Some drinks from the Summit

March 31

Bartenders attending the Grand Marnier and Navan Mixology Summit were picked based on numbers based grading system that wasn't totally explained to me in detail. But one thing was for certain, they wanted as many different recipes as possible using their products.

The bartenders submitted four recipes each and demonstrated two out of the four. From flipping through "The Big Book o' Cocktails," as I have dubbed it, and sitting in on a few of the labs to watch the bartenders do their stuff, it was fun to see how many different ways different bartenders managed to bring their preferences and styles to two ingredients.

As JC had told me the day before, the idea was to find ingredients that used "creativity and something unexpected" as I watched Sean Bigley (Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas), put his twist on a Negroni with the Grand Milano.

Grand Marnier, Campari, Fee Brothers Grapefruit bitters, freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and Plymouth Gin were shaken and poured into a cocktail glass, and garnished with an orange spiral.

Today Erik Hackinen from Seattle's Zig Zag Cafe made a La Roquette and La Nouvelle Vague. Erik described Zig Zag's cocktail menu as one that featured a lot of rye and whisky and the La Roquette channeled a bit of that by taking Rittenhouse Rye 100 Proof and stirring it with Grand Marnier, Peychaud Bitters, Regan's Orange bitters, Torani Amer and absinthe in a mixing glass. The drink was then strained, and garnished with a lemon twist.

Steven Kowalczuk, cocktail chef for Room at Twelve Centennial Park in Atlanta, Ga., enjoys using fresh vegetable as well as fruit juices in his cocktails. He created a Navan Carrot Cake using fresh carrot juice, Navan, cinnamon schnapps, Grand Marnier and ground cinnamon. Heavy whipping cream and sugar are shaken before hand to make thick. Then the liquid ingredients are shaken and poured into a martini glass. Cream is poured on top, and garnished with a bit of cinnamon. In today's case, a bit of graded carrot was used.

Some bartenders showed adaptability when they had a curve ball thrown at them. Ronaldo Colli (Americano Restaurant, San Francisco) didn't have fresh raspberries or creme fraiche on hand for his Sweet Tart demonstration. He went ahead and made it with strawberries and heavy whipping cream. After muddling the strawberries, lemon juice, agave nectar and a splash of water are added and shaken. The liquid is then strained into a tall glass filled with ice. Grand Marnier and heavy whipping cream were mixed in another glass, then poured into the cocktail.

When asked about using agave nectar, Ronaldo said it was something naturally sweet with the consistency of honey. Tad Carducci, part of the staff for the summit and consultant with Tippling Bros., chimed in that the nectar is a low glycemic index food that makes it a less processed, healthy addition to drinks.

Tad commented that he was seeing a lot of bartenders starting to use organic and or all-natural ingredients in cocktails. Whether it was by using certified organic spirits or ingredients, green or simply less-processed. He said, "It's shifting towards the attitude of wanting to put better things in our bodies."

Fat washing and you: Grand Marnier & Navan Mixology Summit edition

I take a lot of notes. A lot. When I talk to bartenders I sometimes like to glean info on techniques as well as recipes. Many times I tend to file it away in my on repository of cool things to keep in mind or it gets buried in an entry, and that's kind of unfair. So, in the spirit of freedom of information, I decided I'm going to try and do "...and you" blog entries that break out shop talk separately. And if possible, try to illustrate these with photos.

Luckily, the Mixology Summit has a seminar hosted by Steve Olson with his Wine Geek staff holding stations explaining different techniques and styles of bartending.

In this edition of "...and you" I grabbed a visual of fat washing, demonstrated by Mr. Don Lee himself, who with Phil Ward, was also explaining how to make bitters. I've mentioned fat washing plenty of times before, and not that it's hard to understand the process, but I really wanted to show a visual of how it looks. Also, I wanted an excuse to talk about the Buttered Popcorn Rum cocktail.

When I previously talked with Don, he had mentioned the bacon-infused bourbon and brought some to the seminar. And yes, it definitely has smoky bacon flavor. He also showcased his buttered popcorn rum.

The buttered popcorn rum starts with 10 Cane Rum. Air popped popcorn is added to the rum, then processed through mesh bags to get all the popcorn flavor, but none of the kernels. Then clarified butter is infused in the rum for four hours before being fat washed.

