Spirit Free Cocktails ( or the ancient term – mocktails ) across the globe are singlehandedly famous for a clean and sober appearance. Afterall, they are stripped of their essence, Alcohol. In most cultures, alcohol is associated with adventures, fun and being free. After all, who doesn’t love alcohol at the end of the day? Turns out a lot of people!

Globally, the shift has been remarkable towards non-alc beverages and rightly so because fun can happen without a hangover. So when Burma Burma Restaurant who are an award winning Burmese cuisine restaurant in India, set out on a journey to create zero-proof cocktails, they set out on a challenge to create flavours that resemble the alcohol palette yet are spirit free with spices and herbs marching and ruling on the tongue.

The herbs and spices take you back to Burma and each drink feels like an invitation into the world of Burma which is so hidden away from the world. For the cocktail book, our research led to the Burmese protests against rules, norms and which gave rise to the punk rebel sub-culture through music. This sub-culture has been predominantly famous since 1970’s around the world too. Burma is aloof from the world but surely resembles the world in every way possible. A deeper look into the sub-culture, we realised that punk zines communicated raw thoughts, emotions and an act of freedom in a world where everything was structured and life felt like a rule book. Our imagination led us to create a zine lookalike menu that could come out of Burma during this rebellious period.

For a restaurant that breaks the norm for sharing burmese culture, punk zines became the inspiration for the cocktail book that spans across 8 cocktails accompanied by a small plates menu. Each cocktail page dives deeper into the flavour, spices and a guide into Burmese streets that allows chaos and freedom to enter. The pages are filled with posters that prohibit alcohol, call-out posters for cocktails, even a drinking game to play at the table with dice being called from the servers and a few pages shared behind the scenes of how each drink was crafted.