Liquid Meal

A 10,000-mile road trip with stops at some of the country's best cocktail bars provided Ozumo's bar manager, Joshua Haney, with liquid inspiration.

Now his drink menu features two of the downtown Japanese restaurant's unlikeliest--and most delicious--cocktails.

Inspired by some bars' penchant for bacon, Haney combines leftover Kobe beef fat from Ozumo's kitchen and Fuji apples in a syrup. He then chills the infusion and removes the solidified fat in a technique called "fat washing." The apples smack of beefiness and are used as a garnish in the Yawarakai, a bourbon-based booze drink whose name translates as "suave."

For the sweet and salty Jishin, or "earthquake," made with a bourbon base and finished with a salted almond rim, Haney turns to mushrooms. (His father is a longtime member of a mycological association.) Haney boils candy cap mushrooms to remove their toxins, then infuses them in a syrup. The treated fungi taste remarkably like maple syrup.

Not all of the drinks on Ozumo San Francisco's new bar menu are equally exotic. Consider the more conventional cocktails warm-ups for the idea of beef-flavored apples.

Ozumo San Francisco, 161 Steuart St.; 415-882-1333 or ozumo.com