Don did a quick ice bath demonstration of fat washing to illustrate how easily the fat solidifies for extraction.



When Don makes his fat washed spirits, he makes five gallons at a time and uses a blast chiller, but for those of you who want to make smaller batches and fast, Don said he's previously used liquid nitrogen as well for quick demonstrations. As long as you can chill the spirit enough to solidify the fat, that's what matters.

Don also mentioned that another thing to keep in mind when fat washing is to not use a bottle or any container that tapers to a small opening. Try to use wide-mouthed containers that allow as much surface area contact between the spirit and the fat for maximum flavor transfer.

Don said that adding coke to the rum created a flavor experience that's like "going to the movies." Cocktails using the buttered popcorn rum and bacon bourbon are both currently on the menu at PDT.

Mixology Summit, seminar bonus!!

Making bitters, and you: (Don Lee, PDT)
"Patience...it really takes a long time. When you're making new drinks you can mix one up, taste it, and if you don't like it dump it out in 30 seconds. With bitters it takes months."

So instead of making large batches of bitters, Don suggested that if you want to play around with different flavored bitters, make small batches of tinctures, alcoholic extracts made by leaving herbs and herbal ingredients in alcohol. Don prefers neutral grain spirits, but you can experiment with other spirits, just remember the infusion time may differ depending on the spirit used. They don't require as much time as bitters and they provide single note flavors you can test before moving on to more complex bitters.

Booze and high altitudes

March 30

A low-frequency headache continued to thud in the back of my head. An 8 am flight from New York, a layover in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and a bumpy turbulence-happy plane ride later I found found myself in Vail, Colo. for The 2008 Mixology Summit sponsored by Grand Marnier and Navan. I wasn't incapacitated, but the altitude was affecting me in a slow nagging manner that was hard to ignore.

Headache, slight nausea and dry mouth. I already felt hungover even before a single drink had passed between my lips.

"Well, since I already feel like I've been through an all-night bender, I guess there's only one solution," I thought to myself. "I think I'm just going to drink until I conveniently forget how I feel."

And the Mixology Summit was the perfect place to do it. For three days, the Marriott-Vail Mountain Resort was overrun with mixologists who came from all over to demonstrate their drinks, ski, and drink. And you know you're going to be able to get a hold of something to drink with bartenders running around. The event provided a full bar with everything each participating bartender needed, from mescal and absinthe, to oranges and carrots. That didn't stop some people from bringing their own stash just to make sure they had everything they needed.

This year 300 bartenders and mixologists from around the country applied to be part of the summit. Participants were asked to submit four drinks using Grand Marnier or Navan as an ingredient. Out of the 300, 100 made it to Vail where their drinks are recorded for posterity's sake in video and/or photo form and their recipes bound in a large tome.

While the whole deal just sounds like a big excuse to get a bunch of bartenders together and hang out and drink at a picturesque ski resort, they are in fact working while they are here. It's legit. They fill out tax forms and everything.

"This isn't a contest," JC Iglesias, business director for Grand Marnier, told me as he busily fluttered around one suite where the lab was taking place.

I had walked into a consulting session where bartender Myong Park from the Drawing Room in Chicago was painstakingly demonstrating for the videographer how to make an orange peel garnish for one of his drinks.

The winners are actually working since they are consultants for Grand Marnier and Navan. They receive a consultant's fee, and though they have to pay out of their pocket for hotel and air, they can write it off on their taxes. The drinks are then used by Grand Marnier and Navan as part of their cocktail directory. This is useful for many reasons. For Grand Marnier and Navan, it's great to be able to show possible bar and restaurant clients how their products can be used, but also, JC explained that bars will sometimes contact them asking what cocktails can be made using such and such ingredients and the company can provide them with recipes or recipe possibilities using the database they've acquired through the summit.

The labs were a flutter of activity as bartenders were in and out, grabbing at bottles and asking for ingredients. The radio crackled through with requests for ingredients from other rooms and staff members zipped in and out.

Speaking of staff, the people helping with keeping the lab bars stocked and also mixing behind the bars for events included familiar faces such as Jim Meehan and Don Lee. I even got to finally put a face to Phil Ward who I'd only talked about or heard of like some mythic folk character.

