Posted by Paul Clarke, May 9, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Sure, you could make mimosas on Mother’s Day. But if you’re looking for something a little more adventurous to make with your bubbly—or, perhaps the idea of spending an afternoon at your mother’s place requires a little extra fortification—you can send your greetings via Air Mail.
Bar manager Thad Vogler at Beretta in San Francisco likes these with the dry, floral taste of Barbancourt rum from Haiti, but the gentle, vanilla-y richness of Bacardi 8 also works well. And you’ll want to use a dry Champagne or sparkling wine here; something sweet will overshadow the rum, and you can adjust the sweetness of the drink by tinkering with the honey. The important thing is, the Air Mail is flexible while being suitably celebratory, and the potency can be dialed up or down depending on your mother’s tastes—and the day’s situation.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 25, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Before there was tiki, there was tropical. Back in the 1930s and early ‘40s, as Don the Beachcomber was spawning what was to become a wave of openings of Polynesian palaces, bartenders and restaurateurs were filling up their liquor shelves with rum and experimenting with new concoctions.
One of the earliest to be influenced by the Beachcomber was Victor Bergeron, who saw what Donn Beach had started in L.A. and took the idea home to Oakland, revamping his old Hinky Dinks watering hole and renaming it Trader Vic’s. In 1947, Bergeron published Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide, an extensive recipe guide detailing hundreds of drinks, including many proto-tiki mixes that reflected the experimentation that had been going on in earlier years.
The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail has a few of the tropical essentials: first, it’s based on rum; second, its flavor is fleshed out with fresh lime juice and the little-known syrup called falernum; and third, the name has both Caribbean and nautical overtones. It’s a few steps short of a full-blown Nui Nui, Sumatra Kula or Pearl Diver’s Punch, but there’s no shame in that. On a warm spring day, when the mood for something bright and tropical hits you but you’re not quite up for breaking into full luau mode, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail fits the bill quite nicely.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 18, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? Hit up the archives. Cheers!
What, you thought Manhattan was the only borough of New York that had a drink named after it? We’ll get to the Brooklyn later, but Staten Island and Queens? Well, sorry—better luck next time.
Like its namesake, The Bronx cocktail has taken a beating over the years. It all started out well (with origins at the old Waldorf-Astoria back when that was the place to drink), but when Prohibition hit, the Bronx became ... popular. This was a bad thing, you see, because all sorts of rotgut gin were being mixed into cocktails, and the Bronx was one of those that had enough other stuff in it to somewhat obscure the vile taste of the booze. By the time Repeal rolled around, many drinkers had lost a few layers of stomach lining to Bronxes and others of its ilk. As a result, it was remembered with so much ill will that the drink practically disappeared.
Let’s be honest: The Bronx is unlikely to be anyone’s favorite drink. But while it’s not exactly bottled excitement, The Bronx is actually pretty good, and surprisingly refreshing. Be sure to use fresh-squeezed orange juice (and if you add a dash or two of Angostura bitters, you’ve got a somewhat tastier Income Tax Cocktail on your hands), and approach it with an open mind. There are some things from the past worth revisiting from time to time.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 11, 2008 at 5:45 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
As much as I like to imagine it happening, chances are that Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott and the rest of the gang never tipped up a round of these.
While the members of the Algonquin Round Table likely never got on the outside of an Algonquin—the drink’s recipe didn’t appear in print until years after the legendary lunch meetings ended—this mixture bearing the name of that venerable hotel is as dry and captivating as was their wit. Fortunately, while the Round Table disbanded around 1929, it’s not too late to explore the flavor of the Algonquin.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, April 4, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Let’s admit up front that the name could be a problem. "Tuxedo" is a perfectly fine name for this cocktail, given the crisp formality of its austere dryness; however, it’s such a fetching name that other cocktails have used it as well. It should also be pointed out that this drink has traveled under different sobriquets—CocktailDB.com lists similar recipes under names such as the Cutest One, the Fino Martini, the Golden Girl, the Straight Law and the Roe a Coe Cocktail, and that’s without even breaking a sweat. But it’s best not to get too tangled up in the etymology of a drink; instead, take the many versions as proof that dry gin and fino sherry are destined to be together.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 28, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Indecisiveness isn’t a characteristic limited to humans. Consider the weather: we’re fresh out of spring’s starting gate (those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), but here in Seattle, a place of moderate maritime climes if ever there was one, bits of slushy snow were clinging to the blossoming daffodils late last night.
