High above the London skyline, 52 floors up in The Shard, Gŏng bar has launched a new signature cocktail menu titled Nature & Earth, a poetic and transportive experience that charts the botanical lifecycle through eight inventive drinks—and one cocktail you won’t actually drink at all.
The menu is the latest creation from assistant director of food and beverage Julien Casanova, bar manager Simone Ghiozzi, and assistant bar manager Davide Capirola. But it might be more accurate to say it was cultivated than created. Nature & Earth follows the journey of a plant from seed to blossom, root to juice, with each cocktail devoted to a single ingredient—buckwheat, mango, sugarcane, and more—handled with the same reverence you might reserve for an heirloom seed catalog.
Take the Buckwheat, for example—a blend of Toki Japanese Whisky, buckwheat shochu, and peach and jasmine soda, crowned with a hand-moulded savory fried buckwheat noodle. It’s the kind of drink that tastes like it belongs to a specific latitude and maybe even a specific hour of the day—early evening, before the light shifts. Then there’s The Flesh, a fiery tribute to fruiting and flowering, featuring Enemigo Blanco Tequila, mezcal, mango, citrus, sesame, and oriental spices, all garnished with a single dried chili: the botanical equivalent of an exclamation point.
From the Flower, with its bright, blooming mix of Orientalist Gunpowder Gin, chrysanthemum honey, and Champagne, to Sugar Cane, made with fresh juice sourced directly from Borough Market and stirred into a base of Havana Club and rhum agricole, the menu never strays far from its roots—both figuratively and geographically. Asian botanicals such as rambutan, galangal, matcha, and makrut lime thread through the experience, whispering of spice markets and tea gardens rather than shouting over them.
And then there’s the ninth cocktail, a serve that doesn’t show up in a coupe glass at all. Called The Evergreen, it’s a donation to the Veritree reforestation initiative, planting a native tree in Kent for each gesture made. No garnish, just good karma.
“This menu is a tribute to nature’s quiet brilliance,” Casanova said. “It led to cocktails that don’t just taste good—but also do good.”
Gŏng, nestled inside the Shangri-La Hotel, has offered sweeping views of London since 2014. With Nature & Earth, it now offers a different kind of perspective: one that reaches as deep into the soil as it does into the clouds.
For more information on Gŏng Bar and its Nature & Earth Cocktail Menu, head over to the bar’s official website.
In 2022, Gǒng Bar launched their Tropical Oasis Menu.
