Vodka, clear jamun (Indian blackberry) juice, fresh mint & lime — Indian Accent Delhi
Jamun (Syzygium cumini), the Indian blackberry or java plum, is one of India's most beloved summer fruits — sold by street vendors from April to June, eaten with rock salt and chili. Its flavour combines dark berry with a slight astringency and a distinctive flavour compound (jamboline) that is unlike anything else. The juice is impossibly purple — it stains teeth, tongues, and clothing indiscriminately. Indian Accent's cocktail team found that clarifying the juice (removing the astringent tannins through agar-agar fining) produces a crystal-clear, deep crimson liquid that delivers all of jamun's flavour without the staining or bitterness.
Fresh jamun is seasonal (April–June in India) and increasingly available at Indian grocery stores in the US during this period. Outside season, frozen jamun or jamun powder works for the flavour. The clarification step is important for the Indian Accent presentation — unclarified jamun juice is astringent and staining. If you skip clarification, the drink is still delicious but deeply purple and will mark anything it touches.
The original Indian Accent at The Lodhi Hotel in New Delhi is where Manish Mehrotra transformed the conversation about Indian cuisine globally. This is the flagship — a restaurant that takes every regional Indian ingredient and technique seriously, then reimagines it with the confidence of a kitchen that has mastered the grammar before rewriting the language. The cocktail programme is equally considered.
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