When the weather (or your palate) is being indecisive, it’s best for your cocktails to play along. That’s where the El Presidente comes in: made with light rum, it has a bright, summery appeal; but with the gravitas brought to the drink by dry vermouth and orange curacao, the flavor is ready to pull on a sweater against the evening’s chill.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 14, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
For a holiday so frequently associated with tipsy merriment, St. Patrick’s Day is certainly celebrated with a bum bunch of drinks.
Okay, there’s Guinness—I’ll give you that as the primary redeeming tipple for the day, with a tip of the hat also to the decent drams of Red Breast. But what else do you see being poured? Buckets of American lager tinted with vegetable dye, mugs of Irish coffee so laden with sugar and whipped cream that a drinker will lapse into a diabetic coma before inebriation sets in, and in the more raucous places the young folks frequent, the unfortunately named Irish Car Bombs.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, March 13, 2008 at 3:45 PM
I must admit, I’m kind of a St. Patrick's Day scrooge: parades bring out the agoraphobic in me, I look terrible in green, and I detest shepherd's pie. I usually boycott the holiday entirely, staying in while my friends head out to pubs to guzzle pints of dyed beer.
I do, however, have a soft spot in my heart (stomach?) for Bailey's liqueur. It’s one of my booze shelf staples: I use it to bake brownies, and I often add it to hot chocolate for a special late-night treat. So this year, I decided to see if I could create a festive drink that would put even a cynic like me in the mood to celebrate the shamrock. Inspired by the knock-it-back-fast classic, the Irish Car Bomb, I came up with this beer float, using Guinness stout and Ben & Jerry's Dublin Mudslide. A marriage of alcohol and ice cream—what could be more delicious?
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Posted by Paul Clarke, March 7, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
If you’ve ever been to a luau-themed party or exotic bar, or sipped your way through a beach vacation, chances are you’ve been served a mai tai. Unless you’re especially lucky or just happen to have a thing for tiki drinks, however, chances are even better you’ve been served a fraud.
Spawned from the rum-soaked genius mind of “Trader Vic” Bergeron, the mai tai is one of the most regal refreshments in the exotic-drink universe. Originally made with 17-year-old Jamaican rum, imported French orgeat, Dutch curaçao and fresh-squeezed lime juice, the mai tai quickly became a phenomenon; it also quickly became perverted. Hordes of Trader Vic-wannabes took wild stabs at recreating Bergeron’s long-secret recipe, and the result is what we all-too-often experience now: a sweet, murky drink filled with assorted fruit juices and syrups, with little resemblance to the original swoon-worthy concoction.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 29, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Let's start the weekend right—with a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles). Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
When I was a kid, one of my mother’s closest friends was in the habit of slyly pointing out that she’d had only twelve (or thereabouts) birthdays—this, despite the fact that she was a middle-aged mother of three. Her punchline of course—and note I never said it was a good one—was that she was born on February 29, a date that only appears on the calendar when leap year rolls around.
Hey, look at today’s date! As you might expect from such a benign oddity, the day has spawned its own cocktail. The Savoy Cocktail Book states, “This Cocktail was created by Harry Craddock, for the Leap Year celebrations at the Savoy Hotel, London, on February 29th, 1928. It is said to have been responsible for more proposals than any other cocktail that has ever been mixed.”
I can’t attest to Craddock’s claim, but I can back up the notion that the Leap Year is a very engaging concoction. Mildly sweet, with a faint touch of bitterness, the cocktail is tasty enough to be enjoyed regularly while we wait for the next February 29 to roll around.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 22, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
The Manhattan’s fans are legion; they are also, fortunately, innovators.
While there are a handful of cocktails that take the basic Martini and employ respectful riffs, the Manhattan is the mixologist’s true muse. Whiskey, vermouth, bitters—a simple, basic trio, but one that lends itself to all manners of variation. Early versions of the venerable drink welcomed dashes of absinthe or maraschino liqueur—if you’re wondering why, try it and discover the brilliance a few dashes can make—and wider-ranging interpretations include the Brooklyn, made with the bitter orange Amer Picon, and the Rob Roy, with scotch in place of the rye or bourbon.
These innovations aren’t all vintage. Here’s a relative of the Manhattan that dates to within the past five years, a drink created by New York bartender Enzo Errico that utilizes its ancestor’s rye whiskey base, matches it with the bitter Italian vermouth Punt e Mes, and fills in the flavor with a hearty dose of funky maraschino liqueur. Named for a once rough-and-tumble Brooklyn neighborhood that’s since changed with the times, the Red Hook is one of the more memorable variations of the Manhattan.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 15, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
In 2008, if you’re an adult male who feels the need for a little, um, assistance in the intimacy department, you reach for one of the pharmaceuticals you see advertised during football games. In 1928, if you needed a little vavoom in the bedroom, you went to see Dr. Voronoff.