The reception in the evening featured several cocktails from Mixology Summit alumni.

I got a chance to talk to Jacques Bezuidenhout who I'd only talked to on the phone previously for the interview I did with him when I was writing my NRN 50 story on cocktails as survivors.

I also got to meet Leo DeGroff again who pointed out we hadn't seen each other since when I visited PDT last year.

"But we talked on the phone, right?" I protested.

"No, no," he corrected me. "It wasn't even on the phone. It was email."

Oh, well, the important thing is we got to meet up. Right?

After several cocktails and generously poured champagne I witnessed people dancing to Skee-Lo. I wondered if that would be indicative of the rest of the three days I'd spend here.

A manic Monday

or "Even Mondays aren't safe from Death & Company"

March 24

“You’ve been here before?” Alex, who I had met before at Tailor, asked me as he prepared several drinks.

I had already polished off a Oaxacan Old Fashioned (El Resoro Resposado, Los Amantes Mescal, Agave nectar, dash of Angostura bitters, flamed orange peel) sans dinner so the Mucho Picchu (champagne, pisco, Maraska Maraschino Liqueur, fresh grapefruit juice) I was nursing was beginning to work its magic, but the whir of Alex’s arms grabbing at a bottles and shakers and jiggers was plenty distracting.

After a slight pause, I shook myself out of my reverie and answered sheepishly, “No.”

Alex shot me a half-serious and half-joking look of shock.

I do go to bars and it's not that I'm a teetotaler. Besides the fact that a) I'm only one human with one liver that I'm beginning to worry about increasingly as I get on in the years, b) I've found that my fascination with cocktails ended up being something almost academic. Drinking a cocktail? Fine with that. But drinking something you've only read about or something entirely new? That's where the fun is. I'm more than happy to pick the brains of bartenders and watch them do their thing, but at the same time I get nervous about visiting hot spots because my previously mentioned awkwardness in crowds kick in. I've gotten over that a bit since I started doing beverage-related things for NRN, since, if anything, I'm all about working around my quirks. But for the large part I still try to sneak in all ninja-like at non-rush times so I can grab a seat far from the madding crowd.

And that was exactly why I’d stepped through the doors of Death & Company at 7 pm on a Monday night. I was grimly determined to do a tactical strike of the place. I heard it could get crowded and I wanted it to be clean. In early and out the door by the time the crowds descended. Things didn't go that way.

Damon, the “new” guy (new by virtue of having joined Death & Co.'s ranks just a week or two ago, though he'd mixed elsewhere before), had manned the bar for the first hour and a half all on his own in a frenzied yet impeccable solo performance.

However, he handled the entire situation with perfect aplomb even as the drinks queue grew longer and longer and the wait time grew between drinks. He apologized for the wait, but I didn’t mind waiting since I could very much see with my own two eyes how busy the place was. I also was busy copying down drinks of interest and their ingredients into my notebook while jotting out possible story ideas. While doing this, I found time to be inspired to write several haikus. Here's one.

Chereography
of frantic cocktail mixing;
Drinks warm a cold spring.

...I never said I was a poet.

The crowd had arrived early and hit the place hard. Eventually people were getting turned away. At one point I was apologetically asked if I didn't mind moving over to make room for two guests because they were from London and had never been to Death & Co. I was more than happy to oblige for the out-of-towners.

After traveling over to the other side of the bar, two gentlemen sitting next to me got up and left and another two filled their place. One of them was Naren.

"Oh yea! Bret wrote about you!" I exclaimed, almost a bit too enthusiastically, in a stroke of inspired recognition after he figured out I worked for NRN and with Bret. The other gentleman, Kenta Goto, also recognized me at the same time I recognized him because I'd run into him previously when since he can be found behind the bar at Pegu.

In all honesty, as busy as things got, and even in the small intimate space, my crowd-hating self was doing pretty OK. Without a throng of people standing around you don't feel the press of people behind you as you sit at the bar, and those at tables have an unobstructed view of the bar so you didn't feel like your order sort of disappeared over the sea of heads into some kind of blackhole.

Though the staff tried to be accommodating, seat numbers were strictly adhered to with people encouraged to come back later when space opened up. I'm sure not every bar can get away with this, but if people desire what you're offering in terms of atmosphere and product, then they're going willing to come back. But in the case of the guests from London, it also is a good thing to be smart enough to recognize when customer relationships can be forged.

