Manhattans go down dangerously easy with a silkiness I particularly enjoy in stirred cocktails, and Pisco Sours indulge my love of tartness without being overbearing with lip-smacking texture from the egg white. However, the Paloma holds a special place in my heart simply for providing a "Paul on the road to Damascus" like moment of conversion in regards to cocktails. Or maybe it was more like when Naaman was healed by the Prophet Elisha...either way, it was pretty Biblical.
The hagiography of this particular drink begins early in my life. Illegally early. Bret said if I said I grew up abroad it was OK, but actually, it still kind of wasn't. The following is hardly a morality tale. When I was younger, drinking was far from a sophisticated. Pretty much any sort of mixed drinks were simple (and easily concealable) one-two combos like Screwdrivers. My particularly atrocious addition to the annals of adolescent drink-mixing was a gin and grape ade concoction. I convinced myself that the resulting mixture tasted a lot like an anemic version of the energy drink Bacchus-F.
Cocktails purchased from establishments, didn't fare any better. Goopy margaritas and saccharine Pina Coladas would first knock me out with a diabetic coma so that the alcohol could raze a wave of fire that'd burn off my the top layer of my tongue and esophagus while melting nose hairs without resistance. I decided drinking cocktails was one of those weird things people sometimes do that doesn't taste or feel good, but they did because it was just another way to drink alcohol. It just was not my thing, and in college I mainly stuck to beer.
After I had graduated and began working for Nation's Restaurant News a new feature was added to our Beverage Trends Newsletter. The idea was to feature a particular non-alcoholic drink and a cocktail came up and I was drafted to find subjects for these monthly installments.
Beyond the basics of getting a photo, recipes, a little back story if available, etc., I was simply charged with finding things either new or interesting. I don't know if not knowing all that much about cocktails was a good thing or a bad thing because, well, everything was kind of new and interesting to me. Nonetheless, not knowing what else to do, I simply started plugging in permutations of the words "cocktail," and "menu" into Google with whatever modifiers I thought would help and seeing what was out there.
There were handfuls of cocktails I took notes on that I found, but one that I kept looking at was a Paloma that 5 Ninth had on its menu. I'd never heard of it and the description read, "Tequila, lime juice, a grapefruit soda
and a pinch of salt. Really." My thoughts exactly.
I called up the place and asked if I could stop by for a photo and to ask about the drink. I made my way down to 5 Ninth, crossing cobbled streets, to a small, unassuming white building that looked more like someone's house than a restaurant. I was told by one of the owners Vincent Seufert to visit right before the place opened for dinner so that I could do my thing unhampered.
The drink brought out to me was a pale sunny yellow drink with a green glow from the inside thanks to a squeezed half of a lime floating in it. It was very photogenic in the afternoon light coming into 5 Ninth. It looked crisp and refreshing. The glass was fogged up with tiny beads of condensation barely visible. Very different from viscous and nuclear hot messes I had come across before.
I wasn't sure what to do with the drink once I was done taking photos and kind of looked around awkwardly. Vincent looked surprised and asked if I wasn't going to drink it.
"It's for me?" I asked incredulously. Yea, I know, how cute.
I eyed the drink. Sure, it looked good. Sure, I love limes and grapefruit is fantastic. But then I started getting flashbacks of all the cocktails I had over the years. I slowly lifted the glass to my mouth and took a sip.
What happened next I can only describe as, hm, well, like you know how in Requiem for a Dream they had the montage of images that convey the rush of the high? Yea, that. That's what happened in my mouth. Except this was more a series of surprise, puzzlement, then an explosion into very pleasantly surprised.
By God, cocktails can taste good! No, seriously, they can taste good! I screamed inside my head. And not just good, this one was damned delicious. What the hell had I been doing and drinking all this time?
And that was the literal beginning of it all. As I continued to further research and look into cocktails for the following months' installments I learned more and got to try even more cocktails. They didn't always all floor me, but all the bad memories of bad cocktail ghosts past were slowly being exorcised out of my head.
Of course once I'd "discovered" the Paloma I was also surprised to find out how elusive it was. I remember one time going to what looked like a decent restaurant in the West Village. The menu wasn't anything too fancy, but it had its own bar with an attentive staff that seemed like a place where a Paloma would be a pretty reasonable order. You would think. The bartender looked at me and said, "I'd never heard of that. Could you tell me what's in it?"
"Well, it's got tequila," I started. The bartender nodded with a smile.
"Then there's lime," I continued as I kept my eyes on his face. Good, I still had him.
"...and like, I think there was grapefruit soda..." He started frowning a little. I averted my eyes.
"...and salt!" I ended. I took a deep breath and looked back up at him. He just stared at me with a look on his face as if I had just made a not very flattering remark in reference to his mother's honor.
"Um, well," he stuttered, "We don't have grapefruit soda, but we do have grapefruit juice and I could add a little tonic to that, but are you sure that's a real cocktail? It sounds kind of...weird"
"No! It's really good!" I insisted. My companion at the time looked just as skeptical as well.
The drink that was produced was horrifying. I don't know what went wrong with it, but it was ten kinds of wack that no one should put anywhere near their mouth ever. Even the glass seemed ashamed with its contents.
"But...but, it had all the elements," I dejectedly sputtered later on to my friend who thought I had earned my comeuppance for apparently lying about the existence of such a drink. The Paloma not only taught me that cocktails could actually taste good, but it also taught me the importance of balance and proportions. Maybe if I had given the bartender exact measurements it would've turned out differently. And I still feel a little bad about it because the guy honestly did not know the recipe. Maybe he made other cocktails that were awesome and I caught him on a bad day, not that I tried anything else because the first drink was so discouraging.
Nowadays I know of many places I can walk into where if I name a drink I can get it, and on the chance that the bartender does not know it or they don't have a particular ingredient, they can suggest I try something else in the similar vein of flavors that I was looking for. I don't even have to give an exact recipe. I can be as vague as "I don't know, I just want something real fruity." This is something I have a hard time taking for granted whenever I remember the first Paloma I ever had and the Bizarro version that almost destroyed the universe.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Venture out to Brooklyn: Jack the Horse Tavern
So, now that we're back to our regularly scheduled program after the Tales info dump...
Aug. 2
I'll be the first to admit that I might abuse my "this is research" privileges to occupy a stool at a bar for hours on end. I can only hope that my ability to really put it away mitigates any ill-will I might incur from my reluctance to leave my seat.
Having said that, I found myself yet again spending another couple of hours at the corner of a bar. I initially planned on stopping by Jack the Horse Tavern months ago. Now that I finally got around to it, I figured I should make up for lost time.
After getting just a tiny bit lost I ambled about the fruit-named streets until I got to the corner of Hicks and Cranberry. It was a restaurant with a trim storefront, wood floors and a large bar. The staff ferried about in denim shirts. The impression I got was "we just want to give you a hint of rustic, a mere whiff, but not look ridiculous while doing it."
I asked head barkeep Maxwell Britten, if the place was mostly a neighborhood haunt after a couple next to me explained that the friendly challenge they issued for a new drink at the end of their meal was a regular thing. Despite being slammed by an early evening rush, Maxwell obliged and created a cocktail for them to go with their dessert. Maxwell said that while it was a neighborhood joint, the place had been getting a lot of attention and increasing traffic from outside of Brooklyn Heights.
Maxwell tries to change the menu pretty often since he has room for only twelve or so cocktails on the menu. The easiest way for him to make regularly changes is through the weekly featured cocktail.
"It's a way to try stuff and if it's a hit I put it on the menu," he said. The one's that don't exactly make the cut get written down for future reference. "Sometimes in the dining room someone will ask for a drink from four years before."
Currently, he's excited about this week's featured cocktail, the Carthusian Shish (Ocucaje pisco, fresh mint, fresh ginger, fresh grapefruit juice, whiskey aged barrel bitters, yellow chartreuse float).
The resulting drink was a very light bright refreshing drink. Something my brain wasn't expecting after pulling out the flavors from the flavor vault as it read over the ingredients.
