It’s no secret that foam is among the most popular drink garnishes of today. From cloud-topped coffees and side-pulled beer pours to frozen cocktails with dollops of salted mascarpone, frothy drinks are popping up in just about every corner of the beverage sector. Bartenders, baristas, and consumers alike just can’t get enough of the thick, creamy topping — whether it be for the trend’s undeniable visual appeal or the unique textural experience that the first sip delivers.
As these towering garnishes reach new heights and populate more menus, bartenders are tasked with finding innovative ways to put their own spin on the technique. Izzy Stein, beverage and creative director at Papi in Portland, Maine, felt compelled to take the aerated trend in her own direction. The result is the Mami Chula, a tall, bright orange cocktail flecked with passion fruit seeds and vanilla bean, topped, of course, with a stunning cupcake-icing-like swirl of Cava custard foam.
When designing the Mami Chula, Stein started with the concept of the foam before finding the right drink for it to sit atop. She first crafted the creamy Cava-custard mixture while trying to develop a crème brûlée-inspired Pisco Sour. Instead, she eventually landed on a Pornstar Martini-esque drink. “It was a little bit of a scavenger hunt, starting from a small concept and then just building around that,” she says.
To make the foam, Stein begins by reducing a few bottles of Cava (usually Martínez) by roughly 40 percent to thicken its texture and concentrate its flavor. The sparkling wine from Spain is known for its crisp minerality and citrus notes, adding a distinct flavor to the foam. Stein combines the Cava reduction with a common custard base — egg yolk, cream, and vanilla — and loads it all into an iSi canister, the tool typically employed in professional bars and kitchens that fluffs up liquids into an airy, soft-peaked consistency. According to Stein, reducing the Cava by nearly half enhances its bitter and acidic elements, giving the otherwise dessert-like custard foam a piquant edge.
“Honesty, I just love crème brûlée and fruit custards in general, so cream and fat is like a match made in heaven with the vibrance and acidity of something like passion fruit,” she says. “As for the sparkling wine, I prefer Cava because I find it to be a little brighter and that it complements the drink’s tropical fruit flavors.”
For the build, Stein brings together a rum base with lime juice and a flurry of passion fruit flavors. The team infuses the rum with a house made bourbon and vanilla bean paste to evoke the profile of a classic Pornstar Martini, typically made with vanilla-flavored vodka and simple syrup. Another key component of a traditional Pornstar Martini is the passion fruit, and here Stein cranks up the passion fruit flavor using passion fruit liqueur, syrup, and pulp. The rum and passion fruit components are quickly shaken with lime juice and poured into a mini-milkshake glass over ice. The lofty spiral of Cava custard foam is the final piece of the puzzle and similarly plays into the Pornstar Martini theme, reimagining the drink’s playful sparkling wine sidecar as an airy foam topping.
Before landing on its current presentation, the drink went through a few iterations. Stein thinks the previous version — where she leaned into her initial crème brûlée idea and caramelized the outer edge of the custard foam with a torch and served the drink in a larger, taller glass — was almost too over-the-top and might have steered customers away. While the drink gained some steam with that presentation, she says it became one of Papi’s best-sellers in its newest get-up.
“Ever since we changed the presentation to a milkshake glass and with two Papi-branded straws, it’s gotten more popular,” she says. “Now, it’s a little cuter, a bit less flashy, a more modest presentation of itself.”
Its visual appeal aside, one of Stein’s favorite aspects of the Mami Chula is its play on competing textures and flavors. With its high fat content, the Cava custard holds its shape and resists mixing into the actual liquid. All the while, the rich and creamy notes of the custard complement the otherwise tart, fruity flavor of the drink. As Stein puts it, the Mami Chula is an “interactive” cocktail: Customers can mix in a certain amount of the velvety foam until the drink reaches their desired level of sweetness.
“It’s a drink that fits both ends of the spectrum,” she says. “I didn’t just want to garnish it with foam for the sake of having a foam. I wanted to create this sort of duality and balance.”
