Standing for about four hours at Bar Milano

or Everybody Loves Tony Abou-Ganim

April 11

Really, they do. And how can't you? He's super nice and chill.

I heard that there was a friends and family opening on the 10th, but the problem with soft openings is that a restaurant can have one, or maybe more. They might think one soft opening is OK, but then go back and close it all down for a couple of days to tweak things before deciding to do an opening proper. I guess I could've called to check or something, but I figured that if it was open, it was. In the case that it wasn't, I'd rather have the total plausible deniability of "Aw shucks, you guys aren't open? I didn't know that..." if I waltzed into the middle of a soft opening. I prefer to go with the Daniel Day-Lewis school of method acting when it comes to restaurant opening crashings.

Lucky for me, I guess Bar Milano decided one night was enough and I walked into a restaurant that was in full swing. I asked for a seat at the bar but was told the bar seats were all full. I was taken to a communal standing table in the middle of the bar but decided I wasn't going to ferry myself between the table and the bar. So I took my chances with not being able to get a seat and squeezed myself into a corner end so that I could be in the direct line of where the drinks were coming from and get a chance to chat with Tony.

Tony said that the bar had just gotten its liquor license at 4:30 pm the previous day, so this was the staff's first time serving actual guests. It was a good thing that liquor license came through because the bar was packed. During a quick breather between drinks three and four, I stepped out to the main dining area and it was definitely calmer than the bar.



"Wow, they weren't kidding when they put the 'bar' in front of 'Bar Milano,'" I thought. Sadly, I amuse myself a lot with internal dialogue. The bar area is out front and on display. It's the most noticeable thing about the place from the outside with its large window front that seems to say "Hey, passersby. Check out or cool pretty bar. Look at all these people having a drink. Don't you want to be one of these people? Wouldn't you like to come in and relax with a drink?"



Thanks to the large windows and lighting, the bar is brighter than if you were sitting in the dining area.

Other details about the bar? The glassware was designed especially for Bar Milano and handcrafted and blown in Poland. The glasses look great, but a word of warning, if you get anything served in an Old-Fashioned glass (like say the Sunshine), you are buying yourself two tickets to the gun show. OK, well, I guess one ticket, since you'll be mainly working out your drinking arm. These things are *heavy*. Not enough to impair your drinking, but still, noticeably so. I liked the heft though.

Also, no bottled water. The place is hooked up with spigots that provide cool flat and sparkling water on tap.

Tony also wrangled some natural undyed golden cherries rather than using the typical dyed, preserved, atomic red Maraschino cherry, to use as garnishes for some of his cocktails. I was lucky to have one in my first drink, a Corpse Reviver No. 2. Tony dropped a cherry into the drink and it sat nestled at the narrow bottom of the cocktail glass. It was an interesting garnish because it didn't necessarily pop out, but would make its presence known when you'd move the glass a little. It'd slowly rotate into your line of vision like a baleful sun. Quite fitting for a drink with a name like Corpse Reviver.

And I totally ate it, because I'm the type of person who eats garnishes. It was very mild and just lightly sweet. It had just a slight bit of fruitiness to it so that if you were to accidentally bit down on it (instead of fishing it out and chomping down on it like I did) it wouldn't kill your tongue to the flavor of the drink. None of that cough medicine or strong sweet flavors. And let me just say, the garnishes were delicious. Even the orange slice for the Sunshine was tasty. It wasn't some errant slice all dry and sad, it was juicy and tasted like an orange.

The evening started off with anise flavors. The cocktail menu was still AWOL, so I decided to put my fate in the hands of the people making the drinks to start off. Tony put down a Corpse Reviver No. 2 in front of me. I seem to get started off with that a lot. Allan the bar manager made me a Rattlesnake. It was the first time I'd had a Rattlesnake. Allan said he liked to call it an "unholy lovechild of a Sazerac and a Whisky Sour." Did I mention that Allan is fun to listen to? Well, he is. I wasn't trying to bother him while he did his work thing, but I couldn't resist pestering him with a few questions.

The cocktail wasn't very sweet at all, and definitely sour, but at the same time a little smoky thanks to the rye whiskey and anise from the Pernod.

Tony also made a lot of fizzes for Bar Milano. I had two. The Veneto and Milano both were cocktails full of orange flavor, but sort of on opposite sides of the spectrum for orange. The former was "light and fun" as Tony said, with some Aperol and fizz from a little Prosecco. The latter packed a heavier, more bitter punch with Campari.

Looking over my notes, I realize there's a lot of oranges going on. There was also quite a bit of Aperol slinging behind the bar. Tony enjoys using Campari and bitters, so the use of Aperol might not be surprising, but there's actually a reason behind it. Tony said the Aperol is a sort of tip of the hat to the Northern Italian cuisine of the restaurant. I also noticed his use of honey in some of the cocktails and asked if he preferred using it over simple syrup, but he responded that it was simply because he found that honey went well with Aperol.

And while all this Aperol might seem like too much aperitif for one person to take, it rears its head in different ways. For example, the Purgatory was a sunny almost tropical cocktail using citrus vodka, Aperol, elderflower liqueur, lime juice and fresh mango puree. The Aperol seemed to help keep the whole thing grounded from floating away on a sweet cloud of mango and elderflower. The burnt orange peel's a nice touch as well. And for those of you who might be interested, this drink came about thanks to an episode of Iron Chef America, when Tony had to mix drinks using the secret ingredient...(all together now, in the chairman's voice) MAAAAAANGOOOOOOO!!!!

I realized that I had been standing at the bar for several hours at this point and decided I needed to make my way out and let some other people have a chance to drink. As I was about to leave Tony asked me, "Did you have a Sunshine yet?"

I answered that no, I had not, and Tony told me I couldn't leave before trying that. He really didn't need to twist my arm, so I sat down and took a sip of the cocktail and again, found it an amazingly sunny drink. I know I used that adjective already for the Purgatory, but this one really deserves it. That "Sunshine" business was no joke.

Tony said he'll probably be around until the end of the month before heading back to Las Vegas, so stop on by if you want to talk to the man himself about his drinks. If you miss him this time around, he'll be back. He said he'd at least try to make it back here quarterly. Also, see if you can get a hit of the rosemary-infused gin that he's using for one of his cocktails. I didn't get to try the actual cocktail this time around, but I'm definitely making another stop there in the near future after having had a bit of the gin. The infusion made it so that the rosemary sort of just exploded as it hit your tongue. However, it wasn't so much you tasted it, but the smell of rosemary rolls through your mouth.

Charles Vexenat at Death and Co.

I'm still going through notes from the Summit and I promise to tie it up tomorrow with some sort of "things I took away" type of post.

However, here's a tidbit I forgot to disclose. According to Phil Ward, Charles Vexenat from The Lonsdale will be at Death and Co. April 27-30 as part of the bartender exchange program the bar has been a part of. So if you've always wanted to check out the stylings of a French bartender from London, those would be the days to make a visit.

Bar Milano opening update

Restaurant opening dates are mutable things and it's no surprise that you can't be 100% sure of an opening date until the restaurant has actually opened in some weird Schroedinger's cat-esque exercise, but for those of you keeping track of progression for Bar Milano...

...According to a brief e-mail exchange with Joe Denton, the opening date is no longer April 7 and is later in the week "if everything is according to plan."

But you can be sure I'll follow up on this with a physical visit.

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.