COULD A HIGH-VOLUME restaurant in the suburbs have one of the best bar programs in the Philly area? With Farm & Fisherman bar manager Danny Childs’ approach to beverages, the answer is a resounding yes.
Over the last five years, this barman with an ethnobotanical research background went beyond the usual local beers, natural wine and creative cocktails. Childs ferments syrups and vinegar for shrubs and mixers. He even brews kombucha in house. He also crafts his own bitter herbal liqueurs (amaro), preserves fresh ingredients and forages for edible garnishes.
“Our drinks tell the story of this region,” Childs says. He uses local sassafras to make old-fashioned root beer, ramps for cocktail onions, paw paws in a popular pisco sour and cranberries from abandoned Pine Barrens bogs in a gin drink made with homemade pine, juniper, cedar and birch bark amaro. His cocktail cherries? A local family lets him pick them from their tree.
This bar isn’t just about booze: “We have [housemade] sodas, a seasonal shrub soda, a kombucha or two and a non-alcoholic cocktail,” Childs says. His most popular zero-proof drink riffs on the scotch-based Penicillin cocktail, but instead employs a Chinese smoked black tea to create a complex drink.
The menu changes frequently based on what’s available, including elderflower, hardy oranges, honeysuckle, crab apples and staghorn sumac berries from a garden behind the restaurant. “I love to tell people what our region offers by giving them something really delicious,” Childs says.
THE FARM AND FISHERMAN TAVERN
1442 Marlton Pike E., Cherry Hill, NJ
and 575 Horsham Rd., Horsham, PA
fandftavern.com