The most important part of this equation is the attitude of the bartenders. Ahem, "Like a glass for a cocktail, the good bartender is always chill." I really apologize for that. Would it make it better if I said that's from my notes for "Chicken Soup for the Bartender's Soul" that I'm shopping around? OK, not really. I will say, if anyone out there is interested and is willing to offer me an advance, I can come up with some more no matter how painful.

I asked Alex about the difference between yellow and green chartreuse besides the color (Answer: There's a slight difference in proof and some difference in flavor).

I asked Damon if the Elder Fashioned was in the spirit of an Old Fashioned, but with elderflower flavors (Answer: Yes).

Alex guided me through the murky depths of picking a third drink with actual conversation (Alex: "Hm, so do you want to stick with tequila?" Me: "Well, I already had something with champagne in it so I don't think sticking to the similar spirits is going to save me at this point.").

Damon humored me when I asked for a Paloma and made a pretty decent facsimile even though he didn't have any authentic grapefruit soda on hand.

All this while churning out drink after drink.

A tiki party with DISCUS

March 19

Two interesting things from the evening:

1. Learning Bar Milano, the New York bar that Tony Abou-Ganim is a partner in, is planning to open April 7.
2. I shook hands with Tony Abou-Ganim.

You kind of geek out about certain things when you're familiar specific industries. I'd always heard about Tony, read about him, but never seen or spoken to him. So it was kind of exciting to actually meet him. If I had to compare this to something else from my life. It was like the time I stood in line for three hours at Forbidden Planet so I could get my comics signed by Grant Morrison and I was having my own little geek excitement moment when it was my turn to have him sign my comics and...OK, maybe that example is a bit hard to relate to as well.

But more on the two points later.

It was a dreary, drizzling gray March evening when I walked into Bikini Bar. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, with the Olympian abbreviation of DISCUS, was holding a Tiki Rum Party. Suddenly, I was in Hawaii. Or at least an indoor sun-soaked beach house facsimile. Of all the bars I've been in, Bikini Bar is hands down the brightest. The tiki party theme was in full swing. There were leis, pupu platters, Hawaiian shirts and of course, plenty of rum and rum cocktails. They even had Blue Hawaii playing in the background on mute.

Taking advantage of the bi-level bar, Don Lee and Jim Meehan of PDT shook up several drinks downstairs, while upstairs, UK bar expert Angus Winchester mixed up another list of beverages.

Bret was already there when I arrived, though he couldn't stay for long since he had to head out to Broadway East. He was talking to Aaron Burns, senior marketing manager of Bacardi Innovations, a division of Bacardi Brands. Aaron chatted with me a bit about Rubi Rey, Bacardi's new single barrel finished white rum.

Aaron said the Rubi Rey has "the image of a vodka with the substance of a scotch." People are willing to pay more for premium vodkas and Bacardi decided that a premium rum would provide an alternative to those consumers who want something on a premium level that's not vodka. Aaron added that people are looking towards trying different premium spirits. Factoid of the evening from Aaron, "Ninety-five percent of the rums sold in the United States is sold for less than $15."

I kept going back and forth between upstairs and downstairs throughout the evening because of the number of people milling about directly in front of the bars made me feel claustrophobic. Also, for some reason I kept finding myself inevitably packed into a corner or awkwardly squeezed between to conversing groups. I felt like Houdini trying to escape out of a tight squeeze every five minutes. At the same time I was entirely too wrapped up in taking notes and peering over the bars to see what was going on while trying to see if I could snap some photos.

Being that mobile there was a lot of people I found myself running into and I mean that pretty much literally. As I sipped Colada Nueva Dos that Jim made downstairs I tried to reign in my short attention span to read some name tags and introduced myself to Martin Doudoroff of CocktailDB.

Upstairs I spotted someone across the room over the sea of heads who I thought looked familiar until I practically smacked myself on the forehead when I realized it was Joaquin. I managed to grab him right before he was leaving to say hi. Unfortunately, I don't do faces in crowds all that well. I wish I was joking at how bad I get with faces sometimes. Sometimes I feel like the journalist version of Adrian Monk. I have all these quirks hat you think would hamper me from doing my job.

