Fancypants takes its unseriousness very seriously. The Nashville restaurant, dreamed up by the team behind Butcher & Bee, underscores its unfussy fine-dining space with a mantra: “No dress code. Please wear pants.” Imaginative dishes populate a prix fixe tasting menu that might include fermented tea leaf caesar salad sprinkled with spiced peanuts and crispy shallots and garlic; spicy and saucy pork ribs with chili crunch; and smoked scallop crudo on a bed of icy habanada peppers and sungold tomatoes. The drinks, cheekily named after different kinds of pants, also walk the tightrope of fancy-but-approachable.
“With cocktails, we always aim for something that feels both familiar and unexpected,” says David Norris, the “Curator of Exciting Liquids” (read: beverage director) at Butcher & Bee and Fancypants.
The Tuxedo Pants, for example, elevates the classic dirty martini with a whipped feta olive, cocktail onion, and herbal dill tincture. In the Overalls, an old-fashioned gets a remix with tamari syrup, toasted black sesame, and a splash of orange and angostura bitters. And the Boot Cut, a bracing whiskey cocktail whose recipe is shared below, adopts elements from Norris’s favorite drinks, including a sherry cobbler, a Kentucky mule, and a bramble. “Each of those drinks has its own star ingredient, but I wanted to merge them into one heavy-hitting cocktail with a big personality. It’s become a mainstay on our menu,” he says.
During its summer debut, strawberries starred in the recipe, but for the fall, the bar swapped in blackberries and will warm it up with a touch of cinnamon in colder months. “It’s an approachable yet bold take on a sometimes-overlooked whiskey cocktail category,” Norris says.
