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You may not have heard of Malik Acid, but if you’ve been to an art or fashion world party lately, then you’ve probably had one of their drinks. White Cube, Frieze, JW Anderson, Jamie xx, Miu Miu and Jacquemus have all commissioned the London-based duo to create cocktails in the past 12 months.
Known for their crisp, clean style, siblings Missy Flynn and Cameron Malik-Flynn have quickly become the go-to drinks consultants for creatives (many of whom are also regulars at Missy’s Soho neighbourhood restaurant Rita’s).
I meet the pair at a sneaker drop party at Nike’s London HQ in King’s Cross where they’re dishing up tequila highballs laced with tamarind, cherry and purple pops of shiso. “We have a lot of friends in art and fashion, and we wanted to find a way of speaking to those people about drinks without requiring them to be an expert,” says Cameron. “We thought: how do we be the drinks version of a fashion designer or a jewellery maker?”
For a Theaster Gates exhibition at White Cube, which mapped the artist’s love of Japanese craft and culture onto his Black American heritage, they were commissioned to create a list of cocktails fusing east and west. Drinks included a sparkling hojicha highball, and a sancho and raspberry Manhattan made with Yamazaki Japanese malt whisky. To finish was a hot Japanese-style buckwheat tea made with buckwheat sourced from Anson Mills in South Carolina, “a supplier specialising in heirloom grains, including many that arrived in America via slave routes”, explains Missy, who also has an MA in food anthropology from SOAS.
The company’s moniker comes from “Malik”, the pair’s Pakistani mother’s maiden name (it’s also a play on “malic acid”, the flavour compound that gives fruits including apples and grapes their tartness). And Missy and Cameron take particular pride in championing south Asian ingredients. To raise funds for World Central Kitchen, they created a mango season-themed listening bar in collaboration with bespoke sound system installers Friendly Pressure and fashion designer-turned ice-cream maker Calvin Holmes. Bar-goers sipped shocking-pink dragon-fruit Palomas topped with mango floats and turmeric-coloured lassis “and just talked about mangoes all day”, says Missy. “People came with their own mango-related stories and memories and rituals. We got a lot of people in the south Asian community thanking us for celebrating what some still feel is quite a hidden part of their food identity.”
Malik Acid’s south Asian twists on classics can also be found on the new cocktail menu at Rambutan, the Sri Lankan restaurant in Borough Market. “We love finding cross-cultural links between ingredients,” says Missy. “Tamarind, for example, will represent something different depending on whether you’re Sri Lankan, Mexican or a Brit who likes HP Sauce. We want to make drinks that are beautiful and delicious – but also make you feel a bit curious too.”
@alicelascelles