There is a question I get asked more than any other.
It usually comes from someone sitting at the bar, halfway through their second cocktail, leaning forward with the look of a person who has just realised they are tasting something they did not expect.
The question is: “How did you make this?”
What they are really asking is something deeper. They are asking: why does this taste like it was made specifically for me, in this moment, on this rooftop, in this city?
That question is the entire philosophy of our cocktail programme in a single sentence.
And answering it honestly takes a little time.
When We Started, We Made a Decision Nobody Noticed.
When Garden Wood’s opened in Kalyan Nagar in 2016, we were not yet the cocktail bar we are today. We had a bar. We had spirits. We had a team that knew how to pour.
What we did not yet have was a point of view.
The early menu was — and I say this with the affection of hindsight — perfectly adequate. We had a Mojito. We had a Cosmopolitan. We had a Whiskey Sour. They were made well. They were served cold. People ordered them and drank them and left satisfied.
But satisfied is not the same as moved.
Somewhere in the second year, our founder sat at the bar one evening and asked a question that changed everything. He didn’t ask it dramatically. He said it quietly, almost to himself, while watching the bartender prepare a standard gin and tonic.
He said: “Why does this cocktail exist?”
The bartender — not me, I wasn’t there yet — said: “Because people order it.”
And the founder nodded slowly and said: “Yes. But that’s not a good enough reason.”
That conversation became the founding principle of everything we do behind the bar at Garden Wood’s.
Every cocktail on our menu must have a reason to exist that goes beyond demand.
What “A Reason to Exist” Actually Means.
I want to be precise about this, because it is easy to misunderstand.
We are not saying that classic cocktails are wrong. The Negroni exists for a reason. The Old Fashioned exists for a reason. The Martini — in its truest form — exists for a profound reason. These are not drinks we dismiss. They are drinks we study, respect, and draw from constantly.
What we are saying is that copying them — putting them on a menu because they are expected — is a different thing from understanding them.
When we put our Garden Negroni on the menu, we did not do it because Negronis are popular. We did it because after studying the Negroni for months — its bitterness, its balance, its way of tasting like the beginning of a long evening — we believed we had something specific to say about it.
What we wanted to say was this: what does a Negroni taste like if it grew up in Bangalore?
The answer involved Bangalore-sourced botanicals. It involved a gin rested with roasted Arabica from Coorg. It involved a house-made bitter orange shrub that took three weeks to perfect. It involved tasting it on the rooftop at 7pm on a clear evening and asking: does this belong here?
When it did — when we could sit on that rooftop with that cocktail and feel that the drink and the place were made for each other — we knew the Garden Negroni had earned its place on the menu.
That is what we mean by a reason to exist.
The Four Questions We Ask Every Cocktail.
Over the years, we have developed a framework — informal, instinctive, but consistent — for evaluating whether a cocktail belongs on our menu.
Question One: Does it taste like somewhere?
Every great cocktail I have ever drunk tastes like the place it was made for. A Negroni tastes like a piazza in Florence at aperitivo hour. A Daiquiri tastes like Havana at midday. A Whisky Highball tastes like a Tokyo bar at 11pm.
Our cocktails should taste like Bangalore. Specifically, they should taste like our rooftop in Bangalore — the botanicals, the warmth, the slight smokiness in the air, the sweetness that arrives with the evening.
If a cocktail could belong anywhere, it doesn’t belong here.
Question Two: Does it have a moment?
Every cocktail we make is designed for a specific moment in an evening. The Garden Negroni is a 6pm drink — the drink you have when the day is ending and the evening hasn’t quite begun. The Midnight Root is a late drink — complex, dark, slow-sipping. The Amber Dusk is a golden hour drink. The Spiced Tamarind Margarita is a first drink — bright, bold, immediate.
When a guest sits down, we want to be able to look at them and know which moment they are in — and have exactly the right drink for it.
Question Three: Does it tell the truth?
A cocktail that uses smoke as decoration is lying. A cocktail that uses fresh-pressed juice pretends it’s doing something more than it is. A cocktail that over-garnishes is compensating.
