We made you a – hic! – drink!

Celebrate LURU Issue #3: “The Games We Play” — for a whole month. Come on, ya!

In our latest print issue, join us on a rollercoaster ride through Bengaluru stories that put the games we play under the microscope. We make stopovers to unpack notions of power, relationships, identity, love, courage, and curiosity. In these pages, genre-blurring brilliance takes us to a dog competition in Solapur, sneaks backstage with drag kings, hangs out with medical clowns, contemplates the cricket pitch, eavesdrops on videogamers remembering the naughties, and so much more. (We can’t spill all of its secrets.)

This time around, we’ve got a bonus treat. We had SOKA — No. 28 on Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2025 — make a special cocktail for you. Here’s a sneak peek behind the process.

Perfect playmates

Fixing playdates is difficult work. You’ve got to do some homework before it goes well, and it isn’t always assured fun in the end. But we at LURU like to dive into the deep end and find our way to welcoming shores. What could go wrong, eh? A Bengaluru-based independent print magazine that’s simultaneously a love letter to the city and the thinking citizen’s guide to it, and SOKA, a cocktail bar that infuses its drinks with deeply personal stories and ingredients from Bengaluru — it could work, right?

Helmed by chef Sombir Choudhary (SO) and mixologist Avinash Kapoli (KA), this Indiranagar cocktail bar has earned its tags in the city’s drinking scene in just two years. While Avinash has mastered technique, it’s the origins of the cocktails that intrigue. “With SOKA, we wanted to create a bartender’s bar with good cocktails in a cosy space, not just [a place] for drinking and raging,” he

clarifies politely . After his gang of six went hopping to the bars on the Best Bars list, they returned to “build a Bengaluru experience.” And they have come to do this with fun twists filtered through their own personal relationships with city legends. There’s an in-house take on a city classic — a rum and coke called Black Cadillac — a callback to the infamous neon-pink nightclub on Residency Road; and a drink called Cheese Cherry Pineapple in honour of the strange but elegant snack that still haunts the menus of the city’s old clubhouses. But it’s their clever integration of local ingredients into the mix that’s got this 38-seater bar packed.

Familiar flavours from the city are shaken, stirred, clarified, blended, muddled, or layered into the craft cocktails at SOKA. The moreish, sweet, and creamy Yelakki banana appears in the Mysore High, tempered coconut oil slips into the Big Froot, and carbonated jasmine cordial fizzes through the I Blame Jasmine. With his glowing resume and deep love for the city, it was obvious that Avinash would rock and roll with the brief: cocktails must be easy and fuss-free but feel deeply Bengaluru.

The city, beautiful

For the starting point of the cocktail, Avinash travelled to his past in this city “to remember drinks from his childhood.” And he immediately remembered the “sweet, pulpy HOPCOMS grape juice still available in Cubbon Park.” He recalls that his father, “who worked at Ebony” in Barton Centre on MG Road, spent his days off work taking him to ride the toy train in Cubbon Park and then buying him a bottle of that grape juice. “My dad always added the detail that it was fresh juice,” he remembers fondly. This memory is precious to him — they would ride down to the juice stand “on my dad’s Bajaj Chetak, because you could only drink it there — you couldn’t take the bottle home, it had to be returned to the stall-anna.” This became their little father-son ritual.

“Why shouldn’t we come up with a drink using this grape juice?” He answered his own question with the Cubbon Park Swizzle. Of course, Avinash “hasn’t literally” taken the grape juice; instead, SOKA made a carbonated cordial with this fruit juice, punched up with more juice from tart, purple jamuns. This concoction has been transformed into “a Bengaluru-style mojito,” with gin bringing the boozy vibe and served up in a glass packed with chipped ice. We’re immediately struck by the jewel tone of the drink — periwinkle purple — and the tuft of deep-green mint leaves. We thrash around our swizzle stick, sip, and head back for another hit. It’s a delicious explosion of flavours — fruity, herbal, tart, and refreshing. A little spot of summer in this biting chill. We’re already ordering our second while sipping on our first.

Meet us at SOKA soon!

The details: The Cubbon Park Swizzle will be available for the whole month of December at SOKA, 210, A Cross, 1st Main Road, Second Stage, Indiranagar. Call 93530 45053 for reservations. You can also pick up LURU Issue #3: “The Games We Play” at the bar, along with special-edition coasters and postcards.