Philly’s cocktails and coffee drinks are going bananas

Bananas are both tropical and ubiquitous — an ingredient that couldn’t be less local to our region, but found in every grocery store. They’re mundane yet polarizing, especially when ripened and rendered into syrup. They’re summery, due to their cultivation in hot climates, and soul-warming.

The fruit has long been taken for granted, until now. Its popularity is suddenly booming: It’s a featured ingredient in protein bars, gummy bears, coffee creamer, lip balms, and body washes. Even Wendy’s launched a Minions-themed Banana Frosty Swirl last month.

But bananas’ recent prevalence in Philadelphia’s bars and cafes has little to do with the little yellow cartoon characters. Banana beverages have been a long time coming, hot on the heels of other wildly popular, vibrantly colored, Asian-inflected flavors like matcha and ube.

(Unlike matcha and ube, we’re probably not going to see a shortage of banana. But you never know. The bananas we buy at most grocery stores are of the Cavendish variety, but artificial banana flavoring was engineered with the Gros Michel variety in mind. And sometime in the 1950s, after a devastating fungal blight or “bananapocalpyse” called Panama disease, Gros Michel bananas mostly disappeared.)

“Little treat” cafes are utterly enamored with the banana, as evidenced by banana milk, a classic Korean beverage that has made it onto several cafe menus lately. The cafe crush doesn’t stop there: At the just-opened Sweet Mousse on South Street in Graduate Hospital, you can get a tiny trompe l’œil banana mousse cake ($6) with a dark chocolate center.

But bananas are not the easiest ingredient to work with.

At Seaforest Bakeshop, also in Grad Hospital, cafe manager Mackenzie Quick makes banana milk from scratch, blending oat milk, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and bananas. It’s layered into the cafe’s best-selling beverage: their iced banana milk matcha. And it can only be served iced. “It’s not good at all hot. When you steam it, it turns into porridge,” said Quick.

The banana trend is national, with publications on either coast reporting on Americans’ newfound obsession with the fruit. But what’s particularly unusual about it is that it straddles both the cafe and cocktail realms of beverage, when normally, these spheres do not intersect.

Bartenders are reaching for all types of banana liquor, including Giffard’s Banane du Brésil, which goes into the banana cocktails at Friday Saturday Sunday and Sao, and Crème de Banane from Tempus Fugit Spirits, which is shaken into the banana Negroni ($13) at Cormorant Corner Bar and a banana-y Old Fashioned riff called the Triple Header ($16) at Bar ILU.

Philly cocktail bars are also coming up with unique ways to use the banana in its entirety, including its peel.

“We take the leftover peels after infusing bananas into dark rum and cut them down into half-inch slices,” said Josh Grejdus, the beverage manager at Bluebird Distilling. “Then we use equal parts by weight of sugar and macerate the skins. Let it sit overnight and then strain it” to create a banana oleo-saccharum (or aromatic syrup). A similar elixir is made at both Static! and Next of Kin, said co-owner Kyle Darrow, where brûléed banana goes into liquors like rum and scotch.

Libertee Grounds, the bar with indoor mini golf in Fairmount, takes an approach akin to Seaforest Bakeshop’s. “I make a banana puree, then incorporate it into a simple syrup using a mixture of sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla to lean into the banana bread feel,” said beverage manager Ellie Bley. “I batch this about once a week or more depending on demand.”

And demand for bananas sees no signs of waning.

Forin makes a banana milk that consists of a simple syrup base with a banana emulsion and vanilla paste, which you can add to coffee and matcha drinks. Most popularly, it’s combined with ube and matcha.

Forin Cafe, multiple locations, forincafe.com

Seaforest’s iced banana milk matcha uses Junbi matcha with their house-made banana-oat-maple syrup milk. The matcha is vigorously whisked for a drink that is creamy, fresh, grassy, and thick. It’s lightly sweet and has the texture of a loose smoothie.

Seaforest Bakeshop, 625 S. 16th St., seaforestbakeshop.com

This pink-tiled Chinatown cafe serves a banana latte ($7.75) made with strong Vietnamese phin-brewed coffee, poured over ice and layered with milk and foam spiked with DaVinci brand banana syrup.

Drip Vietnamese Cafe, 225 N. 11th St., 267-243-0270, instagram.com/dripvietcafe

Matcha Cafe Maiko in Chinatown is serving a banana pudding matcha latte, in which banana extract is mixed into whipped cream, the sweetness of which is balanced by a very robust matcha base. The whipped cream tastes like a cross between Runts and sunscreen (which some people love).

Matcha Cafe Maiko, 923 Race St., 267-861-0251, matchacafe-maiko.com

While Static’s bestselling banana cocktail is rotating off their menu soon, the process for making it continues at sister bar Next of Kin, where banana is brûléed, infused into liquor for a day, then strained. Next of Kin’s banana daiquiri, one of the cocktails that uses rum infused with banana, is also one of the bar’s top sellers.

Next of Kin, 1414 Frankford Ave., instagram.com/nextofkinphl

Bartender Eric Martinez created the extremely complex cocktail Saul’s Revenge ($20) for the Lovers Bar using six ingredients: Quinquina, a French bittersweet aperitif, a pineapple distillate akin to mezcal), the divisive and herbaceous Malört, coffee, and Giffard banana liqueur, which is made from overripe Brazilian bananas. The result is smoky, nuanced, and gets a bitter edge from the Malört.

Friday Saturday Sunday, 261 S. 21st St., 215-546-4232, fridaysaturdaysunday.com

A fairly straightforward Negroni (with gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth) is transformed with a slug of Crème de Banane liqueur. Crème de Banane lends a silky viscosity to the classic cocktail and balances out its herbal notes.

Cormorant Corner Bar, 2301 Frankford Ave., 215-575-5112, cormorantphl.com

Take a break from mini golf to try Libertee Grounds’ clarified cocktail, the Drunken BBL ($14) which combines vanilla vodka with Borghetti espresso liqueur, Cynar, La Colombe cold brew, and a house-made banana milk that consists of banana puree mixed with wintry spices.

Libertee Grounds, 1600 W. Girard Ave., Ste. C5, 267-324-3487, liberteegrounds.com