At one point in the evening, a gentleman next to me asked how the Bajan Peach Smash that I was drinking tasted. I said it started off sweeter than how I usually like my cocktails, but as the ice melted it mellowed out a bit. I added that I tried the Baron Samedi's Brew and I thought that was kind of interesting.

As he turned to order the Baron Samedi I caught a glimpse of his name tag and performed a distinctly ungraceful double take.

After fully processing the name on the name tag, I thought to myself. "Tony Abou-Ganim just asked me my opinion about a drink."



Before heading out Tony came over to say good bye and I shook his hand and said, "I kind of had a minor 'rock star spotted' type of mini freak out back there."

"Yes, I saw it on your face," Tony said.

Tony was in town because things were gearing up towards the April 7 opening of Bar Milano.

Later when I got to chat a bit with Allan, a bartender working with Tony, who told me that everything seemed to be running on schedule and that Tony himself would probably be behind the bar for a little bit after opening to make sure everything is running smoothly. By the way, Allan also has an ode to nightlife type of project in the works, which you can preview here.

The party was drawing to a close and finally the both bars were clearing out. I went downstairs and plopped down on a stool and Jim introduced me to Don. I declared that Don had one of the coolest business cards I'd seen that evening.

"Hey! You're the one responsible for the foie-gras infused bourbon," I said to Don, remembering that Joaquin told me he scored the bourbon from PDT for his Loosey Goosey.

I asked Don a bit more about fat washing and how he got the idea for the foie-gras bourbon. Originally it was created to be part of a recipe for a sherry contest. Rather than strictly thinking about how to pair sherry with food, Don said that he thought, "Well, why don't we just make the cocktail like a food item?"

Don said he also did a bacon bourbon using the same bacon as the one used at Momofuku, which has a lot of flavorful fat. Don explained how a lot of bacon infusion recipes he's seen going around actually put the meat of the bacon in the spirit, when it's the fat that has the flavor. And they also cite infusion periods that are too long. Don said weeks is a bit of an overkill when a couple of days will do. And to avoid floating globules of fat, some form of fat washing is necessary. The bacon bourbon, for example, is frozen so that the fat solidifies on top for easy extraction.

Don and I ended talking a bit about Korean soju. Don has a grandfather who was a soju distiller, believe it or not. Don joked that the spirits selling skipped a generation. Having grown up in Korea, I referred to the efforts to make soju cocktails. Famously, or maybe infamously depending on your point of view, Lemon Soju and Yakult/Yogurt Soju, for example. I asked him if he'd ever thought about making his own soju cocktail. Don said, he would if there was a soju that met his standards. I mentioned how in Korea there seemed to be a bit of a premium soju boom going on, with more variety. Don said while that was the case, Korea's tumultuous history killed off artisinal soju, which was how it was made originally. As the country rapidly recovered from the Korean War, soju production became very industrialized and quality dropped a bit.

Before leaving I couldn't help but half-jokingly challenge Don to try and make a high-end version of Yakult Soju.

Drinks from the party:

Mai Tai
Bacardi 8
10 Cane rum
Orange Curacao
lime juice
orgeat

Colada Nueva Dos
Tommy Bahama
White Sand
Malibu Coconut
lime juice
coconut sorbet
pineapple juice

Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail
Mt. Gay Eclipse
lime juice
Cointreau
lime juice
Velvet Falernum

Dark and Stormy
Cruzan Black Strap
lime juice
ginger beer

Bajan Peach Smash
Cruzan Estate Dark
lemon wedges
peach puree
simple syrup
mint leaves

Coconut Grenade
Malibu Coconut
Bacardi 8
passionfruit syrup
Angostura Bitters
lime juice
coconut milk

Baron Samedi's Brew
Myers Dark
orgeat
Honey Cream
lime juice
ginger beer
Angostura Bitters
absinthe

Bartender exchange program

Exchange programs aren't just for students trying to expand their horizons. Joaquin Simo, bartender at Death and Company, spent a couple of days in February working shifts at the Chicago bar Violet Hour. In his stead, The Violet Hour's Kirk Estopinal manned the bar at Death & Company.

Doing an exchange isn't necessarily a publicity ploy, but more of an effort to widen experience and actually go see what else is going on out there in the cocktail world.

