Twisted Lemon restaurant survives, thanks to some ‘clarity’ and cocktails

Laurie Lilliman brings me a tumbler with a big cube of ice swimming in several ounces of a clear liquid the colour of a very pale apple juice.

Uuuhhhh, isn't a bloody caesar supposed to be red," I'm thinking.

I take a sip.

That's the reaction we get," says Laurie, smiling, recognizing the look on my face.

I'm dumbstruck, slack-jawed, as though I'd just seen David Blaine pull Penn and Teller out of the top of David Copperfield's head.

I take another sip. There it is.

All the caesar flavours, unmistakably - the tomato and clam broth, Tabasco, the celery, salt, lime and Worcestershire sauce, the glow of the vodka - all landing where they should, mapping" exactly against my mouth/throat memory of a perfect caesar (even though it doesn't look anything like one), everything symphonizing on my palette. If blindfolded, I'd swear this drink were red, salt-rimmed, wearing a crown of garnishes with a paddle of celery.

How? The answer? Clarity."

Forget lemonade, even if your restaurant is called Twisted Lemon. No, when life throws you sour balls and bitter pills, lockdowns and lonely dark dining spaces, you make ... cocktails.

You don't. Laurie Lilliman does. Clarified cocktails. Super clarified.

They, the cocktails, have literally been rescuing the beloved business she and husband Dan Megna started 12 years ago. More than a business it's an in-pulling culinary hearth warmed by their passion, knowledge and values not only around food but family (Laurie was pregnant when they started), community, environment, fair working conditions, their own love of each other.

At first sight, in my case," says Dan, Twisted Lemon chef. It took some bringing around for Laurie."

The restaurant, which started as a catering business, grew out of their vision for their lives together, doing what they both adore - cooking, serving, hosting. They met at a restaurant - she a server, he sous-chef.

They lived for a time in the space that is now the restaurant. They raised their kids there, before they bought the building next door and made it home, with a big garden where they grow food for Twisted Lemon.

It was a risk, a restaurant in Cayuga, population 1,500, but they wanted to raise their family in a small town, and as word caught on they drew diners from all over - Toronto, Hamilton, Buffalo, Niagara. It took off. Their dream worked.

So, when the pandemic came and they suffered, it was very personal.

One day in January (amid the lockdown) I was up at 5:30, starting to make the (conventional) cocktails (a new rule allowed restaurants to premix), and it just all seemed too much," says Laurie.

I'm ready to quit,' I told myself." For her, the joy was the service, the community. That was gone. The restaurant needed the cocktails but, she asked herself, What do I need?"

The answer was clarity." The word, the idea, sank in.

The waste of leavings, the wall of boxes, foil containers, plastic packaging, it taunted me. While we deeply appreciated that this packing (of pre-mixed cocktails) meant sales, it didn't feel right."

Clarity. The meanings multiplied, and for the mixologist that she is (Laurie has competed and won many prizes in cocktail and bartending events) a special association applied.

Clarification, in mixology, is the process whereby suspended particles are removed from unclear liquid. As Laurie reflected, as she wrestled with existential questions before the sun had even come up, her own sun came up. Clarification. What if ... a new kind of cocktail?

She worked tirelessly, possessed almost, formulating a system for clarifying drinks that would result in zero waste and virtually no packaging. It involves exhaustive rounds of filtration, clarifying, experimentation with syrups, infusions, flavours, tinctures, liqueurs, understanding of reactions down to a molecular level, and days of maturation in large demijohns. The backrooms of the restaurant are like a science laboratory.

The results are a taste exaltation, the flavours often being more intense, for having been so rigorously distilled.

Not just the caesar. There are 24, including Berry Garcia, Paper Plane, Fresco Sour, Rum Punch, Jungle Bird, Jumper Cables and, my favourite, Pine & Ginger.

It has transformed the restaurant," says chef Dan. It kept them afloat. Now dinner hours are full again.

The 24 are currently featured in a beautifully designed hexagonal advent calendar box (cut-off, Dec. 1), a cocktail a day over advent, culminating in Christmas, proceeds to McMaster Child and Youth Mental Health Unit.

For more, twistedlemon.ca.

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jmahoney@thespec.com