We do not put anything in a cocktail that isn’t doing a specific job. The smoked cardamom in the Amber Dusk is not there because it looks dramatic. It is there because cardamom and single malt have a specific relationship — a warmth that mirrors each other — and the smoke deepens that relationship in a way that nothing else does.
Every element must earn its place or it doesn’t get a place.
Question Four: Would we drink it ourselves?
This sounds obvious. It is, in fact, the most frequently violated principle in bar programmes around the world. Menus are built for trends, for price points, for upselling, for Instagram.
We build ours for us. Every cocktail on our menu is a cocktail that our team drinks on their nights off. If we wouldn’t order it, we don’t make it.
The Drinks That Didn’t Make It.
The story of our cocktail programme is, in large part, a story of drinks that almost were.
There was a cocktail — I spent six weeks on it — built around a clarified curry leaf and coconut water base, finished with aged rum and a dehydrated lime wheel. It was technically extraordinary. It was photographically beautiful. It tasted genuinely interesting.
It was also exhausting to drink.
After the first few sips, the curry leaf became too present. The novelty overtook the pleasure. It was a cocktail that wanted to be noticed more than it wanted to be enjoyed.
I took it off the development list and learned something important that day: a cocktail must be willing to disappear into the evening.
The best cocktail is the one you don’t notice you’re drinking until it’s finished and you want another. Not because you didn’t taste it — but because tasting it felt completely natural, like the right song in the right room.
That curry leaf and coconut creation was a performance. Great cocktails are not performances. They are company.
What Bangalore Taught Us About Flavour.
I want to say something about this city — because I think it is underappreciated how much Bangalore has shaped our palate.
Bangalore is a city of layers. It is simultaneously old and new, traditional and experimental, South Indian and international, serious and exuberant. It is a city that eats Masala Dosa for breakfast and Wagyu for dinner and does not find this contradictory.
Our cocktail programme reflects that.
We use jaggery because jaggery is one of the most complex sweeteners in the world — layered, warm, slightly mineral — and it belongs to this part of India in a way that white sugar never will. We use kokum because its tartness is specific and irreplaceable. We use Coorg honey. We use Mysore sandalwood bitters — crafted by a distiller we visited three times before we were satisfied. We use tamarind not as a novelty but as a genuine flavour that has earned its place in our palate.
These are not gimmicks. They are not “Indian-inspired cocktails” in the superficial sense that phrase is often used. They are cocktails made by people who grew up tasting these flavours — who understand their relationships, their tensions, their possibilities.
When a guest from outside Bangalore picks up one of our cocktails and says “I don’t know what I’m tasting but I know I want more of it” — that is the moment our programme is working.
A Note on the Mocktail Programme.
I want to end here, because this matters.
When we rebuilt our cocktail programme four years ago, we made a commitment that I am proud of: we would treat the mocktail programme with exactly the same seriousness, the same creativity, and the same obsessive refinement as the cocktail programme.
Not because mocktails are fashionable. Not because of trends toward sobriety in hospitality. But because our guests who don’t drink alcohol deserve to feel the same thing our guests who do drink alcohol feel — that sense of being handed something that was made with genuine care for their enjoyment.
The Kokum and Cardamom Cooler. The Forest Floor. The Bangalore Lemonade with fresh ginger and curry leaf oil. These are not soft drinks poured into a nice glass. They are crafted with the same four questions as every other cocktail on our menu.
I have watched guests who don’t drink alcohol pick up a Forest Floor and go quiet for a moment. Then they look up and say: “This is the best thing I’ve ever drunk.”
That moment is why we do this.
Come and Ask Me Yourself.
If you ever find yourself at our bar in Kalyan Nagar, Electronic City, or Whitefield — sit down. Tell me what kind of evening you’re having. Tell me if you want something bright or something dark, something familiar or something you’ve never tasted before.
I’ll make you something.
And when you ask me “how did you make this?” — I’ll tell you the whole story.
— Rohan Verma, Head Bartender, Garden Wood’s Kalyan Nagar