The first time Big Star bartender Maria Carlin tasted makgeolli—an alcoholic Korean beverage made from fermented rice—she was about eight. Her grandmother, Ok Sun, used to make it. “She would invite church ladies over and they’d come and pray and sing and drink makgeolli.”
Carlin says that she also thought about what flavors go well with Korean cuisine, which led her to add ginger syrup to the drink. When you taste it, she says, “you get that yeasty, yogurty flavor from the makgeolli, then you get a little bit of ginger in the middle, and on the back end you get the smoke from the mezcal.” She named the cocktail after her grandmother: the Ok Sun Fizz.
Carlin has challenged Patrick Smith of the Violet Hour to create a cocktail with black sesame seeds.
