Bruce Cost
Chef Bruce Cost’s zippy fresh ginger ales, served at Big Bowl and Wow Bow, are now being bottled! The restaurants continue to mix fresh ginger ales to order for in-house diners, but you can now buy bottles to take home.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for 20 years,” says Cost, who first developed the recipe for a California restaurant, and authored the cookbook “Ginger East to West: A Cook’s Tour with Recipes, Techniques and Lore”
Like the restaurant version, Fresh Ginger Ginger Ale by Bruce Cost starts with fresh ginger roots, cooked up with pure cane sugar. The chef believes this is the first bottled ginger ale not made from an extract.
“We peeled 2,400 pounds of ginger for the first batch,” Cost says.
Packaged in 12 ounce glass bottles, the bottled ginger ales contain no preservatives and are made in dated batches, like vintage wines. Cost expects to have his next batch out in January. The all-natural, unfiltered drinks come in three flavors: Original, Jasmine Green Tea and Pomegranate, and sell for $3 per bottle or $9 per four pack.
The ginger ales are sold at all locations of Big Bowl (Gold Coast, River North, Schaumburg and Lincolnshire) and Wow Bow (Magnificent Mile, Loop and River North), foodlife on the Mag Mile, and via home-delivery grocer Peapod. More retail outlets are in the works.
