He also talks about his Nanjangud Banana Panaka, which is built around the Nanjangud banana – GI-tagged, grown in Mysuru district, and genuinely unlike any other banana in the world. There is a butteriness to it, almost floral, and as Abhishek says, “when you work with it you realise it doesn’t need much done to it.” Paired with jaggery (not sugar, never sugar – because jaggery, as he puts it, lets you taste where it came from), dry ginger, black pepper, coconut milk, and rum, the drink becomes something close to a liquid map of Karnataka. “Nothing in this drink had to be imported or explained,” Abhishek says plainly. And that, in a single sentence, is the entire argument for hyperlocal mixology.
