A breakdown of BarChef’s Abstract Ice, a cocktail you eat with a spoon

Since 2009, Frankie Solarik of Queen West’s BarChef has been rattling the cocktail scene with hyper-modernist elixirs, like the $45 hickory-smoked Manhattan (served still smoking) and the daiquiri in a coconut shell finished with edible flowers and toasted-coconut snow. His newest creation blurs the line between food and drink—it’s fully consumed with a spoon. “I didn’t want to call it a chilled soup, but that’s pretty much what it is,” says Solarik, who prefers to hire cooks over bartenders to make his crazily complex cocktails. Here’s how he makes the Abstract Ice.