café ArtScience to include well over 100 unique drinks. It will feature the many recipes he’s developed and perfected while bartending, including some drinks he has specially created for patrons. Maul anticipates the updated list to debut just before Christmas. It’s not finalized yet, but Maul says it will launch in book format at the bar. He hopes the tome will mirror the expansive drink menu he worked with at Clio.
To Maul, the current, 50-odd cocktail list is more of a starting point for guests.
“If I don’t have a drink that will match [a person’s tastes], I’ll make a drink,” he says. “And if you like it, you get to name it.”
He’s taken the time to jot down those recipes, and intends to include many of them on the new menu, custom names and all.
“I literally keep every cocktail list I’ve ever written,” he says. “The last 10 years of my bartending [career] are in these little books.”
But until that curated list is ready to go, Maul has put forward a varied array of daiquiris. Rum is one of his preferred spirits to work with, and the cocktail is one he regards highly, Maul says.
“It’s kind of like ordering a Negroni. There are certain drinks where you’re planting a flag, saying, ‘We do cocktails and we do them well,'” he says.
New daiquiris at the bar range from the original, with rum, lemon, sugar, and grenadine; to more complex cocktails like the Smoothest Daiquiri Evah, which features three types of El Dorado rum, along with burnt cinnamon and grapefruit. Other additions include the Royal Navy, with Pusser’s Gunpowder rum, lemon, cinnamon, and sugarcane; a frozen daiquiri with lime and sugar; and a fall daiquiri blended with Dos Maderas 5+5 and spiced sugar syrup.
Stop in while the weather’s still remarkably warm and try all eight. And if you’re looking to pair one with food, Maul recommends the restaurant’s hot dog.
“Daiquiris are like rosé — there’s really no bad time to drink one,” he says.
$12, Café ArtScience, 650 E. Kendall St., Cambridge, 857-999-2193, cafeartscience.com.
