Once a year, Vilnius turns pink. The Pink Soup Fest -- a celebration of šaltibarščiai, the cold beetroot soup Lithuania drinks all summer -- fills the Old Town with one improbable colour. We are a cocktail bar, not a kitchen. So we did the only sensible thing and put the soup in a glass.
The soup, first
Šaltibarščiai is cold beetroot soup made with kefir, beets, cucumber, dill, and a boiled egg on the side. It is bright magenta, sour, and served cold -- the Lithuanian answer to a heatwave. Every June, Vilnius throws the Pink Soup Festival in its honour and half the city eats it for lunch. We poured three drinks for the weekend, all of them pink, all of them built on Lithuanian beetroot and rose.
Šaltibarščių Šotas // Pink Shot
Cold soup, one swallow. Kefir and Lithuanian beetroot liqueur, shaken cold and poured short. It tastes like šaltibarščiai and drinks like a shot -- sour, savoury, faintly sweet, the same magenta as the soup it borrows from. The most literal translation on the list.
Burokėlių Sour // Beetroot Sour
Earthy, tart, deep red. Lithuanian beetroot liqueur with lemon and egg white, shaken to a foam. The beetroot gives it body and a colour somewhere between wine and soup; the lemon keeps it sharp. A sour for people who are sure they do not like beetroot.
Rožių Spritz // Rose & Raspberry Spritz
Lighter, floral, summer in pink. Raspberry purée and Lithuanian rose liqueur, lengthened long and cold. This is the one for the terrace -- fruit-forward, gentle, the pink that comes from roses and raspberries rather than roots. Less soup, more garden.
Why pink, and why here
None of this is permanent. The festival drinks come and go with the season. But they fit what we do the rest of the year -- Lithuanian ingredients, cocktail names you have to sound out, English only to explain the glass. Beetroot, kefir, and rose are not exotic here. They are what is in the fridge and the forest.
If you missed the Pink Soup Fest, the beetroot and rose stay on hand -- ask at the bar. And if you are looking for a cocktail bar in Vilnius Old Town that drinks like the place it is from, Stiklių g. 4 is the address.