Maxwell told me the story behind the drink's fanciful name. First off, a little background. The word "punch" comes from the Farsi word for five (panj) because the drink was made with five different ingredients. The sailors of the East India Company took a liking to the drink, brought it back home, and that's how we got punch. So, taking his cue from the origin of the word punch, Maxwell christened his six-ingredient drink by looking up the Farsi word for six (shish) and while he was at it, tipped his hat to the Carthusian monks who first began producing chartreuse.
Maxwell said the drink was already doing decently so there was a chance it'd go on the menu proper.
I then tried the JtH Old-Fashioned (Rittenhouse Rye, house bitters, brandy poached cherry, scorched orange twist). I noticed the Maxwell first scorches the orange twist into the glass and muddles it with the cherry before adding the other ingredients. The scent of orange with a sort of fruity scent and sweetness kind of hits you on the front of your tongue and once it rolls back down your throat, the smell of bitters kick in.
The Royal Swagger (Famous Grouse Scotch, Grand Marnier, fresh lemon juice, topped with Prosecco and garnished with a lemon twist) was next and after I polished that off, I started mapping out the rest of my drinks for the evening. I blew through three cocktails with nary a food past my lips and I know my limit in such situations is six at the most.
"Which one do I really need to try before I go?" I asked.
"You should try the Robbie Robbie, but I suggest that you have that last," Maxwell answered after a brief moment of thought.
I certainly wasn't going to stop now, so slipped in the Nearly Water onto my dance card before I went for the Robbie Robbie.
The Nearly Water is made with grappa, Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, fresh lemon juice, orange Curacao, and topped with Prosecco. Grappa was on the brain since I'd gone to a grappa seminar at Tales and recently we had a little office discussion about grappa. Well, actually it began about vodka, then we were talking about gin, then sloe gin. I busted out my two sample bottles of pacharan since we were talking about sloe berries, then somehow we wound up talking about grappa.
When I took a first sip of it there was almost a vegetal scent. After two more sips I figured out that it reminded me of how the discarded grape peels and seeds would smell once the neighborhood herbal/medicinal place squeezed all the juices and liquids out of grapes and seal it in little individual plastic pouches with the same machine they'd package the Chinese herbal medicines in. In Korea, a Concord-like variety of grape is most commonly consumed as opposed to the seedless reds or greens you see here sold as table grape so the mashed up grape skins would make the grape liquid thick and purple and the pouches would come out very warm from the sealing machine. It actually tasted better to me warm with it slightly tart and very grapey flavor. The color, viscosity and even warmth would make it look almost like liquid burgundy velvet sloshing around in the plastic pouch and the whole thing had a thick vegetal grape smell thanks to the peels and seeds that got pulverized in the process.
"Ah, that would be the grappa," I thought after that kind of weird Proustian moment rushed through my head.
Finally, it was the Robbie Robbie's turn (Famous Grouse scotch, Luxardo Amaro, dry vermouth, Regan's Orange Bitters and a flamed orange twist). It definitely was a nice end, but then it made me thirsty for a Manhattan...so I went ahead and ordered one. What was one more?
Aug. 2
I'll be the first to admit that I might abuse my "this is research" privileges to occupy a stool at a bar for hours on end. I can only hope that my ability to really put it away mitigates any ill-will I might incur from my reluctance to leave my seat.
Having said that, I found myself yet again spending another couple of hours at the corner of a bar. I initially planned on stopping by Jack the Horse Tavern months ago. Now that I finally got around to it, I figured I should make up for lost time.
After getting just a tiny bit lost I ambled about the fruit-named streets until I got to the corner of Hicks and Cranberry. It was a restaurant with a trim storefront, wood floors and a large bar. The staff ferried about in denim shirts. The impression I got was "we just want to give you a hint of rustic, a mere whiff, but not look ridiculous while doing it."
I asked head barkeep Maxwell Britten, if the place was mostly a neighborhood haunt after a couple next to me explained that the friendly challenge they issued for a new drink at the end of their meal was a regular thing. Despite being slammed by an early evening rush, Maxwell obliged and created a cocktail for them to go with their dessert. Maxwell said that while it was a neighborhood joint, the place had been getting a lot of attention and increasing traffic from outside of Brooklyn Heights.
Maxwell tries to change the menu pretty often since he has room for only twelve or so cocktails on the menu. The easiest way for him to make regularly changes is through the weekly featured cocktail.
"It's a way to try stuff and if it's a hit I put it on the menu," he said. The one's that don't exactly make the cut get written down for future reference. "Sometimes in the dining room someone will ask for a drink from four years before."
Currently, he's excited about this week's featured cocktail, the Carthusian Shish (Ocucaje pisco, fresh mint, fresh ginger, fresh grapefruit juice, whiskey aged barrel bitters, yellow chartreuse float).
The resulting drink was a very light bright refreshing drink. Something my brain wasn't expecting after pulling out the flavors from the flavor vault as it read over the ingredients.
Maxwell told me the story behind the drink's fanciful name. First off, a little background. The word "punch" comes from the Farsi word for five (panj) because the drink was made with five different ingredients. The sailors of the East India Company took a liking to the drink, brought it back home, and that's how we got punch. So, taking his cue from the origin of the word punch, Maxwell christened his six-ingredient drink by looking up the Farsi word for six (shish) and while he was at it, tipped his hat to the Carthusian monks who first began producing chartreuse.
Maxwell said the drink was already doing decently so there was a chance it'd go on the menu proper.
I then tried the JtH Old-Fashioned (Rittenhouse Rye, house bitters, brandy poached cherry, scorched orange twist). I noticed the Maxwell first scorches the orange twist into the glass and muddles it with the cherry before adding the other ingredients. The scent of orange with a sort of fruity scent and sweetness kind of hits you on the front of your tongue and once it rolls back down your throat, the smell of bitters kick in.
The Royal Swagger (Famous Grouse Scotch, Grand Marnier, fresh lemon juice, topped with Prosecco and garnished with a lemon twist) was next and after I polished that off, I started mapping out the rest of my drinks for the evening. I blew through three cocktails with nary a food past my lips and I know my limit in such situations is six at the most.
"Which one do I really need to try before I go?" I asked.
"You should try the Robbie Robbie, but I suggest that you have that last," Maxwell answered after a brief moment of thought.
I certainly wasn't going to stop now, so slipped in the Nearly Water onto my dance card before I went for the Robbie Robbie.
The Nearly Water is made with grappa, Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, fresh lemon juice, orange Curacao, and topped with Prosecco. Grappa was on the brain since I'd gone to a grappa seminar at Tales and recently we had a little office discussion about grappa. Well, actually it began about vodka, then we were talking about gin, then sloe gin. I busted out my two sample bottles of pacharan since we were talking about sloe berries, then somehow we wound up talking about grappa.
When I took a first sip of it there was almost a vegetal scent. After two more sips I figured out that it reminded me of how the discarded grape peels and seeds would smell once the neighborhood herbal/medicinal place squeezed all the juices and liquids out of grapes and seal it in little individual plastic pouches with the same machine they'd package the Chinese herbal medicines in. In Korea, a Concord-like variety of grape is most commonly consumed as opposed to the seedless reds or greens you see here sold as table grape so the mashed up grape skins would make the grape liquid thick and purple and the pouches would come out very warm from the sealing machine. It actually tasted better to me warm with it slightly tart and very grapey flavor. The color, viscosity and even warmth would make it look almost like liquid burgundy velvet sloshing around in the plastic pouch and the whole thing had a thick vegetal grape smell thanks to the peels and seeds that got pulverized in the process.
"Ah, that would be the grappa," I thought after that kind of weird Proustian moment rushed through my head.
Finally, it was the Robbie Robbie's turn (Famous Grouse scotch, Luxardo Amaro, dry vermouth, Regan's Orange Bitters and a flamed orange twist). It definitely was a nice end, but then it made me thirsty for a Manhattan...so I went ahead and ordered one. What was one more?
Monday, August 4, 2008
Tales of the Cocktail 2008: The end of the end
I'm going to finish up my blogging about Tales (a good two weeks or so after the fact) with some photos that I managed to snag. Not a whole lot since I spent much of my time eyes wide open with a deer in the headlights look on my face, but a handful nonetheless.
To tell the truth, plenty more happened down at Tales than what I pithily managed to record here on this blog, but they seem to be more of the "you had to be there," variety of stories — if they are publishable to begin with that is. Sort of like a really drunken dysfunctional family reunion. Or would that qualify as a typical family reunion? Which, OK, I admit sounds bad, but kind of speaks to how as far as conventions or conferences go, Tales is a pretty personal get together. And it really was a fantastic experience. Besides, you can't spell "dysfunction" without "fun"! Wocka, wocka, wocka!
But to get serious again, let me say that as I talk about cocktails, bar practices or techniques on this here blog, every now and then I wonder if I sound way too much like I'm attempting to be some kind of social historian. I just find it hard to divorce the drinks from their stories though. Without the who, what, when, where, how and if available, why of these drinks don't make their way in somehow, the cocktails get relegated to mere formula and that's a shame considering the conviviality that many find inherent in drinking culture. Besides, as its own class in the grand scheme of food and drink, cocktails are a chattersome bunch full of their own stories and characters. Could you really ignore talking about it? It'd be like standing up King Lear on stage to recite his lines without a set or the benefit of other characters. It'd make for an interesting one man show if done right, I suppose, but you're not exactly getting the full story. Pick up a copy of a good cocktail book, whether historical or present, and you can see that when attempting to track down some primogenitor of a classic tipple, the gathered pieces of fragmented narratives play a large part in piecing together the character of the drink. And while cocktail is alcohol and that's grand and all that, the figure of the bartender looms largely behind them.
All this of course is a very long and florid way of saying, I don't have much else to write about Tales, and here are some photos. Though now that I've uploaded it all, I kind of realized I didn't really think through how many photos I have. I guess I could just code in the photos and...well, I've dragged this thing out long enough so everyone will just have to deal with a long scroll down. I don't like it any more than you do. Click on photos to see a larger version.
Sazerac cupcakes!
Tales founder Ann Tuennerman and Sen. Edwin Murray, D-La., at the toasting of the Sazerac's official cocktail status
Paul Tuennerman and H. Ehrmann
Stephen Beaumont and his wife Maggie
Gary Regan
Ann Tuennerman and Robert Hess at the Tales reception party sponsored by Beefeater Gin
Joaquin Simo (Death and Company), Charles Hardwick (Blue Owl Cocktail Room), Jim Ryan (Dressler, Dumont, and Dumont Burger), Alex Day (Death and Company)
Julie Reiner, Tony Abou-Ganim
Eben Klemm, Jared Brown
Charlotte Voisey
Dale and Jill DeGroff
Eben Freeman (Tailor)
Natalie Bovis-Nelsen, The Liquid Muse, making her official Tales non-alcoholic...wait, wait! Where are you going? Come back! I actually kind of liked the NOLita Heat she was making. When I heard non-alcoholic, I thought it'd be a sweet super fruity thing, but it was super tart and spicy. To make it: Muddle 2 jalapeno slices with lime juice in a mixing glass. Ice and 3 oz. of mango juice are added and shaken. After straining into a champagne flute, the drink gets 1 oz of Prickly Pear syrup and topped with alcohol free Brut.
Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay, Tippling Bros.
Dave Wondrich
Eben Freeman's Ramos Gin Fizz Marshmallow and Sazerac Gummy Bear
Claire Smith's deconstructed vodka and Red Bull (discussed previously with the above items in "Seminar Highlights")
John Lermayer during the Bar Chef Challenge
Aisha Sharpe
John Myers (five billion points on the scorecard in my head for hair and facial hair combo)
Alan Walter
To tell the truth, plenty more happened down at Tales than what I pithily managed to record here on this blog, but they seem to be more of the "you had to be there," variety of stories — if they are publishable to begin with that is. Sort of like a really drunken dysfunctional family reunion. Or would that qualify as a typical family reunion? Which, OK, I admit sounds bad, but kind of speaks to how as far as conventions or conferences go, Tales is a pretty personal get together. And it really was a fantastic experience. Besides, you can't spell "dysfunction" without "fun"! Wocka, wocka, wocka!
But to get serious again, let me say that as I talk about cocktails, bar practices or techniques on this here blog, every now and then I wonder if I sound way too much like I'm attempting to be some kind of social historian. I just find it hard to divorce the drinks from their stories though. Without the who, what, when, where, how and if available, why of these drinks don't make their way in somehow, the cocktails get relegated to mere formula and that's a shame considering the conviviality that many find inherent in drinking culture. Besides, as its own class in the grand scheme of food and drink, cocktails are a chattersome bunch full of their own stories and characters. Could you really ignore talking about it? It'd be like standing up King Lear on stage to recite his lines without a set or the benefit of other characters. It'd make for an interesting one man show if done right, I suppose, but you're not exactly getting the full story. Pick up a copy of a good cocktail book, whether historical or present, and you can see that when attempting to track down some primogenitor of a classic tipple, the gathered pieces of fragmented narratives play a large part in piecing together the character of the drink. And while cocktail is alcohol and that's grand and all that, the figure of the bartender looms largely behind them.
All this of course is a very long and florid way of saying, I don't have much else to write about Tales, and here are some photos. Though now that I've uploaded it all, I kind of realized I didn't really think through how many photos I have. I guess I could just code in the photos and...well, I've dragged this thing out long enough so everyone will just have to deal with a long scroll down. I don't like it any more than you do. Click on photos to see a larger version.
Tales founder Ann Tuennerman and Sen. Edwin Murray, D-La., at the toasting of the Sazerac's official cocktail status
Paul Tuennerman and H. Ehrmann
Stephen Beaumont and his wife Maggie
Gary Regan
Ann Tuennerman and Robert Hess at the Tales reception party sponsored by Beefeater Gin
Joaquin Simo (Death and Company), Charles Hardwick (Blue Owl Cocktail Room), Jim Ryan (Dressler, Dumont, and Dumont Burger), Alex Day (Death and Company)
Julie Reiner, Tony Abou-Ganim
Eben Klemm, Jared Brown
Charlotte Voisey
Dale and Jill DeGroff
Eben Freeman (Tailor)
Natalie Bovis-Nelsen, The Liquid Muse, making her official Tales non-alcoholic...wait, wait! Where are you going? Come back! I actually kind of liked the NOLita Heat she was making. When I heard non-alcoholic, I thought it'd be a sweet super fruity thing, but it was super tart and spicy. To make it: Muddle 2 jalapeno slices with lime juice in a mixing glass. Ice and 3 oz. of mango juice are added and shaken. After straining into a champagne flute, the drink gets 1 oz of Prickly Pear syrup and topped with alcohol free Brut.
Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay, Tippling Bros.
Dave Wondrich
Eben Freeman's Ramos Gin Fizz Marshmallow and Sazerac Gummy Bear
Claire Smith's deconstructed vodka and Red Bull (discussed previously with the above items in "Seminar Highlights")
John Lermayer during the Bar Chef Challenge
Aisha Sharpe
John Myers (five billion points on the scorecard in my head for hair and facial hair combo)
Alan Walter
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tales of the Cocktail 2008: Spirit Award winners
Part one of the end of my Tales blogging. Some of the nominees were previously mentioned, here.
I'd never been in a place quite like Harrah's and I felt like I walked miles to get to the theater where the awards ceremony was being held.
"Oh man...so many people! And tables! I'll be at tables with people!" I thought, beginning to panic once I saw all the dinner tables set up. I camped out with Hanna Lee from Hanna Lee Communications for a while and I'd like to thank Mr. Eben Freeman for taking me under his wing so that I didn't freeze up and die by painful shyness.
Here are the winners:
Best Drinks Selection
1806 Melbourne Australia
Best Classic Cocktail Bar
Milk and Honey, NYC
World’s Best Cocktail Bar
Le Lion - Hamburg, Germany
Best New Cocktail Bar
Ruby, Copenhagen, Denmark
Mixologist/Bartender of the Year
Nick Strangeway - Hawksmoor, London, England
Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book
Imbibe by David Wondrich
Best Cocktail Writing
Gary Regan (San Francisco Chronicle)
Best New Product
Fever Tree Mixers
Best Cocktail Menu
Ruby - Copenhagen, Denmark
Best Drinks Brand Representative/Brand Ambassador
Jason Crawley - Maxxium, Australia.
Helen David Lifetime Achievement Award
Dale DeGroff - King Cocktail
I'd never been in a place quite like Harrah's and I felt like I walked miles to get to the theater where the awards ceremony was being held.
"Oh man...so many people! And tables! I'll be at tables with people!" I thought, beginning to panic once I saw all the dinner tables set up. I camped out with Hanna Lee from Hanna Lee Communications for a while and I'd like to thank Mr. Eben Freeman for taking me under his wing so that I didn't freeze up and die by painful shyness.
Here are the winners:
Best Drinks Selection
1806 Melbourne Australia
Best Classic Cocktail Bar
Milk and Honey, NYC
World’s Best Cocktail Bar
Le Lion - Hamburg, Germany
Best New Cocktail Bar
Ruby, Copenhagen, Denmark
Mixologist/Bartender of the Year
Nick Strangeway - Hawksmoor, London, England
Best New Cocktail/Bartending Book
Imbibe by David Wondrich
Best Cocktail Writing
Gary Regan (San Francisco Chronicle)
Best New Product
Fever Tree Mixers
Best Cocktail Menu
Ruby - Copenhagen, Denmark
Best Drinks Brand Representative/Brand Ambassador
Jason Crawley - Maxxium, Australia.
Helen David Lifetime Achievement Award
Dale DeGroff - King Cocktail
Tales of the Cocktail 2008: Seminar highlights
A, I hope, quick run-through of things that I wanted to mention that stood out from a few of the many seminars I attended:
Molecular Mixology, Thursday, July 17:
(Led by Jamie Boudreau with panelists Eben Klemm, Eben Freeman and Claire Smith)
Eben Klemm talked about his background in molecular biology at M.I.T. and how at the time that particular area of study was more of a collection of techniques that were used by other branches of studies such as oncology. Molecular biology was considered more of a tool and in the same way he compared how molecular mixology more or less defines technique and tools used for creating drinks.
One thing that I paid attention to in particular was how even though "molecular mixology" sounds interesting and sexy and gets thrown around a lot, Eben pointed out that honestly it's not exactly something new under the sun. He said that while some people might say molecular gastronomy is technique-based, many of the techniques being used are duplications of techniques already in existence; just carried out more effectively.
For example, a lot of people think of foams as a hallmark of molecular gastronomy, but think about classic cocktails such as a Ramos Gin Fizz or a Pisco Sour with frothy heads created by egg whites. Sure nowadays you might use some kind of ingredient to create a foam with just about anything and not having to rely on eggs, but the basic idea of manipulating flavors and or textures through technique or ingredients isn't exactly a new.
He warned that these are tools that should not be relied on and "we should be focusing on making good drinks."
Claire Smith, a mixologist working for Belvedere Vodka, commented that with her molecular mixology was more micro mixology with the idea of being able to control flavor delivery in new ways.
"It's not our job to scare them off, it's our job to make a good drink," she said echoing what Eben Klemm said earlier.
Eben Freeman addressed the topic of maybe molecular mixology being "over" due to being overplayed. When people ask "Aren't foams over?" Freeman compared it to asking, "Is grilling over?"
Techniques "don't get removed from the lexicon," he said and in fact bartenders owe it to themselves to learn as many techniques as possible, but not just for technique's sake. "This isn't about the shock value."
Eben Freeman brought Sazerac gummy bears and Ramos Gin Fizz marshmallows for every to sample, while Claire presented an elaborate three-piece "vodka and Red Bull" set up with cotton candy, a glass of Belvedere vodka, and a grapefruit flavored marshmallow since, to her, Red Bull had a sort of grapefruit flavor to it.
During the Q and A portion of the seminar, someone asked Eben Freeman about his hard shake video online and Eben actually stood up to say that was his approximation of the technique and it does not do justice for the real hard shake method. He went on to explain that the hard shake isn't about just being a fancy technique that magically create great cocktails. It's not some kind of snake oil to your cocktail ills. It has just as much to do with a way of thinking as you prepare a cocktail and the idea of being conscious of what you're shaking in your shaker. I sat riveted listening to him talk about the technique. It was sort of the first time I actually heard an account that went beyond "here's this cool mystical thing from the East," when talking about the topic of the hard shake.
Not that the extended conversation made it sound any less like a secret ninja training technique, but the gears just sort of finally clicked in place in my head as to why this isn't really a big deal but is at the same time. You can read the recipes, talking about consistency, ice quality, proper tools, but in the end cocktails are still a hand-made product. I'm going to go off the loopy end now.
You could say a cocktail, is a cocktail, is a cocktail, but it's basically an artisan product custom-built every single time someone serves you a glass of something. If you're doing it properly that is.
Eben mentioned how many bartenders are beginning to develop their own shaking styles either based on the hard shake or just from what works for them, and watching bartender do their thing in what probably comes across as highly uncomfortable intensity that's borderline the subject of a song by The Police, you can see it. And not just see it, but even hear it. Whether it's a clinkita-clinkita-clinkita or a chugga-chugga-chugga, whether it's a tight up and down motion or a loose figure eight type of deal, it's basically like a bartender signing his John Hancock on your drink. And a bartender could have several different ways he or she would shake different cocktails. That's what this whole hard shake business seemed to say to me. Thinking about how you shake a drink makes you sort of take a pause. You don't treat the drink making process as just throwing in different tasting liquids into a canister.
...what was I saying? Anyway, as someone who over thinks details a lot of things this was delicious over thinking fodder and I kind of drifted off intently contemplating cocktail shaking.
The Scented Trail: Techniques on How to Develop Aroma in Your Cocktails, Thursday, July 17:
(Audrey Saunders and Tony Conigliaro)
Now I thought this was a pretty cool seminar. Hosted by Audrey Saunders and Tony Conigliaro, this seminar showed that different possibilities could be further explored in creating cocktails. And it wasn't just "Here, smell this," type of seminar talking about just how spirits might smell. Audrey and Tony talked about scents like perfumers pulling out hydrosols and essences that they make or use.
Audry explained the before people were distilling alcohol, they were distilling flowers and plants for a variety of uses. That's where people cut their distillation teeth. And Tony said that perfume works similarly as cocktails.
There were explanation of top notes, middle note and bass notes. How scents break down over time with more volatile smells that hit you first such as florals and citrus on the top end, to scents that come through more like flavors and linger longer on the bass end. Cocktails also have these properties. Smell a cocktail when you first get it all icy cold, then wait until it's warm and sticky to take another whiff and you can smell the difference for sure. Anybody who's ever taken a good smell of a bar after a night of people spilling beer all over the place could tell you that.
It was a seminar full of intriguing tidbits, such as different ways to create hydrosols. Maybe diluting essential oils or creating simple tinctures with neutral grain alcohol. Maybe even distill it to further concentrate the scent.
While Tony mentioned everclear as the an alcohol he might use for tinctures, Audrey said she preferred 80 proof vodka since everclear can be too strong and could "cook" some more delicate ingredients.
By using tinctures and the like, not only did you enchance the cocktail but as a bartender you also get a chance to use flavors and ingredients that are not easily accessible in drinks.
Tony brought out a cocktail inspired by an old Roman drink using mastic and wine. The champagne was absolutely bubbly and light, but got a little oomph to it with a richer richer note from the mastic resin (it needs to be cooked to bring out the flavors and scents!).
Cracking the Egg: The Traditions, Challenges and Potential of Eggs in Cocktails, Saturday, July 19:
(LeNell Smothers)
I only caught the tail-end of this because I had been down in the kitchen for the first hour or so, but I'm so glad I made it in for the last bit.
I'm a fan of egg in cocktails so I wanted to listen in on what had to be said since all I knew was it goes in your cocktail raw, you can use yolk, white or both, and it's delicious.
Little did I know there were issues like your shaker's seal being compromised once the egg and stuff ("stuff" is a technical term) expands inside the shaker. Everyone nodded and murmured thoughtfully when this topic came up. This seemed to be a problem for both Boston or Cobbler shakers. One suggestion was to seal the shaker again periodically whenever you'd feel the seal is not as tight as it could be.
LeNell ended the seminar by bringing up Prairie Oysters. I was puzzled at first because I thought she was talking about these, but she meant this. She wanted to give a demonstration to close things out and asked for a volunteer and Matty Gee got called up.
It all seemed like, you know, the typical audience volunteer thing. She helped him out of his jacket and then...she started unbuttoning his shirt. For those of you who did not go to this, you missed out on LeNell doing a bodyshot version of a Praerie Oyster out of Matty Gee's navel. Let me just say that I thank the Fates for allowing me to be there to be delightfully scandalized. Sadly, I snuck in near the end so I was in no position to grab a good photo, but I'd be very surprised if there weren't some Flickr streams out there right now with photographic evidence because I saw flashes go off.
EDIT!!! A kindly hero left me a comment linking to a fantastic write up on the egg seminar (with photographic evidence!). Thank you, commenter. Also nice to find out that Matty's a NOFX fan.
Molecular Mixology, Thursday, July 17:
(Led by Jamie Boudreau with panelists Eben Klemm, Eben Freeman and Claire Smith)
Eben Klemm talked about his background in molecular biology at M.I.T. and how at the time that particular area of study was more of a collection of techniques that were used by other branches of studies such as oncology. Molecular biology was considered more of a tool and in the same way he compared how molecular mixology more or less defines technique and tools used for creating drinks.
One thing that I paid attention to in particular was how even though "molecular mixology" sounds interesting and sexy and gets thrown around a lot, Eben pointed out that honestly it's not exactly something new under the sun. He said that while some people might say molecular gastronomy is technique-based, many of the techniques being used are duplications of techniques already in existence; just carried out more effectively.
For example, a lot of people think of foams as a hallmark of molecular gastronomy, but think about classic cocktails such as a Ramos Gin Fizz or a Pisco Sour with frothy heads created by egg whites. Sure nowadays you might use some kind of ingredient to create a foam with just about anything and not having to rely on eggs, but the basic idea of manipulating flavors and or textures through technique or ingredients isn't exactly a new.
He warned that these are tools that should not be relied on and "we should be focusing on making good drinks."
Claire Smith, a mixologist working for Belvedere Vodka, commented that with her molecular mixology was more micro mixology with the idea of being able to control flavor delivery in new ways.
"It's not our job to scare them off, it's our job to make a good drink," she said echoing what Eben Klemm said earlier.
Eben Freeman addressed the topic of maybe molecular mixology being "over" due to being overplayed. When people ask "Aren't foams over?" Freeman compared it to asking, "Is grilling over?"
Techniques "don't get removed from the lexicon," he said and in fact bartenders owe it to themselves to learn as many techniques as possible, but not just for technique's sake. "This isn't about the shock value."
Eben Freeman brought Sazerac gummy bears and Ramos Gin Fizz marshmallows for every to sample, while Claire presented an elaborate three-piece "vodka and Red Bull" set up with cotton candy, a glass of Belvedere vodka, and a grapefruit flavored marshmallow since, to her, Red Bull had a sort of grapefruit flavor to it.
During the Q and A portion of the seminar, someone asked Eben Freeman about his hard shake video online and Eben actually stood up to say that was his approximation of the technique and it does not do justice for the real hard shake method. He went on to explain that the hard shake isn't about just being a fancy technique that magically create great cocktails. It's not some kind of snake oil to your cocktail ills. It has just as much to do with a way of thinking as you prepare a cocktail and the idea of being conscious of what you're shaking in your shaker. I sat riveted listening to him talk about the technique. It was sort of the first time I actually heard an account that went beyond "here's this cool mystical thing from the East," when talking about the topic of the hard shake.
Not that the extended conversation made it sound any less like a secret ninja training technique, but the gears just sort of finally clicked in place in my head as to why this isn't really a big deal but is at the same time. You can read the recipes, talking about consistency, ice quality, proper tools, but in the end cocktails are still a hand-made product. I'm going to go off the loopy end now.
You could say a cocktail, is a cocktail, is a cocktail, but it's basically an artisan product custom-built every single time someone serves you a glass of something. If you're doing it properly that is.
Eben mentioned how many bartenders are beginning to develop their own shaking styles either based on the hard shake or just from what works for them, and watching bartender do their thing in what probably comes across as highly uncomfortable intensity that's borderline the subject of a song by The Police, you can see it. And not just see it, but even hear it. Whether it's a clinkita-clinkita-clinkita or a chugga-chugga-chugga, whether it's a tight up and down motion or a loose figure eight type of deal, it's basically like a bartender signing his John Hancock on your drink. And a bartender could have several different ways he or she would shake different cocktails. That's what this whole hard shake business seemed to say to me. Thinking about how you shake a drink makes you sort of take a pause. You don't treat the drink making process as just throwing in different tasting liquids into a canister.
...what was I saying? Anyway, as someone who over thinks details a lot of things this was delicious over thinking fodder and I kind of drifted off intently contemplating cocktail shaking.
The Scented Trail: Techniques on How to Develop Aroma in Your Cocktails, Thursday, July 17:
(Audrey Saunders and Tony Conigliaro)
Now I thought this was a pretty cool seminar. Hosted by Audrey Saunders and Tony Conigliaro, this seminar showed that different possibilities could be further explored in creating cocktails. And it wasn't just "Here, smell this," type of seminar talking about just how spirits might smell. Audrey and Tony talked about scents like perfumers pulling out hydrosols and essences that they make or use.
Audry explained the before people were distilling alcohol, they were distilling flowers and plants for a variety of uses. That's where people cut their distillation teeth. And Tony said that perfume works similarly as cocktails.
There were explanation of top notes, middle note and bass notes. How scents break down over time with more volatile smells that hit you first such as florals and citrus on the top end, to scents that come through more like flavors and linger longer on the bass end. Cocktails also have these properties. Smell a cocktail when you first get it all icy cold, then wait until it's warm and sticky to take another whiff and you can smell the difference for sure. Anybody who's ever taken a good smell of a bar after a night of people spilling beer all over the place could tell you that.
It was a seminar full of intriguing tidbits, such as different ways to create hydrosols. Maybe diluting essential oils or creating simple tinctures with neutral grain alcohol. Maybe even distill it to further concentrate the scent.
While Tony mentioned everclear as the an alcohol he might use for tinctures, Audrey said she preferred 80 proof vodka since everclear can be too strong and could "cook" some more delicate ingredients.
By using tinctures and the like, not only did you enchance the cocktail but as a bartender you also get a chance to use flavors and ingredients that are not easily accessible in drinks.
Tony brought out a cocktail inspired by an old Roman drink using mastic and wine. The champagne was absolutely bubbly and light, but got a little oomph to it with a richer richer note from the mastic resin (it needs to be cooked to bring out the flavors and scents!).
Cracking the Egg: The Traditions, Challenges and Potential of Eggs in Cocktails, Saturday, July 19:
(LeNell Smothers)
I only caught the tail-end of this because I had been down in the kitchen for the first hour or so, but I'm so glad I made it in for the last bit.
I'm a fan of egg in cocktails so I wanted to listen in on what had to be said since all I knew was it goes in your cocktail raw, you can use yolk, white or both, and it's delicious.
Little did I know there were issues like your shaker's seal being compromised once the egg and stuff ("stuff" is a technical term) expands inside the shaker. Everyone nodded and murmured thoughtfully when this topic came up. This seemed to be a problem for both Boston or Cobbler shakers. One suggestion was to seal the shaker again periodically whenever you'd feel the seal is not as tight as it could be.
LeNell ended the seminar by bringing up Prairie Oysters. I was puzzled at first because I thought she was talking about these, but she meant this. She wanted to give a demonstration to close things out and asked for a volunteer and Matty Gee got called up.
It all seemed like, you know, the typical audience volunteer thing. She helped him out of his jacket and then...she started unbuttoning his shirt. For those of you who did not go to this, you missed out on LeNell doing a bodyshot version of a Praerie Oyster out of Matty Gee's navel. Let me just say that I thank the Fates for allowing me to be there to be delightfully scandalized. Sadly, I snuck in near the end so I was in no position to grab a good photo, but I'd be very surprised if there weren't some Flickr streams out there right now with photographic evidence because I saw flashes go off.
EDIT!!! A kindly hero left me a comment linking to a fantastic write up on the egg seminar (with photographic evidence!). Thank you, commenter. Also nice to find out that Matty's a NOFX fan.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tales of the Cocktail 2008: Photos from the juice line
I was going to bust these out at a later date once I got through with some other photos I took of Tales and do a comprehensive photo blog entry, but I've been catching up to things at the office and my other two updates are slow in coming together. So here's something to tide you over for now.
Don Lee was nice enough not only to send me some photos he took of the juice line, but I also have permission to reproduce them here. He instructed me to make note that "the photos were at 9am and that they juiced 26 cases of fruit that day alone."
A mountain of citrus
from l-r: Armando Archundia, Thomas Waugh, Jim Kearns, Chris Hannah, Alex Day, Ryan Fitzgerald, Rhiannon Enlil
Breakfast of Champions
from l-r: Thomas Waugh, Jim Kearns, Alex Day and Ryan Fitzgerald. Yes, that's Ryan soaking a cookie with the communal Rittenhouse Rye. Supposedly, several food items were doused with rye whiskey over the course of Tales and I've heard from two different sources that cold beignets taste the best with the rye treatment. I haven't tried it, but my hypothesis is it would be like a baba au rhum, or baba au rye if you please.
from l-r (at least with the faces I can see): Jim Kearns, Alex Day, Joaquin Simo, Kimberly Patton-Bragg, Armando Archundia
from l-r: Rhiannon Enlil, Jim Kearns, Thomas Waugh, Alex Day, Peter Vestinos, and face not visible, but I know that's Jacquelyn Leon
Don Lee was nice enough not only to send me some photos he took of the juice line, but I also have permission to reproduce them here. He instructed me to make note that "the photos were at 9am and that they juiced 26 cases of fruit that day alone."
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Tales of the Cocktail 2008: "I love it that we have the country's best pastry chef cutting fruit"
or Apprentices, the people responsible for you having your drinks at Tales
[Note to Don Lee: Thanks for acting as copy editor/fact checker on this entry.]
Thursday night, Muriel's was the setting of "Desmond Payne's Ruby Jubilee" to honor Desmond Payne, Beefeater's master distiller.
While the party went on in the second level of Muriel's, I found myself outside on the balcony suffused with the sound of muffled revelry leaking out into the evening. Drinks sweated profusely in the thick sticky night as I sat in a group that included John Deragon, Don Lee and Daniel Eun of PDT, both Ebens Klemm (B.R. Guest) and Freeman (Tailor), Ryan Fitzgerald of Beretta in San Francisco and Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at The French Culinary Institute. The group grew and contracted throughout the evening as other bartenders came and left.
I was discussing with Mr. Lee about not wanting to appear like a self-important writer who wrote about bartending because they couldn't. Not that I was being all presumptuous that I could actually bartend, but I really wanted to be serious about the bar trade so as not to waste the time of bartenders I talked to. And I wanted a bit of better understanding about what I was writing. I felt like I lacked in the experience department and was toying with the idea of how to get that.
"You know, like something like street cred," I said, not realizing that I'd inadvertently created a running joke that'd follow me the next couple of days.
"You want bartender street cred? You come juice some lemons and limes in the juice line in the kitchen," Don said. "If you're looking for stories that's the untold story of Tales right there. I've got a pirate-like crew of people working several hours a day."
Don and John were helping Phil Ward (Death and Co.) in a ragtag group of bartender "apprentices". It was kind of an interesting title choice once you saw the caliber of bartenders in the kitchen. They were responsible for batching and creating pretty much all the cocktails served at Tales related events. And if they weren't in the kitchen, they were in the seminar rooms or behind a bar at some event mixing and shaking.
My ears pricked at this suggestion. As informative the seminars had been, to be honest, I could only sit through so many of them and was starting to get a bit of first-timer burnout. At the same time I felt obligated to attend as much as possible to cram knowledge into my head, but it came at a cost. My butt was starting to get tired from sitting and my hands were itching from hearing about all the techniques and recipes.
"Really? I can do that?" I asked.
"Hey John, Sonya's gonna come down to the kitchen tomorrow to get some 'street cred' with us," Don said, the scare quotes practically etching themselves into the almost solid, humid air.
But then I remembered a press event I RSVP'ed to go to the next morning. Could I come in to help an hour in the morning?
"No." John and Don both said.
"You're either in it all the way or you're not," Don said. "The juice line doesn't work that way."
"Oh, come on," I protested. "It's not like I don't want to help. I just have a prearranged engagement tomorrow morning."
"That's called wussing out."
"No, that's called being responsible," I said.
My protestations were soon lost when Dave Arnold said he'd jump in the line and the conversation devolved into an impromptu event to set up a juice-a-thon between Ryan Fitzgerald and himself. Rules were written, and abandoned in the same breath and much smack was talked until Leo DeGroff made an appearance and showed interest in the wager. Apparently Leo's juicing skills is the stuff of legend and something meant to be discussed only in hushed tones of reverence. Ryan, the group's favorite, was quickly displaced by the Prince of Cocktail.
All Friday morning I found myself preoccupied with whether or not the showdown had happened between Ryan and Dave as I sat through a seminar on bitters after a media breakfast held at Brennan's. I wanted to go peek in to see what happened, but feared that I was banned from the kitchen thanks to my wussing out.
After the seminar I ran into LaTanya White, owner of the cocktail catering company 71 Proof in Tallahassee, Fla., as well as one of the apprentices. She said that it should be fine if I go down to the kitchen and helped now. With almost three hours free until I had to be at another seminar, I let Don know I was present to help. Alex Day pointed me to a box of latex gloves. I pulled a pair on and got to juicing. I was going to prove that I could do it and I wasn't just some soft doughy writer sitting in front of a computer who...
"Just wait one goddamn second," I thought an hour and a half later when I realized I had been juicing what seemed like a never ending flow of limes.
OK, maybe, just maaaaaaaayybe Don did Tom Sawyer me into helping out by insinuating both my mettle as journalist and a basic human being weren't up to snuff if I did not participate, but the man had a point about this being hard work. If you didn't see it just walking into hectic kitchen, you certainly knew it after changing gloves for the third time because the juices would penetrate through the latex and make your fingers sting and feeling the your shoulder muscles stiffen from using a a manual juicer, or, as I saw with Alex, having an electric juicer snip at your fingers if you weren't paying attention.
I wasn't the only one pressed (ha!) into service. Dave Arnold, who to his credit did show up at 8 a.m. to help juice, returned to juice some more. Even Jean-Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, who was attending Tales, popped into the kitchen to see how things were going and offer some morale. But that was his mistake because he also got pointed to the box of latex gloves by Alex. Johnny tried to laugh it off, but you don't joke about the juice line. So he too pulled on a pair and joined Joaquin Simo at his side to help cut limes in half to be juiced.
"I love it that we have the country's best pastry chef cutting fruit," Joaquin later commented.
And if for whatever reason you decide that your life is not complete unless you see someone halve lemons and limes at inhuman speeds, call up Johnny Iuzzini. That man goes through a crate of limes like...like...some kind of...lime cutting machine that cuts super fast.
Don pressed upon me several times that he was not joking about the group being like a pirate crew, and as I stood there listening to the orgeat syrup-like musical stylings of Curtis Mayfield coming out of on iPod dock, taking swigs out of a communal bottle of Rittenhouse and taking in the frequently salty banter of a group of hard working and harder playing bartenders, Don's comparison was ringing pretty true.
(A scene from the kitchen: Photo of Ryan in his "I Hate Cocktails" shirt taken by Camper. Not pictured? The back of the shirt. I'll just leave it at saying that several times on Friday when I'd unwittingly look in Ryan's direction when he had his back to me I'd burst out laughing. Maxwell Britten also gets honorable mention for his "Brown and stirred, bitches" shirt.)
So at 7:55 a.m. on Saturday I was back in the kitchen asking what I could help with. Don said it was a bit easier that morning and I made some lemon twists and orange zest and skipped off to another seminar.
It's kind of hard to see the scale how much these guys did even when you're in the thick of it producing gallons of juice or cutting 350 lemon twists because it becomes repetitive and downright inevitable in some ways. However, once out of the kitchen and throughout the day, I'd spot a lemon twist or an orange twist floating in a cocktail that looked oddly familiar or see how many times lemon and lime juice would come up in a recipe presented during a seminar as people sipped the samples, and speaking of which, how about all the math Don and John were doing to make enough cocktails for a 100 people with a recipe made to serve one? It was pretty insane to realize just how much work these guys were doing.
Don caught me in the hallway of the Hotel Monteleone a little later in the day and said that there was a last minute juicing emergency and I should get in the kitchen if I wanted to help.
Thomas Waugh (Alembic) and Joaquin were busy trying to get wheels and wedges out of limes so they weren't ready for juicing so I got to helping with some lemons.
Death and Co. owner Dave Kaplan made the same mistake Johnny did the day before and got put on the juice line for a while.
Eben Freeman came down to help and was soon organizing people and delegating tasks. Seeing me slooooooooowwwwwly cutting lemon twists (in my defense, I did just learn how to do it that morning) he told me to grab a free juicer to help with the limes while he got on the lemons to get the amount of twists needed and was soon getting them ready to be juiced.
All of the sudden it was like the juicing All Stars. Leo DeGroff showed up and proceeded to own everyone in the kitchen as he deftly manhandled an electric juicer and some unfortunate limes with a two-handed technique that I'm pretty sure broke several rules of physics.
"I give up. There's no way I'm keeping up with that," Daniel Eun said and relinquished his manual juicer and moved over to the lemons side. He wasn't an apprentice and was at Tales to hang out, but he also had been helping out in the kitchen whenever possible.
"Holy crap," I thought as I stared slack-jawed with a look that bordered on abject terror.
"I feel pretty damn useless next to you," I told Leo and was about to give up and go help where my help was actually needed, but he picked up a hand press and showed me.
"Just do it like this," he said and then proceeded to squeeze out a shot of juice that splashed me like I was in the splash zone at SeaWorld. Easy enough for him to say, he's been doing this since he was, like, 16 or something. He handily filled up the 1/3 full container to the brim in a matter of minutes before leaving.
For a few minutes I found myself juicing limes next to Gary Regan and it turned into a Christmas miracle. We thought we needed three more gallons of lime juice, but with the intervention of Saint Gary, when Eben decided to double-check we found out we just needed to top off the one container we were working on. There was more to be done, but at least a majority of the juicing was over with, so I went ahead to go get ready for the Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Awards.
"Thanks for the help," Phil Ward told me on Sunday before the start of a punch seminar he was chairing with Allen Katz and Dave Wondrich.
"No, thank you. It was a learning experience," I returned, and I meant it. Zesting an orange? I mean, I know how to grate, but I don't really do it all the time or anything like that. But thanks to talking to bartenders for so long, I now knew about pith. How else would I have found out that a dampened paper napkin lining the bottom of a container for twists, as well as covering them with another dampened paper napkin would keep them from drying out unless Dave Arnold told me? Sounds like common sense, but I never had to store 200 lemon twists and I don't know if I ever will. Using a peeler to get lemon twists was infinitely easier after Ryan fixed something as simple as where was placing my forefinger. And how would I have picked up the handy tip of soaking some cool limes that had been sitting in a walkthrough in warm water before juicing unless I'd watched Eben Freeman do exactly that?
That's pretty much what I wanted. I wasn't looking for some kind of macho respect when I said street cred, I just wanted to learn how things were done in the day-by-day. I could ask all the questions I had when I visited bars or read all the books I wanted, but what I wanted to know was what was habit to these guys.
"It's stuff like this that's what street cred's about," Don told me one evening. "It's not about who's got the best technique or who's making the best recipes. It's who's staying late to work on the garnishes or staying late to clean up."
So anyways, much kudos to the apprentice program guys. I know I didn't get to meet all of you, but great working with you (and please let me know if I've missed anybody in this list or got anything):
John Paul Deragon
Don Lee
Armando Archundia (the dude came all the way from Switzerland)
Joaquin Simo
Maxwell Britten
Alex Day
Jacquelyn Leon
Rhiannon Enlil
Catherine Fellet
LaTanya White
Ryan Fitzgerald
Chris Hannah
Thomas Waugh
Jim Kearns
Josephine Packard
Kimberly Patton-Bragg
Peter Vestinos
P.S. Thomas Waugh spilled about a pint of lime juice on me. Don and John, you derided me for not having capped him back with my juicer, but I just want you all to know, that's all part of my strategy. Oh, I'm going to get him all right. One of these days. He just doesn't know when or where.
[Note to Don Lee: Thanks for acting as copy editor/fact checker on this entry.]
Thursday night, Muriel's was the setting of "Desmond Payne's Ruby Jubilee" to honor Desmond Payne, Beefeater's master distiller.
While the party went on in the second level of Muriel's, I found myself outside on the balcony suffused with the sound of muffled revelry leaking out into the evening. Drinks sweated profusely in the thick sticky night as I sat in a group that included John Deragon, Don Lee and Daniel Eun of PDT, both Ebens Klemm (B.R. Guest) and Freeman (Tailor), Ryan Fitzgerald of Beretta in San Francisco and Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at The French Culinary Institute. The group grew and contracted throughout the evening as other bartenders came and left.
I was discussing with Mr. Lee about not wanting to appear like a self-important writer who wrote about bartending because they couldn't. Not that I was being all presumptuous that I could actually bartend, but I really wanted to be serious about the bar trade so as not to waste the time of bartenders I talked to. And I wanted a bit of better understanding about what I was writing. I felt like I lacked in the experience department and was toying with the idea of how to get that.
"You know, like something like street cred," I said, not realizing that I'd inadvertently created a running joke that'd follow me the next couple of days.
"You want bartender street cred? You come juice some lemons and limes in the juice line in the kitchen," Don said. "If you're looking for stories that's the untold story of Tales right there. I've got a pirate-like crew of people working several hours a day."
Don and John were helping Phil Ward (Death and Co.) in a ragtag group of bartender "apprentices". It was kind of an interesting title choice once you saw the caliber of bartenders in the kitchen. They were responsible for batching and creating pretty much all the cocktails served at Tales related events. And if they weren't in the kitchen, they were in the seminar rooms or behind a bar at some event mixing and shaking.
My ears pricked at this suggestion. As informative the seminars had been, to be honest, I could only sit through so many of them and was starting to get a bit of first-timer burnout. At the same time I felt obligated to attend as much as possible to cram knowledge into my head, but it came at a cost. My butt was starting to get tired from sitting and my hands were itching from hearing about all the techniques and recipes.
"Really? I can do that?" I asked.
"Hey John, Sonya's gonna come down to the kitchen tomorrow to get some 'street cred' with us," Don said, the scare quotes practically etching themselves into the almost solid, humid air.
But then I remembered a press event I RSVP'ed to go to the next morning. Could I come in to help an hour in the morning?
"No." John and Don both said.
"You're either in it all the way or you're not," Don said. "The juice line doesn't work that way."
"Oh, come on," I protested. "It's not like I don't want to help. I just have a prearranged engagement tomorrow morning."
"That's called wussing out."
"No, that's called being responsible," I said.
My protestations were soon lost when Dave Arnold said he'd jump in the line and the conversation devolved into an impromptu event to set up a juice-a-thon between Ryan Fitzgerald and himself. Rules were written, and abandoned in the same breath and much smack was talked until Leo DeGroff made an appearance and showed interest in the wager. Apparently Leo's juicing skills is the stuff of legend and something meant to be discussed only in hushed tones of reverence. Ryan, the group's favorite, was quickly displaced by the Prince of Cocktail.
All Friday morning I found myself preoccupied with whether or not the showdown had happened between Ryan and Dave as I sat through a seminar on bitters after a media breakfast held at Brennan's. I wanted to go peek in to see what happened, but feared that I was banned from the kitchen thanks to my wussing out.
After the seminar I ran into LaTanya White, owner of the cocktail catering company 71 Proof in Tallahassee, Fla., as well as one of the apprentices. She said that it should be fine if I go down to the kitchen and helped now. With almost three hours free until I had to be at another seminar, I let Don know I was present to help. Alex Day pointed me to a box of latex gloves. I pulled a pair on and got to juicing. I was going to prove that I could do it and I wasn't just some soft doughy writer sitting in front of a computer who...
"Just wait one goddamn second," I thought an hour and a half later when I realized I had been juicing what seemed like a never ending flow of limes.
OK, maybe, just maaaaaaaayybe Don did Tom Sawyer me into helping out by insinuating both my mettle as journalist and a basic human being weren't up to snuff if I did not participate, but the man had a point about this being hard work. If you didn't see it just walking into hectic kitchen, you certainly knew it after changing gloves for the third time because the juices would penetrate through the latex and make your fingers sting and feeling the your shoulder muscles stiffen from using a a manual juicer, or, as I saw with Alex, having an electric juicer snip at your fingers if you weren't paying attention.
I wasn't the only one pressed (ha!) into service. Dave Arnold, who to his credit did show up at 8 a.m. to help juice, returned to juice some more. Even Jean-Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, who was attending Tales, popped into the kitchen to see how things were going and offer some morale. But that was his mistake because he also got pointed to the box of latex gloves by Alex. Johnny tried to laugh it off, but you don't joke about the juice line. So he too pulled on a pair and joined Joaquin Simo at his side to help cut limes in half to be juiced.
"I love it that we have the country's best pastry chef cutting fruit," Joaquin later commented.
And if for whatever reason you decide that your life is not complete unless you see someone halve lemons and limes at inhuman speeds, call up Johnny Iuzzini. That man goes through a crate of limes like...like...some kind of...lime cutting machine that cuts super fast.
Don pressed upon me several times that he was not joking about the group being like a pirate crew, and as I stood there listening to the orgeat syrup-like musical stylings of Curtis Mayfield coming out of on iPod dock, taking swigs out of a communal bottle of Rittenhouse and taking in the frequently salty banter of a group of hard working and harder playing bartenders, Don's comparison was ringing pretty true.
(A scene from the kitchen: Photo of Ryan in his "I Hate Cocktails" shirt taken by Camper. Not pictured? The back of the shirt. I'll just leave it at saying that several times on Friday when I'd unwittingly look in Ryan's direction when he had his back to me I'd burst out laughing. Maxwell Britten also gets honorable mention for his "Brown and stirred, bitches" shirt.)
So at 7:55 a.m. on Saturday I was back in the kitchen asking what I could help with. Don said it was a bit easier that morning and I made some lemon twists and orange zest and skipped off to another seminar.
It's kind of hard to see the scale how much these guys did even when you're in the thick of it producing gallons of juice or cutting 350 lemon twists because it becomes repetitive and downright inevitable in some ways. However, once out of the kitchen and throughout the day, I'd spot a lemon twist or an orange twist floating in a cocktail that looked oddly familiar or see how many times lemon and lime juice would come up in a recipe presented during a seminar as people sipped the samples, and speaking of which, how about all the math Don and John were doing to make enough cocktails for a 100 people with a recipe made to serve one? It was pretty insane to realize just how much work these guys were doing.
Don caught me in the hallway of the Hotel Monteleone a little later in the day and said that there was a last minute juicing emergency and I should get in the kitchen if I wanted to help.
Thomas Waugh (Alembic) and Joaquin were busy trying to get wheels and wedges out of limes so they weren't ready for juicing so I got to helping with some lemons.
Death and Co. owner Dave Kaplan made the same mistake Johnny did the day before and got put on the juice line for a while.
Eben Freeman came down to help and was soon organizing people and delegating tasks. Seeing me slooooooooowwwwwly cutting lemon twists (in my defense, I did just learn how to do it that morning) he told me to grab a free juicer to help with the limes while he got on the lemons to get the amount of twists needed and was soon getting them ready to be juiced.
All of the sudden it was like the juicing All Stars. Leo DeGroff showed up and proceeded to own everyone in the kitchen as he deftly manhandled an electric juicer and some unfortunate limes with a two-handed technique that I'm pretty sure broke several rules of physics.
"I give up. There's no way I'm keeping up with that," Daniel Eun said and relinquished his manual juicer and moved over to the lemons side. He wasn't an apprentice and was at Tales to hang out, but he also had been helping out in the kitchen whenever possible.
"Holy crap," I thought as I stared slack-jawed with a look that bordered on abject terror.
"I feel pretty damn useless next to you," I told Leo and was about to give up and go help where my help was actually needed, but he picked up a hand press and showed me.
"Just do it like this," he said and then proceeded to squeeze out a shot of juice that splashed me like I was in the splash zone at SeaWorld. Easy enough for him to say, he's been doing this since he was, like, 16 or something. He handily filled up the 1/3 full container to the brim in a matter of minutes before leaving.
For a few minutes I found myself juicing limes next to Gary Regan and it turned into a Christmas miracle. We thought we needed three more gallons of lime juice, but with the intervention of Saint Gary, when Eben decided to double-check we found out we just needed to top off the one container we were working on. There was more to be done, but at least a majority of the juicing was over with, so I went ahead to go get ready for the Tales of the Cocktail Spirit Awards.
"Thanks for the help," Phil Ward told me on Sunday before the start of a punch seminar he was chairing with Allen Katz and Dave Wondrich.
"No, thank you. It was a learning experience," I returned, and I meant it. Zesting an orange? I mean, I know how to grate, but I don't really do it all the time or anything like that. But thanks to talking to bartenders for so long, I now knew about pith. How else would I have found out that a dampened paper napkin lining the bottom of a container for twists, as well as covering them with another dampened paper napkin would keep them from drying out unless Dave Arnold told me? Sounds like common sense, but I never had to store 200 lemon twists and I don't know if I ever will. Using a peeler to get lemon twists was infinitely easier after Ryan fixed something as simple as where was placing my forefinger. And how would I have picked up the handy tip of soaking some cool limes that had been sitting in a walkthrough in warm water before juicing unless I'd watched Eben Freeman do exactly that?
That's pretty much what I wanted. I wasn't looking for some kind of macho respect when I said street cred, I just wanted to learn how things were done in the day-by-day. I could ask all the questions I had when I visited bars or read all the books I wanted, but what I wanted to know was what was habit to these guys.
"It's stuff like this that's what street cred's about," Don told me one evening. "It's not about who's got the best technique or who's making the best recipes. It's who's staying late to work on the garnishes or staying late to clean up."
So anyways, much kudos to the apprentice program guys. I know I didn't get to meet all of you, but great working with you (and please let me know if I've missed anybody in this list or got anything):
John Paul Deragon
Don Lee
Armando Archundia (the dude came all the way from Switzerland)
Joaquin Simo
Maxwell Britten
Alex Day
Jacquelyn Leon
Rhiannon Enlil
Catherine Fellet
LaTanya White
Ryan Fitzgerald
Chris Hannah
Thomas Waugh
Jim Kearns
Josephine Packard
Kimberly Patton-Bragg
Peter Vestinos
P.S. Thomas Waugh spilled about a pint of lime juice on me. Don and John, you derided me for not having capped him back with my juicer, but I just want you all to know, that's all part of my strategy. Oh, I'm going to get him all right. One of these days. He just doesn't know when or where.
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