So popular was Voronoff’s vitality procedure in the 1920s that it inspired the creation of the Monkey Gland, a cocktail named for the rather sensitive part of an unfortunate simian’s anatomy that Voronoff surgically implanted into his eager patients.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, February 13, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Valentine's Day is less than 24 hours away, and wine shops everywhere are busting out the Champagne. But before you blow a wad of cash on an expensive bottle of bubbly, why not consider a carton?
That’s right: a carton of wine. Don't worry, though—this boozy treat bears no relation to the 5-liter boxes of Chablis that may haunt your collegiate past. Each pint packs up to 5% alcohol by volume, and there are currently six varietals to choose from: Rosé, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Sangria Rojo, and Champagne.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 8, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
This cocktail has a name, appearance and elegant flavor well suited for Valentine’s Day. Unlike its floral namesake, however, this Rose is best enjoyed in quantities of fewer than a dozen.
Rescued from a vintage bar menu by cocktail historian David Wondrich, the Rose enjoyed a brief flash of popularity at the Chatham Hotel in Paris in the 1920s. Good luck finding it since then, which is a shame; soft, floral, lightly sweet and with a titillating aroma from the cherry eau de vie, the Rose is an exercise in delicate decadence, a drink that, like the Widow’s Kiss, can put the imbiber in a mindset from a completely different era.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, February 1, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Regardless of what Punxsatawney Phil happens to see when he’s persuaded to emerge from his burrow in front of a battery of television cameras at Gobbler’s Knob this weekend, there’s plenty of winter yet to come. To keep seasonal affective disorder at bay, sometimes it’s wise to embrace the season for its good points: steaming plates of comfort food are all the more comforting in the winter; you can build crackling fires in the fireplace to drive away the chill; and deep, brooding cocktails seem to provide extra solace at a time when daylight is still at a premium.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 25, 2008 at 5:45 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Drinks such as the Manhattan have recipes that are so engaging and enduring that the cocktail moves straight from inception into the classic column; others, such as the Harvey Wallbanger, enjoy a brief flare of popularity then mostly disappear. Then you have the undead: the drinks that enjoy a certain degree of fame for years or even decades then succumb to changing tastes and disappear from view, only to pop up again on the cultural radar long after being presumed dead.
Enter the Corpse Reviver #2. Part of a class of “corpse reviver” cocktails—so named because of their purported ability to bring the dead (or at least painfully hungover) back to some semblance of life—this drink was a staple of bar manuals back in the 1930s, only to fall off the map in the last half of the 20th century. Then, thanks in large part to cocktail historian Ted Haigh (aka “Dr. Cocktail”), the Corpse Reviver #2 was rediscovered by a generation of 21st century cocktail geeks.
High time, too. Delicately balanced, not too powerful, with a lingering, mysterious flavor, the Corpse Reviver #2 is enjoying a well-deserved second wind.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 11, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Not every occasion calls for something as strong as a Martini. Sometimes you need a drink that's a little softer and more gentle, one that slowly works out the kinks from a long day yet has enough character and sophistication to make it clear you’re not taking any short cuts.
There are several drinks that go by the name “Trilby;” I don’t know where this one originated, but I really like it as an aperitif, and keep one at hand when preparing a weekend dinner. It’s simple, yet elegant, and soft but not too much; if you’re looking for an engaging pre-dinner companion, you could do a lot worse.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, January 4, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
We’re less than a week into the new year, and I’ve only broken a couple of my resolutions so far. For me, that’s a pretty good start.
Along with eating healthier, getting rid of clutter, and pausing to count to ten before I place a hasty bid on eBay, one of my resolutions is to combat my habit to procrastinate. Anybody else with me on that one? Yeah, I thought so.
Here’s a cocktail I came up with a couple of years ago, and it’s not too shabby if I say so myself. Its moniker derives from the fact that it took me more than a month to get around to posting it on my blog, for no reason other than its namesake. Tonight, after a light dinner, I’m mixing up one of these to enjoy while I go through the piles of paper on my desk and stay the hell away from eBay. Well, I dunno...maybe I'll do that tomorrow.
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Posted by Ed Levine, December 28, 2007 at 4:15 PM
You don't normally think of Mario Batali as a mixologist, but I came across this Balsamic Bloody Mary recipe in his cool little book Holiday Food. If you're throwing a New Year's brunch or party this weekend, make a pitcher of these and offer one to every guest that walks in the door. You'll kick-start your party in a major way.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, December 21, 2007 at 7:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) that's perfect for Christmas. Cheers and ho! ho! ho!
