Cocktails and Street Food at Hawkers Five Points
The Five Points Hawkers location recently underwent a full remodel and expansion, adding additional seats and a full liquor bar to the popular Asian street food spot. With several fresh new signature cocktails on the menu, we decided to explore the best shareable street food dishes to go with them.
Pairing food and beverage, be it wine, beer or cocktails, typically adheres to two schools of thought: playing with contrast and finding complements. “Pairing cocktails with Asian street food can be really intimidating, because the flavors in the food are often so complex that it can be hard to decide whether you want to take the ‘opposites attract’ or ‘like minds’ approach,” says Hawkers CEO Kaleb Harrell. “Because we use a lot of unique Asian flavors on the culinary side, we like to take the contrast approach when suggesting paired cocktails.”
The following are recommendations from Kaleb and the team at Hawkers, highlighting their favorite street food and cocktail pairings.
PAD THAI WITH THAT'S MY BAG, BABY
Pad Thai is fiery noodle dish with a heavy dose of citrusy lime. As such it pairs nicely with this refreshingly light, mojito-inspired cocktail that combines rum, lime, mint and soda with lemongrass for a distinctly Asian twist. It comes served in a special zippered pouch like an adult juice box for extra points.
KOREAN TWICE FRIED WINGS WITH GIN RICKSHAW
Bubbles and fried chicken are a pairing made in heaven, especially when it’s got some kick to it. The Gin Rickshaw is a spritzy, refreshing gin drink with lime and cucumber topped off with sparkling wine. The cucumber cools the heat of the dish while the bubbles cut right through the density of the fried chicken. It goes great with the Seoul Hot Chicken Bao buns as well.
BEEF BULOGI STREET SKEWERS WITH TIKI, DO YOU LOVE ME
This pairing is a showcase of the balance between spicy and sweet. The over-the-top fruitiness of the tiki-driven cocktail demand a dish with deeply-infused flavor like the spicy-sweet bulgogi marinade on the Korean-style beef skewers. The cocktail brings a little heat of its own with its serrano pepper-infused agave tempered by pineapple-infused rum, shrub and peach nectar.
Now that you have some direction, go explore the menu and come up with some pairings of your own. Chances are you can’t go wrong and worst case scenario, you can always default to a simple Asian lager. Head to Hawkers Asian Street Fare at 1001 Park Avenue in Five Points.
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Let us know what cocktail and street food pairings you’re enjoying.
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