Eat your drink! FEMAIL visits the world’s first alcoholic sweet shop in London (where five of the jellies are as potent as just one glass of wine)
Daily Mail
By Suzanne Baum For Mailonline
November 19, 2015
Two friends have opened a grown-up sweet shop in London’s Carnaby street selling cocktail-infused candy floss, alcoholic dip dabs and boozy fruit pastilles.
The Eat Your Drink pop-up is the work of Smith & Sinclair – chef Emile Bernard and ex-PR Melanie Goldsmith – whose gin jelly sweets are already stocked in the likes of Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges.
The pair claim the shop is the first of its kind in the world. But will a Pina Colada sherbet really hit the spot like the real thing? Suzanne Baum gives it a go for FEMAIL…
The sweet smell of success is evident as I enter Benefit’s Carnaby Street shop and take the stairs down to the basement where Eat Your Drink has set up home.
For not only are the brains behind this new confectionary business onto a good thing but the smell in the air is wonderful – thanks to the scent-sational work of a lady who goes by the name of Odette Toilette.
She is in charge of fragrancing the shop having made her name in creating amazing Scratch and Sniff events.
The smell and stunning window dressing of the shop leave me in awe – and that’s before I’ve even sat down to try one of the alcoholic sweets.
The owners are trying to create a ‘multi-sensory experience’ for customers; even in my sober state they’ve won me over!
Being a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, I never allow myself to drink during the daytime and certainly not when I’m on a reporting job.
But in the name of work, of course, a little drop of alcohol at 10am was hardly going to affect me (or so I hoped!)
Looking around at the candy floss, dip dabs and fruit pastilles, I was as excited as a kid in a sweet shop and then remembered I was actually in one – albeit an ‘adult-only’ version.
For these sweets are infused with alcohol and, if you are like me, smitten after one bite – you won’t want the responsibility of any kids near you!
As part of the ‘experience’ customers are encouraged to smell, eat, lick and breathe the products – it sounds kind of sexual but in fact by doing so it gets the taste-buds buzzing.
Biting into the gin jelly sweet – that looks like a fruit pastille – I was won over by its pure sweetness and after two mouthfuls the slight warmth of the alcohol hit the back of my throat and it was simply divine.
A box of six of these is the equivalent of one glass of wine so whilst I was tempted to eat the lot, whilst it was still functioning correctly, my brain was telling me to try the dip dab.
I often use Dip Dab lollies (the non-alcoholic ones) to bribe my children to behave themselves but this one tasted like a pineapple lolly coated in sherbet – that was before I dipped it into the Pina Colada gel.
The flavours were incredible and mouth-watering, so much so that I couldn’t stop grinning; by then I was not sure if it was from the pleasure of the sweet or the fact that I was slightly tipsy, either way it was delicious.
The range also includes sugar-coated cocktail garnishes, infused perfumes that create a wonderful scent either worn as a perfume or used as a room fragrance and do-it-yourself candy floss.
This involves pouring your chosen spirit over the sweet to infuse it with alcohol… although tempted, I was slightly conscious that the notes I was making already resembled scribbles so I happily agreed to take the jar home instead (and to hide it from my kids!)
The Eat Your Drink sweet shop is the work of Smith & Sinclair, a joint business venture between ex-chef Emile Bernard and ex-PR Melanie Goldsmith.
Smith and Sinclair already have a successful online business and their boozy pastilles are stocked in the likes of Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges.
The couple were desperate to open their own grown up sweet shop- and now after a successful crowd funder campaign that dream has become a reality.
If I were you, I’d visit the shop as quickly as possible as it is bound to be a huge success. You snooze, you lose, so hurry up and eat the booze… before it’s too late!
Eat Your Drink is open until Christmas Eve.