Carbonating Cocktails with Wildwood's Ryan Csanky

Welcome back to Chef in the Kitchen, a recurring Eater photo feature where we boldly go where few diners have gone before — into Portland restaurant kitchens — to get a sneak peek of the chef du jour hard at work.

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Photography by Dina Avila

In this edition, Eater's trading in a "Chef in the Kitchen" for a "Bartender... Behind the Bar" (for your Oscar-hangover-nursing pleasure, of course). According to people in the know, carbonated cocktails are a thing for 2012 — and at NW's Wildwood restaurant, bar manager Ryan Csanky shakes things up by infusing carbonation into otherwise classic cocktails, adding a modern touch to traditional drinks.

For the carbonated version of the Monkey Gland (which Csanky makes seasonally, depending on the availability of pomegranates for a house-made grenadine), Csanky mixes up a 32-ounce batch (15 ounces each of Beefeater gin and fresh-squeezed satsuma mandarin orange juice, one ounce each of grenadine and Pacifique absinthe). The mixture is chilled before carbonation, a mechanical process that takes about an hour. When finally pouring the cocktail behind the bar, Csanky fills each glass with 2/3s of the Monkey mix and 1/3 soda, to cut the boozy effect.
· Wildwood [Official site]
· All Previous Chefs in the Kitchen [Eater PDX]