Dawa
Our wedding cocktail from Hemmingways Hotel, Watamu, Kenya
Ingredients
1 tbsp Brown Sugar
60ml Vodka
Crushed ice
1 Lime, quartered
1 Dawa stick, twisted in Creamed Honey
Method
1 Put lime and sugar into a tumbler
Crush limes slightly, fill with crushed ice and pour in the vodka
At this point you twist a dawa stick into some honey and add the stick to the drink.
Muddle limes with dawa stick. The more you crush the limes into the mixture and stir the sweeter the taste
Notes
The dawa (medicine) cocktail, invented at the Carnivore restaurant in the Langata suburb of Nairobi, was inspired by the Brazilian caipirinha, a cocktail made with the cane-sugar spirit cachaça. Bartenders complained of morning-after headaches from the cachaça and started subbing in vodka. (Some Brazilians also prefer vodka with their muddled limes and sugar; the resulting drink is a caipivodka.) Carnivore’s bartenders began testing their new drink on guests; and one of them, who happened to be their landlord, was a fan. He asked for another, referring to it as his dawa (medicine). The name stuck and so did the cocktail, which is now found across Kenya.