"In New York you get a lot of customers from other cities, and they say what’s going on in other cocktail lounges," Joaquin said.

But it's one thing to hear about what's going on elsewhere, and entirely another to go take a look in person. It's also a bit of a cultural exchange. Joaquin said he brought along some infusions and bottles of cocktail ingredients hard to find in Chicago, while Kirk brought some of his in gifts in the form of bitters from Chicago for Death and Company to play with.

As much as it is about exchange and taking part in something different from the usual local bartending scene, it also provides a chance for customers of the establishment to try something out of the ordinary.

As Joaquin put it, it "it's not interesting" for someone to come in to Death and Company and just recreate the same menu you can always get at Death and Co. So while in a way it's a chance for bartenders to check out and take in new things, it's also a little bit about showing off their stuff.

"If someone’s in town for three days...they bring their own bitters and syrups and we give them a shot for what they’re doing. We chat and learn about each other...but we're always making sure customers are being served."

For example, Joaquin said that while he was at Violet Hour, there were guests who came in wanting drinks they'd had at Death and Company while they'd visited New York.

So, how'd the exchange go?

"It was a very different experience than working in New York," Joaquin said. "[Violet Hour] has a really good group. There’s not a lot of places like Violet Hour in Chicago and it's a lot of the restaurants picking up the slack for things like cocktail pairings and infusions."

"I think the reaction to it, it went over really well...Part of the joy of it was being able to sit and chat with customers. I know our customers enjoyed have Kirk and Tom; they're both very versatile personable guys. They also brought a lot of bitters and syrups we haven’t played with and opened up our eyes...It's always fun to learn. You never really stop learning."

Joaquin said called it "a fabulous experience," but I was curious if there were any challenges of working in a new and unfamiliar space.

He answered that the only real challenge he had to deal with was the common challenge of the cocktail bar, and that would be the unadventurous customer.

"It's just trying to talk people out of that, and try to have something to broaden their horizons."

He admits having to be sneaky about it, such as sneaking in a citrus or botanical vodka into a drink or suggesting something like a Southside that has gin in it.

"You might say, 'I didn't think I liked gin,' and that's my job to teach you that you do."

In fact, Joaquin found people in Chicago to be very receptive and they liked the drinks that he made for them. He created some infusions and used the harder to find in Chicago items in his drinks and he found that people were very open-minded.

Currently Death and Company's head bartender Phil Ward is at San Francisco's Alembic, while Alembic's Thomas Waugh is in New York. Joaquin mentioned that Charles Vexenat from the Lonsdale in London will also make his way to Death and Company probably sometime in April.

March 3, Pt. 2

Flatiron Lounge and Rayuela

After the jizake seminar and tasting, I got back in the office and had about an hour or so to get any work done before I had to run to the Flatiron Lounge for the Tales of the Cocktail New York media reception. Because I only had Monday morning to finish coding and send out our Weekly E-Newsletter before the seminar and tasting, I had been up late on Sunday night getting the bulk of it done. As I always like to tell people, "The internet is always open," so doing things on the weekend isn't anything new. Even so, by the time I got back in the office I was pretty tired and was wondering where the day had gone. I told my friend the day before, "I really don't know if I can do three events tomorrow."

He was not amused. "My heart bleeds for you," he retorted with dripping sarcasm.

While this might sound a bit lame and "Oh, poor me," the truth is event-hopping is not as glamorous as it sounds when it's your job. If you're going just to hang out and take in the sights, it's extremely fun, but I'm there with my antennae at attention and my notebook and pen always at hand in case I hear or see something. I guess I could take it a bit more easy, but call it an occupational quirk if you will, as soon as I hear something that makes me go "Ooooohhh," out comes the pen. Not to complain or bellyache of course. I actually think it's one of my job perks. I like to think of it as playing Harriet the Spy for my real job, what with my furtive looking around and jotting things down.

Flatiron Lounge was PACKED when I got there. The crowd was an interesting mix. Within the first five minutes of getting through the crowd I squeezed past two keffiyehs (worn by a too cool for school Lower East Side looking girl-guy set), a set of quite possibly not ironic mutton chops, and an older gentleman with a bristly mustache that looked like it could handily take out Wilford Brimley's walrus 'tache in a knock-down drag out brawl not unlike the Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David fight scene from "They Live." All these different people of different ages, shapes, sizes, backgrounds and scenes brought together by the powerful magnetism of alcoholic beverages.

