Brock Shepherd knows a thing or two about cocktails. The owner of the Kensington restaurant Rice Bar (and formerly of Azul, Canteena Wine Lounge, and The Chelsea Room) has done cocktail consulting, which included coming up with the drink menu at Izakaya, and won a contest in 2005 for creating the ROM’s signature cocktail-the Pink Trillium.

At Rice Bar, Shepherd puts his creativity at work with Asian-influenced concoctions like the Boozy Float (prosecco, cherry sake, liquid nitrogen frozen yogurt) and Turks and Spice (shochu martini with saffron, cardamom, and orange, served with Turkish Delight).

On discovering soju (Asian vodka): “I was introduced to it years ago. After work, we would go for Korean food and I thought, what’s this strange sweet potato vodka? Then, in the past couple of years when I opened Rice Bar, I wanted to do something different because you can’t really define this restaurant. It’s its own style and I wanted the cocktails to go the same way. I found a really good rice-based shochu that I liked, so I wound up using that as a base for a lot of the cocktails. The concept worked really well because we wanted to stand out a little bit.”

On creating cocktails: “A lot of what I’ve been doing, even since my last restaurant and the bar I used to have, is infusing things. Like, why buy flavoured vodkas and liqueurs? They’re perfectly respectable for what they are, but I’d rather get orange flavour from orange zest than use Absolut Mandarin. I want pure flavours. I’m also influenced by the whole molecular gastronomy thing and I think it’s really interesting, so I use liquid nitrogen for our margaritas because, why not? I like to create things.”

On Toronto’s cocktail scene: “For cocktails, New York and London are two cities that are really progressive. Toronto’s going to follow what’s going on in New York and London to some degree, but I think it’ll be in a safer way. Toronto plays it easy. But it’s all about quality and bringing bartending back to where it started when you made everything. You weren’t buying bar mixes in powders, you made fresh juice and simple syrup! It’s not difficult, it’s just the way it used to be. I think the drink scene here will improve. But it takes dedicated people to put it in place and then to carry it through.”

On his favourite drink: “The Azul is soju that’s infused with star anise and lemon zest mixed with fresh apple ginger juice. It’s tart and it has a bit of spice from the ginger.”