As Yuletide traditions go, they don’t come much more classic than the Tom & Jerry. Bowls of this rich, boozy warmer were a staple at countless 19th century saloons after the season’s first sign of snow. As a Christmas tradition, the ritual of breaking out the Tom & Jerry mugs lasted well into the Eisenhower administration; the link between the drink and the holiday was such that it was immortalized by Damon Runyon in Dancing Dan’s Christmas, in 1931:
This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.
Changing tastes left this venerable holiday drink behind, but pockets of devotees still remain. Today, the Tom & Jerry is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, as lovers of classic cocktails try their hand at mixing a bowl. Preparing the batter does take a little work, but it can be doled out all day (and night) at holiday parties and Christmas gatherings. Basically a sort of hot eggnog, the drink may seem unfamiliar to contemporary palates; no worry, Tom & Jerry has a way of making friends real fast.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 20, 2007 at 3:45 PM
For those of you who may have been intrigued by the Charleston Punch but do not have plans to entertain groups of 300 people over the holidays, consider this saner yet festive alternative from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
.* Matt Lee and Ted Lee are Charleston denizens, but Matt developed the prototype of this punch for a black-tie holiday dinner at a Harvard eating club, so make of that what you will. It is possible that lower indigenous levels of gentility call for lower levels of alcohol.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 20, 2007 at 3:00 PM
The response to the New Orleans Junior League eggnog suggests that within the Serious Eats community there is a hitherto unexpressed interest in the alcoholic concoctions of nice Southern ladies. And why not? Without a flutter, they present recipes featuring booze in quantities that would make Dylan Thomas blanch. Witness the Cotillion Club Punch from the aforementioned Charleston Receipts. To make about 300 servings, you'll need:
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 18, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Eggnog may be second only to fruitcake as a holiday punchline. And why not? It comes up most often as an explanation for otherwise inexplicable behavior at office parties, and the pre-made version in most grocery stores resembles an opaque, insipid quart of 10W-30 motor oil. For the first 30 or so years of my life, I never gave much eggnog much thought. Then, thanks to a lucky day at Myopic Books, the Gourmet's Guide to New Orleans came into my life. The name is misleading—it is, in fact, a Junior League cookbook. Charleston Receipts is probably the most famous Junior League cookbook, but as a rule, they are worth keeping an eye out for when you trawl the cookbook section at your favorite used book store. My copy is the 13th edition, from 1955, but I don't know when the eggnog recipe became part of the collection. After I read the recipe, I knew immediately I had to make it:
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Posted by Paul Clarke, December 14, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Think of it as an easy, no-egg eggnog. Or think of it as a classic Southern tipple, with an alluring blend of sweetness and richness, and a deep-flavored kick. However you approach the milk punch, just be sure to think of it sometime during the holiday season.
I had a great time sipping one of these on a July morning in New Orleans, but with its fullness of flavor, its silky texture and its nutmeg finish, the milk punch seems particularly well-suited to this time of year. Classically made with a combo of brandy and rum, the milk punch also works well with bourbon in the place of either or both. And while it’s lovely to drink the punch when poured into a glass full of crushed ice, you can instead serve it hot, for a rich and potent warmer. Either way, this drink that dates back to horse-and-buggy days has a way of slowing everything down, taking the edge off a hectic holiday season if only for an hour or two.
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Posted by Jenn Smith, December 13, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Before he was an Iron Chef, before challenging other cooks to a Throwdown, before planning an upscale burger joint, Bobby Flay was a cook with a passion for the flavors of the Southwest—smoky, spicy, fruity. He translated this love of chiles, honey, and mesquite into the menu for his first restaurant, Mesa Grill.
In the 16 years since it opened, the menu has evolved, but the core ideas and the Mesa classics that bring the color and energy of the "contemporary Southwest" to diners in New York and Las Vegas year after year are still present.
Today Flay is everywhere, including on the bookshelves (he's written six previous cookbooks). This is his first restaurant-related cookbook, but the translation of food created in the professional kitchen into recipes useful to the home cook is pretty successful.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 9, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
Before serving a big Thanksgiving meal, there are two things you want to avoid: getting your guests (or yourself) too giddy on generous pours of wine or scotch; and killing the palates of all the assembled guests by doling out rich, sweet pre-prandial ice-breakers that blunt, rather than enhance, the appetite.