I figured penetrating the dense crowd could take place later, since I was more interested in seeing what the bar was serving up. I spotted Flatiron's owner and cocktail expert Julie Reiner behind the bar. She was a blur of red in her crimson shirt. The bartenders worked overtime to churn out drinks. I managed to grab myself a Southside Fizz (mint muddled in simple syrup, Plymouth gin, lime juice, simple syrup, shaken and strained into a glass, then topped with soda and garnished with a mint sprig).

I got to chat briefly with Ann Tuennerman, Founders of Tales of the Cocktail, who informed me that there would be a collaborative beverage blog going on during the entire event.

I tried to scan the crowd to see if there was anybody I knew and literally found myself face-to-face with Fodor's restaurants and hotels editor (and former NRNer) Erica Duecy who introduced me to her friend Marshall Altier.

Erica excitedly told me about a book idea she was shopping around about what she liked to call her "adventures with aperitifs." With a lot of anecdotes and stories talking about innovations and recipes. As she put it, sort of like "Eat, Pray, Love" but with aperitifs.

She also told me about the beverage program Marshall was working on for Terroir included cocktails using beer and wine.

I'd seen Marshall behind the bar from when I stopped by Tailor previously, and he works with beverage programs for other locations around the city. I asked him if there were any particular reason for creating a cocktail list based on wine and beer, and he explained that Terroir did not have a license for serving liquors. Also, it worked with the restaurant's seasonal wine bar concept. (The restaurant's opening met some previous delays, but I got an email from Marshall this afternoon saying that Terroir is set to open tonight. However the cocktail menu won't be up and running just yet.)

I snagged a New York Sour (Rittenhouse Rye, lemon juice, orange juice and simple syrup shaken and strained into a double rocks glass. Topped with red wine and garnished with an orange slice and cherry), and we talked a bit more about cocktails and about Tales of the Cocktail specifically when I noticed it was almost 7 pm and I should probably head over to Rayuela. I excused myself and made my way towards the door when I ran into Mr. Bret Thorn who introduced me to photographer Jennifer Mitchell and I got caught up in a conversation as we joked about combining food photography with paparazzi photography. I entirely forgot why I was headed towards the door in the first place.

I did get to Rayuela eventually. The restaurant was hosting the official launch of The Liquid Team and had some other previews going on, but the star of the hour was the Liquid Chef, mixologist Junior Merino. Bartender Magazine honored him by inducting him into the Bartender Hall of Fame.

I tried to see if I could spot Junior to offer my congratulations but ran into Akiko again who was talking to Peter Pioppo. Peter, a foodie turned food photographer, was responsible for the photos of Junior's cocktails that were decorating the second level of the restaurant.

I caught up with Junior and congratulated him. I asked him what being inducted into the Bartender Hall of Fame entailed and he showed me his sparkly ring set with what looked like an aquamarine.

Junior's signature cocktail, Coming Up Roses, was available, but there were also nine other cocktails he created for other locations served at tables throughout the restaurant.

The cocktails I sampled at Rayuela (recipes provided at the event):

Rising Star (Rayuela)
3/4 oz. Inniskillin Ice Wine Vidal
3/4 oz. Boiron Lychee Puree
3 oz. Moet & Chandon Brut Champagne

The ingredients are poured into a Champagne flute, stirred, then garnished with star fruit & red currants.




Passion-Kumquat Mojito (42 Restaurant)
2/6 lime
3 halved kumquats
3/4 oz. Boiron passion fruit puree
3/4 oz. simple syrup
7 to 10 mint leaves
2 oz. Leblon Cachaca
1/2 oz. Fever Tree Bitter Lemon

Muddle first five ingredients, then add cachaca, Bitter Lemon and ice. Shake and pour, then garnish with kumquat flower and mint sprig.

Adelita (Cafe Frida)
2 oz. Hine Cognac
1/2 oz. Monin Cinnamon
1 whole egg
1 oz. evaporated milk
1 oz. fresh orange juice

Pour ingredients into shaker, and shake with ice. Strain into martini glass rimmed with crushed cookies and garnish with blood orange slice.