Imagine this: You’re indulging in a platter of succulent raw bar items — slurping back oysters, delicately picking up mussels dotted with green curry, and forking through a whole conch, hunting for bits of chewy scungilli — and just when you’re almost done, your server comes over with a chilled shot of gin. This isn’t just a frivolous gift, though; it comes with a set of instructions: Pour the shot into the shell, mix thoroughly with the brine, and drink straight from the opening of the conch, making an oceanic version of an ice luge shooter.
This is the routine at buzzy West Village restaurant Wild Cherry. As the venue is hidden behind the historic Cherry Lane theater, it only makes sense that the beverage program features some deliberate theatrics — including an $86 Scorpion Bowl adorned with fresh flowers and crazy straws. But the dramatic presentations are no gimmick here.
“The idea for this came about in our first weeks of opening,” says head bartender Karlos Hernandez. “We always knew we wanted to add a little shooter to our seafood tower for friends and family, we just didn’t quite know exactly what it would look like, so the idea really clicked for us after a few nights of selling our scungilli dish.”
The scungilli is one of the many raw bar offerings at Wild Cherry, though maybe less compelling to the average guest when compared to the more approachable tuna crudo or diver scallop.
“Part of the charm at Wild Cherry is we happily encourage guests to build their own raw bar tower from the menu,” Hernandez says. “Of course I always mention the scungilli, whelks sourced out of Montauk. It may take some convincing, but when it gets to the table, it’s always a hit — from presentation to taste, guests suddenly forget you used the words ‘sea snail’ to describe it.”
To prepare the scungilli dish, the meat is braised in a court bouillon broth, which is often used to poach fish in French cuisine. It is then thinly sliced, combined with crunchy celery and red onion, and served chilled in a spiraling conch shell, soaking in a generous pool of court bouillon.
“This broth, in its braising process, absorbs an incredible amount of the whelk flavor, and we found that many guests were leaving this little bit of liquid gold behind in the shell after clearing the dish, something that pained us all to witness,” Hernandez says. “Needless to say, that’s where the idea [to add a shot] came in.”
When thinking about the ideal spirit pairing for this briny, seafood-infused broth, Hernandez first reached for mezcal. “I had been served mezcal shooters with leche de tigre from ceviche in Oaxaca before, so naturally it made sense in my head,” he says. But the flavors of the conch didn’t meld as cohesively with the smoky, vegetal mezcal notes as he wanted.
Next, Hernandez reached for gin. He combines an oyster tincture and house-made celery brine for Wild Cherry’s house Dirty Martini, so tapping into this flavor combination seemed logical for the scungilli. In this case, he didn’t go for a classic London Dry style, but rather Spain’s Xoriguer Mahón gin. Coming from the island of Menorca, this spirit is distilled from Parellada and Xarel-lo grapes and infused with juniper aged for about two years in open crates influenced by the salty ocean air.
“I first learned of Mahón during my time at Frenchette where it was the choice gin of our wine director Jorge Riera, and I got really into it at the time,” Hernandez says. “In my head, I knew that if stirred with a touch of Maldon salt, the oils and bitter botanicals in the gin would complement the court bouillon’s earthy and sweet whelk flavor, and so we gave it a go. The natural ocean salinity of the dish paired very well with the Mahón, a complimentary flavor but also a perfect texture and weight to mix with the court bouillon.”
The last element that Hernandez had to nail down was the timing. When a guest orders the scungilli, the server or bartender makes sure to keep an eye on the shell to present the shot at the perfect moment.
“Too early and we run the risk of pouring the shot over whelks (gross), too late and the court bouillon broth is gone or poured out onto a plate as guests try to fish out the last bit,” Hernandez says. “We catch it at the right time and instruct guests to pour the chilled shot in the shell, mix well, and drink straight from the opening of the conch, a natural spout. More often than not, they go for it and are pleasantly surprised, sometimes wiping some brine off their chin as they pass the conch to the person next to them.”
Though the team started giving these shots as a cheeky gift to friends of the restaurant, Hernandez says that guests were quick to catch on and now it’s considered part of the dish. “Some thought it was a joke, but most were eager to try it,” he says. “It’s their reward for being adventurous and eating snails.”
