New Cocktail Collection at GRACE Bistro.

GRACE Bistro has launched a new summer collection with unusually named cocktails — Lurea, Vamora, Laviva, Twista, Lemra, Perella, Flirta. Each one sounds as if it's pulled from a nonexistent epic, where the heroines are spirits, goddesses, or Amazons. But the names aren't the main point — all the drinks in the new lineup are built on delicate flavor combinations that unfold gradually and unhurriedly. In the Perella cocktail, for instance, you can taste grapefruit, basil, and pear, while Lemra has lime, cucumber, berry gin, and apple. Laviva is built on white rum, a lavender note, and citrus, while Twista is gin with Tibetan chamomile and Suze, making its flavor especially complex.

Each cocktail is assigned its own character: bold, like Flirta with tequila and basil; seductive, like the tropical Lurea with passion fruit, coconut, and frankincense. The strongest drink in the collection is Vamora — vodka, tequila, gin, rum, and triple sec, with pomegranate added. It's a cocktail for an evening mood, when what you want isn't energy but depth, when the table has gone quiet and the conversations turn personal.

Head bartender Yegor Bocharov named this collection "Sip Me Softly." He emphasizes that the new cocktails are about attention to nuance, about a flavor that doesn't shout but whispers. So they're best approached unhurriedly, feeling the balance, as if on a warm evening you're watching the sunset and wondering where the night will lead.

The menu keeps pace, put together in the same mood. Every element on the plate supports the summer theme, revealing it from a different angle. In the okroshka, chicken mortadella replaces the usual sausage. The burrata risotto gets its green color not from spinach but from a fresh-herb pesto. The scallop tartare has kiwi, ponzu, orange, and cashew. The tomato carpaccio has a honey sauce with calamansi.

The plating is done so the ingredients don't compete with each other but create the sense of a delicate, fragrant composition. Caramelized cod is rounded out with sautéed spinach and zucchini flowers. Burrata shows up in the vegetable tartare, the gazpacho cools from the first sip, and the shrimp pil-pil provides the sweet-and-spicy accent.

Toward evening, as the heat subsides, the menu offers new options: tabbouleh salad with lamb kebab, calamarata pasta with mushrooms, and aligot potatoes made with three cheeses at once — Gruyère, suluguni, and parmesan, plus black truffle. All of it is built not on abundance but on nuance, just like the cocktails. GRACE Bistro this season isn't just about flavor — it's about a feeling, when food, drinks, and the evening become one.