Honeydew, Calpico, honey, basil & citrus — Tiya SF
Tiya is chef Srijith Gopinathan's San Francisco restaurant — named after his daughter, it is his more personal and experimental space after years at Taj Campton Place. The cocktail menu is named for SF neighborhoods, but the zero-proof options defy easy geography. Calpis takes its name from Calpico, the Japanese cultured milk soft drink (similar to a diluted, sweetened yogurt drink) that has been popular across East and Southeast Asia since 1919. Paired with fresh honeydew melon, honey, basil, and citrus, it becomes a drink that belongs equally to a Tokyo convenience store and a San Francisco fine-dining room — which is precisely Tiya's aesthetic.
Calpico is available in both a white (original) and coloured fruit versions — use the original white Calpico for this recipe. It is widely available at H-Mart, 99 Ranch, Mitsuwa, and Japanese grocery stores. Honeydew is best blended and strained for a clear juice; over-extraction makes it slightly bitter. Yuzu juice (available frozen at Japanese grocery stores) adds a more complex citrus dimension than lemon.
Tiya takes the intersecting immigrant histories of San Francisco's Japanese and Indian communities and distils them into a cocktail menu. Each drink is named after a San Francisco neighborhood, building a portrait of the city through layered flavour — yuzu meets curry leaf, matcha meets chai, Calpico meets tamarind. A genuinely original vision in American craft bartending.
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