The Best Bar in North America Wants You to Drink Your Sticky Rice

Mango sticky rice has had a moment. This Southeast Asian dessert, made from naturally sweet, glutinous (not to be confused with gluten) rice, even more naturally sweet ripe mangoes, brown sugar, and full-fat coconut milk has been all over the internet—and the world—lately. 

Known as khao niaow ma muang in its native Thailand, mango sticky rice  has always been a popular treat there. And with Thai food now among the U.S.’s favorite cuisines, with more than 10,000 restaurants from coast to coast, the dessert has risen in profile along with beloved dishes like pad thai and drunken noodles (pad kee mao). 

But its prominence reached an incredible peak April 2022 at Coachella, going viral as it shared a stage with Thai teen rapper Milli, who unapologetically refueled on stage with the dessert during the last bars of her set. Online searches jumped 20 times practically overnight, per Google Trends, and the web has since become flooded with recipes and ways to order it, with no signs of dying down.

Which brings us to a present day, and a brand-new way to enjoy this now iconic dessert. Because the absolute best bar in North America and the #6 best bar in the entire world, Double Chicken Please (DCP), thinks you should drink your mango sticky rice. 

We wouldn’t have expected anything less from a venue owned by a showman like GN Chan, a trained industrial designer and former street magician, and Faye Chen, who helped renowned bartender Shingo Gokan open Shanghai’s lauded Speak Low. And since its inception in 2020, New York City’s DCP has already made a name for itself for comfort food-inspired cocktails that put mind-bending spins on food. 

For example, “In the initial phases of the business launch two and a half years ago, the Japanese Cold Noodle cocktail held the title of ‘most ordered cocktail,’ and as of today, the Key Lime Pie has likely claimed the position of the most ordered cocktail option,” Chan says. Other items that have gotten a lot of attention at DCP include the Cold Pizza cocktail and NY Beet Salad drink (along with exciting real fried chicken sandwiches, natch).

So Why Mango Sticky Rice, and How? 

To start, Chan says, DCP employs “hacking design” techniques borrowed from industrial design, breaking down the flavor into liquid form. “This approach [is] the concept for developing and crafting all of the cocktails at The Coop,” the bar’s back-room, multi-course craft cocktail experience.

Chan describes two approaches to bringing food experience to cocktail reality: “flavor reflection,” deconstructing the flavors from a dish, comprehending the individual components, and subsequently rebuilding them in liquid form to craft a cocktail that captures the essence of the original culinary experience; and “flavor inspiration,” which hinges on the influence a certain flavor wields over sensory perceptions. “A particular flavor or taste sparks a surge of creative inspiration,” Chan says. “This surge then serves as the driving force behind developing a cocktail that encapsulates the essence of that flavor.”

Mango Sticky Rice falls under the flavor inspiration approach, Chan says. R. “I’ve seen mango sticky rice as a dessert served [in] many places in Taiwan”—where he and Chen both hail from—but his first true taste of its authentic flavor was during a work trip to Bangkok. “The combination of coconut milk’s richness with the mango and sticky rice caught me by surprise,” he says. “The delicate and sweet profile of the sticky rice coupled with the tropical essence of creamy coconut milk and the zing of fresh fruit had a very satisfying toothsome texture.

“It was at that moment the inspiration struck–to translate this dish into a cocktail, utilizing rum as the base spirit.” he says. 

The result: another mind-bending hit, made with a precise balance of aged rum, mango, sticky rice, pu’er tea, wakame, cold brew coffee, and coconut syrup. And with that, it joins an elite collection designed to “evoke a sense of shared nostalgia among our guests,” as Tako Chang, the brand’s manager of brand marketing and communications says. “Among the [menu] options, there is likely one dish you’ve encountered elsewhere at some juncture in your life. Our intention is to create an immersive experience that enables guests to connect with familiar flavors and relish in the sentiment of nostalgia together.”

And we don’t need to be at Coachella to cheers to that.