🥒 Salty City

Coconut yogurt, cucumber, black garlic & lime — Copra SF

8 min
Savory & Cooling
Rocks glass over ice
Copra, San Francisco
0% ABV
Ingredients
  • 80ml coconut yogurt (Coyo or similar — or blend coconut cream with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar)
  • 80ml fresh cucumber juice (juice 1 large cucumber, strain)
  • 2 cloves black garlic (available at Whole Foods and Asian grocery stores)
  • 20ml fresh lime juice
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • Ice
  • Cucumber ribbon & black garlic slice to garnish
Method
  1. 1
    Blend garlicBlend black garlic cloves with cucumber juice until fully smooth — this is essential, no lumps.
  2. 2
    CombineIn a shaker, combine coconut yogurt, black garlic-cucumber blend, lime juice, and salt. Add ice.
  3. 3
    ShakeShake vigorously for 15 seconds — the yogurt needs thorough mixing.
  4. 4
    Double strainStrain through a fine-mesh strainer into a rocks glass over ice.
  5. 5
    GarnishRun a vegetable peeler down a cucumber for a long ribbon. Curl in the glass. Rest a thin black garlic slice on the rim.

About This Drink

Salty City is a pun (Copra is in North Beach, San Francisco — nicknamed 'the City') and a statement of intent. This drink belongs in the same category as a Bloody Mary or a Dirty Martini — it is savory, complex, and designed to pair with food rather than to stand alone as a sweet refreshment. Coconut yogurt provides body and the subtle tang of fermentation. Fresh cucumber adds cooling, watery freshness. Black garlic — raw garlic fermented until deeply sweet and umami — is Copra's most distinctive ingredient, echoing the kitchen's interest in fermented and aged South Asian condiments. Lime closes with acid. It is one of the most unusual non-alcoholic drinks on any restaurant menu in San Francisco.

Bartender Tips

Black garlic has none of the raw heat of regular garlic — it is sweet, slightly tangy, and deeply umami. Don't substitute raw garlic. If you find the savory quality too intense, add 5ml more lime juice. Coconut yogurt should be the thick, Greek-style kind — thin coconut yogurt makes the drink watery. This drink is intentionally an acquired taste — extraordinary with food, not ideal as a standalone aperitif.

Origin
Restaurant
Copra, San Francisco
Origin
Contemporary Indian, North Beach SF
Flavour
Savory & Cooling · Easy
Related
🍹All 119 MocktailsBrowse all recipes 🇮🇳Indian CocktailsWith alcohol
Where to drink this
Restaurant
Copra
Address
1700 Fillmore St, San Francisco, CA 94115
Style
Modern Indian cuisine & cocktails
Accolades
Michelin Bib Gourmand · One of SF's most acclaimed Indian restaurants

A Pacific Heights gem where Indian flavours meet California produce. Copra's bar programme is built on house-made infusions and seasonal ingredients — jaggery, kokum, dried mango, fresh turmeric — interpreted through a California craft cocktail lens. The result is a drinks menu that feels simultaneously rooted in the subcontinent and completely native to San Francisco.

Visit coprasf.com