Stop 5: Sugar Monk

Awash in jazz clubs and speakeasies throughout the Roaring ’20s, Harlem had a sizable head start on the craft cocktail movement. But Sugar Monk takes the experience to the next level, sourcing many ingredients (from tinctures and bitters to liqueurs and amaros) from sister concept, Atheras Spirits, a micro-distillery across the East River in Brooklyn. It also collaborates with a forager and ethnobotanist when creating its ever-changing menus, including the recent Orion edition. Divided into five “chapters” with each featuring four cocktails, the presentation is whimsical and almost twee, but the execution and craft are decidedly nuanced and geared for mature palates.

For example, the Four Horseman layers in three varieties of amaro and a cardamom liqueur (all from Atheras), plus lemon, patchouli and aquafaba. It’s presented with a lit rosemary sprig to infuse a bit of smoke and pull out the deeper, earthy notes of the patchouli. In the nonalc chapter of the Orion menu, the Negroni Sbagliato goes even deeper into the wild ingredient space, combining a hemp-based spirit with zero-proof sweet vermouth, grape, bitter orange, allspice, juniper, wormwood and tonic.