Kitchen & Bar

On this phone

How to get around

The bar under the name is the map. Swipe it sideways if a destination sits off-screen. On Tonight, the button pinned to the bottom cooks the lead dish.

  1. Tonight — What you can cook first, plus drinks that fit the same shelf.

  2. This week — Five dinners from the shelf, urgent things cooked first.

  3. Shelf — Edit what you actually own.

  4. Written methods — Every dish and drink with a method somebody wrote out.

  5. The pantry — Start from one ingredient: what it does, and everything built on it.

  6. Out of it — What to use instead, judged by the job the missing thing was doing.

  7. Photo review — Review a demo shelf photo and confirm every item before adding it.

  8. Flavor Lab — Pairings with a track record: classic matches and the mixology behind them.

  9. Wild cards — Combinations with no tradition behind them, only shared aroma notes.

  10. Send to Occasion OS — Prepare confirmed shelf availability for Occasion OS.

  11. The field — The gap this layer owns.

Keep it on the home screen

  1. iPhone — tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
  2. Android — open the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.

After that it opens as Kitchen & Bar, not a browser tab. Inventory stays on this device.

Substitutions · 3 dishes here use it

Out of cola

Sweet, acidic and caramel-heavy, which is enough structure to carry a spirit on its own. It is also the flattest-going mixer here; ice first, cola last.

Everything below is judged against that job. A swap that covers it is a swap; one that only looks similar is not.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

another dark soda — root beer, dr pepper style

one for one

What it gets you
Sweet, spiced, acidic bubbles doing the same job in a highball or a braise.
What it costs you
The specific citrus-and-vanilla profile, and root beer is much more anise-forward.

Instead · 2

soda water plus a bar spoon of demerara syrup and two dashes of bitters

half an ounce of syrup per five ounces of soda

What it gets you
Sweetness, spice and carbonation in roughly the right shape, with far less sugar.
What it costs you
The color and the caramel, and nobody will mistake it for cola.

What none of them do

In a braise, cola is doing three things at once — sugar for glaze, acid for tenderizing, caramel for color. Diet cola does one of them, so a ham glazed with it comes out pale and thin.

Where the swap will be tasted · 3

These need it and are short enough that nothing hides: 4 required ingredients or fewer, which makes cola a quarter of what is in the pan. Make the swap a decision rather than a repair.

Check what else is in the pan

The company cola keeps in this library, counted off required ingredients. A swap that argues with the top two is the wrong swap, whatever a chart says.

What to make with colaRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions