Entries tagged with 'cocktails'
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©iStockPhoto/Jan RihakIn today’s Washington Post, Jason Wilson touches on a topic that’s the pet peeve of many craft bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts: the prevalence of sour mix in many restaurants and bars. In "Sour With a Natural Power," Wilson notes that squeezing a lemon (or a bunch of them before a shift) and adding some sugar or simple syrup is a pretty simple and straightforward activity. Why, then, during this supposed golden renaissance of mixology does commercial sour mix persist? This mix usually sneaks up on you, like a mullet seen from the front. And you usually spot it too late, once you've settled onto the bar stool. It's a hot day, and you're maybe thinking about a Tom Collins,...
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Bloody Marys are one of those things that, like cilantro, inspire pure love or massive hatred. At Chile Pepper, we're split right down the middle. Personally, I think a Bloody Mary must include a strong hit of horseradish, celery salt, a sprinkle of lemon zest and, of course, a celery stalk. What's a must-have for you? As alcohol folklore goes, it was the sophisticated palates of New Yorkers who thought the Bloody Mary was bland when it debuted at the St. Regis Hotel's King Cole Bar in Manhattan in 1934. An American bartender, Fernand "Pete" Petiot, who had mixed equal parts of tomato juice and vodka while working at Harry's New York Bar in Paris during the 1920s, created...
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Photograph from Invisible Hour on Flickr Thank god for Prohibition. Before the Big Thirst got underway in 1920, the barroom was for the most part a masculine place. Women were banned from many drinking establishments—either by law, by house rules or by social standards—and it wasn't until the 1920s, when the owners of then-illegal watering holes were less picky about who they let through the door, that a female presence started to become a somewhat regular occurrence in bars across the country. As Eric Felten noted in "Women Behind Bars" in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, it took another couple of decades before women moved to the other side of the bar in any kinds of numbers. Felten writes...
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©iStockphoto.com/YinYang Eric Felten, the drinks columnist for the Wall Street Journal, seems to think so. He cites this year’s edition of Food & Wine’s annual cocktail compilation, Cocktails ’09, as proof of vodka’s demotion in the cocktail world. This year’s book has only ten vodka-based drinks, Felten notes, whereas the 2005 edition had 60. He openly celebrates the decline of all kinds of -tinis in favor of drinks based on gin, brandy, and other intensely flavored spirits. “As a way to inject unobtrusive alcoholic content into sugary drinks,” he writes of vodka, “the spirit is unsurpassed…But vodka's neutrality and uniformity would seem to be at odds with the slow-food crowd's embrace of robust flavors reflecting specific locales.” Is vodka...
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Photograph from Eleonor on FlickrI never really bought into mezcal’s whole hallucinogenic-insect thing, not even when I was a gullible undergrad, but the close urban-legend association between mezcal and creepy crawlies was enough to keep me away from the spirit for most of my adult years. Not that I was missing out on anything – until relatively recently, most commercial mezcal sold in the U.S. was of shoddy quality, and mezcal was a novelty booze that was better known for having a dare-worthy worm or scorpion in the bottle than for any gustatory excellence. But as Dan Saltzstein writes in today's New York Times, mezcal is on the ascendance. Artisan-crafted mezcals such as those from Ilegal, Del Maguey, Sombra and...
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Editor’s Note: Serious Eats correspondent Carey Jones, eating her way around Italy, will be reporting back from Rome, Bologna, Tuscany, and Puglia. "For those who like to taste and nibble without committing too much money or stomach space, it’s a dream come true." Americans have their happy hour bar snacks; the Spanish, their tapas. But no one does a drink-and-nibble like the Italians and their aperitivi. Starting around 6 p.m, give or take a few hours, most bars deliver a small tray of bite-sized stuzzichini (appetizers) with your drink—a pair of eggplant-ricotta rolls, say, or a few prosciutto crostini. And an increasing number of bars are laying out full-scale buffets of enticing finger foods, included in the price of your...
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The idea of an alcohol-free cocktail is an oxymoron to some, and an easy punchline to others. But as Jason Wilson points out in today’s Washington Post, creating booze-free libations is not as easy as it looks. Photograph from iStockPhoto.comIn “Taking Mocktails Seriously,” Wilson talks to bartenders and drink experts who are pioneering creative alcohol-free concoctions, and not just for the under-21 set. As he notes, simply leaving out the alcohol isn’t quite the common-sense solution it might seem. “Nonalcoholic cocktails can present more of a challenge than regular cocktails because liquor usually offsets the sweetness of other ingredients and adds complexity,” Wilson writes. “Take away the booze and you've got to find a new way to layer and balance...
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The bar at The Foundry. As if the booze-pump wasn’t primed enough for the advance of craft cocktails and other well-made drinks, an article titled "Bar Wars" in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted another recent shift that has the potential to bode well for good imbibing: high-end restaurants are placing a greater emphasis on their bar and lounge areas. What’s prompting restaurants such as Per Se in New York and The Foundry in Los Angeles to expand their bar offering, of course, has less to do with a sudden desire to promote bibulous artistry than with the simple need to survive during catastrophic economic times. As Katy McLaughlin writes, Around the country, proprietors are turning their restaurants—or significant parts...
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If the bartender is simply opening a beer or pouring a glass of Scotch, $1 a drink may still make sense. But what about those bars where ordering a drink is more along the lines of ordering an entrée in a restaurant?
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In the April issue of Saveur, the editors write that the growing interest in well-honed cocktails has created a demand for classic bar manuals. In a piece titled “The Cocktail Chronicles” (hmmm, that sounds familiar...), Saveur’s editors note that this demand for rich sources of creative drink recipes has even affected that old, dusty standard found in every rec-room home bar: the Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s Guide. Mr. Boston’s familiar red-covered bar guides have been in circulation since 1935, and flipping through the pages of the old 1930s and '40s editions is a trip through the past. My 1946 edition has a color insert featuring 12 of the drinks that ruled the era, including the Manhattan, the Tom Collins, the...
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