Here’s a way to avoid these related hazards, while still serving something creative that will help get the conversation flowing. Created by Audrey Saunders, co-owner of Pegu Club and the mind behind some of the best cocktails in current circulation, Eve relies wholly on a base of dry vermouth, its herbal flavor enhanced by a slow maceration of fresh apples. Lower in alcohol than a cocktail or a scotch on the rocks, and with a complexity of flavor that sets the stage for the meal to come, Eve has a delicate character perfectly suited for the season.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, November 2, 2007 at 6:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail recipe from Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
I don’t know who Cameron was, or why he might want to be kicking. But I do know that this unlikely union of ingredients makes one of the most startlingly appealing drinks in the bartender’s vintage-cocktail arsenal.
Scotch whisky is a notoriously difficult ingredient to use in cocktails; Irish whiskey isn’t much better. Introduce them into the same glass, though, with some lemon juice for brightness and the ethereal character of orgeat for sweetness, and they get along as nice as can be. This cocktail dates back to at least 1930; that’s when it crops up in a slim book called Cocktails, by “Jimmy” late of Ciro’s (it also appears in the Savoy Cocktail Book at about the same time). It’s too unlikely a bird to ever have enjoyed widespread fame; but its idiosyncrasies are the very things that make it so appealing.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 26, 2007 at 5:45 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
It may sound like a powder keg, but this drink that predates the republic has its own charm. Quintessentially autumnal and once a staple of every tavern menu, the Stone Fence is a bibulous fossil of the colonial era, a time when hard cider filled every cup, sometimes mixed with something harder to help ward off the chill.
Use an artisanal cider, if you can find one, but the choice of spirit is pretty open: applejack or the bolder Laird’s Apple Brandy provide a nice boost of apple flavor, but bourbon, rye, scotch, or dark rum are all perfectly acceptable. Just don’t underestimate the Stone Fence—get too casual with a second or a third, and you may feel like you’ve run headlong into the drink’s namesake.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 19, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail from Paul Clarke to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
It ain’t fancy, but that’s a big part of its appeal. Because at the end of a long day—scratch that; long week—you don’t always feel like challenging your palate, or even thinking about it very much. You just want a nice, easy drink, one that’s as loyal and friendly as an old dog, that doesn’t mind if you pad around the living room in your socks or lie back on the couch watching shows you’d never dare admit you enjoy. Who’s it gonna tell, anyway?
It’s Friday afternoon, and if you’re lucky you’ve got about 60 hours before you have to think or speak for anybody else again. Time for the Whiskey Sour—the comfortable T-shirt of drinks.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, October 12, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? That kinda week, eh? Here you go. Cheers!
You could call the Last Word the true zombie of the cocktail world. Unlike the Zombie—that venerable tiki concoction which was constantly altered over the years, but which never actually disappeared—the Last Word was created and was then promptly forgotten for decades, before being brought back to life—rising from the grave, as it were—stronger and more powerful than ever.
The Last Word dates to Prohibition, as far as anyone can tell, and except for a brief mention in Bottoms Up!—a 1951 cocktail manual by Ted Saucier—the drink languished in obscurity until about four years ago, when Seattle bartender Murray Stenson dusted off the recipe and began serving the drink to customers at Zig Zag Café. Fast-forward to the present day, and the Last Word is a fully revived classic, gracing the bar menus in cities around the globe. More popular now than it ever was in its youth, the Last Word is a surprisingly tasty balance of four ingredients working in perfect unison. Mix one up this weekend, and make up for lost time.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, September 21, 2007 at 5:15 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!
The Cocktail à la Louisiane is much more delicious than a near-obsolete drink has any right to be. Once the house cocktail for the Restaurant de la Louisiane—“one of the famous French restaurants of New Orleans,” wrote city historian Stanley Clisby Arthur in 1937—this rich, voluptuous mix of rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and the herbal Benedictine liqueur is accented with the subtle flavor of anise, provided by New Orleans’ homegrown Peychaud’s bitters and a few dashs of absinthe or pastis. First documented 70 years ago in Arthur’s Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em, the Cocktail à la Louisiane has been largely ignored since then. It’s worth the effort to search out the ingredients (or a talented bartender in a well-stocked establishment) and bring this drink into the 21st century.
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Posted by Paul Clarke, August 10, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Let's get this weekend started right. Here's a cocktail to kick things off. Need more than one? Here you go. Cheers!
Don’t let the color fool you. With its gentle pink hue, the Jasmine may look as prissy and cute as a Hello Kitty armband, and its unassuming appearance and sprightly color has no doubt appealed to many drinkers of the once-ubiquitous Cosmo. But unlike that candy-colored alcopop, the Jasmine is all business, its alluring tint supplied not by the Cosmopolitan’s innocuous red cranberry juice but by the intensely garnet Campari, an Italian aperitif famous for its powerful bitter flavor and its racy advertising campaigns.
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