Bar Gripes

A few mild rants and observations garnered while at various bars.

1. Local bar, normally very good, but small. Had a Green Monk, their version, which was essentially lemon vodka with a splash of Chartreuse. Pretty good. They featured a Sazerac, which you don't usually see, so I told the wife she was driving home and ordered one. Not very good. I admire bars branching out from the everyday, but when you do....do it right, dude! The glass was not frozen (a Saz needs to be icy cold), but hey, I could overlook that since not all bars are set up to handle that. But when you just swish around some ice cubes, splash Pernod for a rinse, then throw in rye and Peychaud's---I suppose technically you've made a Sazerac, but it's a pretty lame one. They were using Michter's Rye, which is okay, but there are better rye whiskies available, honestly. And they overdosed with Peychaud's (which I'll admit is easy enough to do, but a bartender should learn how NOT to do). Then they forgot the slice of lemon peel, for rimming the glass, then dunking. Made all the difference, cumulatively, from a good Saz toa mediocre one. Disappointment.

2. Chain restaurant in the burbs of Kansas City, and we sat at the bar for a bbq dinner. Dinner was so-so, but the surprise was a young, fairly inexperienced but downright enthusiastic bartender. Here's a young kid who knows his bourbons, and loves to make the classics the right way! He made a Woodford Manhattan, straight up, by sight, no measuring, and did it perfectly. Great color, clean taste, just the right temperature, no floaties from the ice, and a perfect pour. I love it when a person excels past their surroundings, and this guy did. If he stays in the biz. he will end up being a great bartender.

3. Prestigious restaurant down on Country Club Plaza in KC, Plaza III. Been there forever, and it's a Kansas institution. Meal was fine, and the steaks lived up to their rep, but we hit the bar first. Congenial bartenders, and a great mise en scene. It looks like an old-fashioned bar is supposed to look, with dark woods and high stools and white coated tenders. Curiously, the tenders made all their cocktails in glass, then poured over. No shakers, just in glass and pour to another glass. Made pretty decent drinks withal, but I thought it odd that in this emporium of the cocktail they had exactly one vermouth: Gallo! Now, no slam on Gallo, because they actually make a pretty decent low end vermouth---but hey, no Noilly Prat? No M&R, for god sake? And let's not even go for Carpano Antico, huh? Whassup? Turns out they did have an old, dusty bottle of Dubonnet Rouge that had been sitting around for who knows how long, so my friend didn't have to suffer through Gallo poured over fine whiskey; bit strange in the finished cocktail, but he said it was interesting.

Rant: A bar like this should have a full setup, without question. The kind of place it is,the rep it has, and the prices it charges, it should be a fully furnished bar. And, sadly, it isn't.

On the other hand, we did have a couple of killer bottles of Marques de Caceres Gran Reserva Rioja 2001 for a ridiculously low price, so it wasn't all bad. And the KC Strip with Roquefort was excellent. But they can do better in the bar, for sure.

I'll admit that not only have I not had any of the cocktails you've mentioned, but also that I have never even heard of them.

That said, is there a single cast-iron correct wayto make a cocktail? Isn't there any room for the bartender to be creative? If there was just a single recipe for each cocktail then do you really need a bartender, surely a machine could do it?

I'm thinking of the multiple ways food recipes are interpreted, a 'caesar salad', for example, rarely looks the same in two different places. A Napolitana pizza means whatever the restaurant wants.

And how does one know what the correct version on a cocktail is? Does it just come down to a memory of the very first one tasted?

Peter, Hi...


Indeed Peter there are no "cast-iron correct" methods and there is room for creativity. As with the dishes you mention though, there is a certain limit to the room for variation before the cocktail or the dish becomes something else. Tournedos that are not topped with goose liver, no matter whether it sits on an artichoke heart and no matter how exquisite the sauce is simply not tournedos Rossini; and a salad that contains iceberg lettuce and not romaine lettuce is in no way a Caesar salad. The same would be true with a grasshopper cocktail – if it does not contain both white and green crème de menthe it just ain't a grasshopper. As to pizza Napolitana specifically – indeed there is a traditional recipe and although many variations on the theme are fine, too many variations deserve a different name..

As to machines, indeed true, and many "cocktail mixes" can be purchased pre-made in tins and some even in powdered form, all that these require is the addition of the appropriate alcoholic beverage. Most of those, of course, are pretty poor. (The one exception I have found is in several of the tinned Bloody Mary mixes offered on airlines. I avoid the intake of too much alcohol on airplanes but do enjoy the Bloody Mary mix just served over ice).

As to the "correct version" of many cocktails, there are several guides, those including for example the Mr Boston Bartender's Guide, the best of which agree on nearly all of the recipes used. The bartender who does not have a copy of one of those guides under his/her bar is a poor bartender indeed. Going a step further, the "favorite" version of a cocktail is a very personal matter and may not be all that "correct", depending perhaps on factors as seemingly insignificant as the manner in which a particular barman flicks his wrist while holding a cocktail shaker. As in the kitchen, so at the bar - talent tells. On the other hand, while a rose by any other name remains a rose, a stinkweed or a tulip, by whatever name, will never be a rose.

Best
Rogov

I only drink an occasional martini (once or twice a year) and the only other times I drink hard liquor is an occasional after dinner cognac or eggnog with rum during the holidays. But Ilike my wine and beer. I did discover, with the help of my sons, a very nice small local Irish Pub that has 24 beers on tap - major imports to micros - and 15 cent chicken wings that can be ordered in over 30 ways, from Buffalo style mild to various BBQ styles (the Jack Daniels are tasty) to grilled jerk to musabi. And they're good wings - nice size and cooked properly.

Hoke - the Sazerac is my favorite cocktail. I've been so dissapointed when ordering them that I almost never have one unless I'm in New Orleans at the bar where they were, I'm told, invented. (I forget the name; Inn of the Seven Sisters or something?) Anyway, I agree with you and think that if cocktails are not done right they shouldn't be named the same as the original. I think that some cocktails do have a "cast-iron correct" recipe and the Sazerac is one of them.

Hoke..just curious..Which KC burb and which resto? Did some consulting in Overland Park a few years back, wd go back in a nano second

thanks, Jon

BTW..as the result of one of your prior posts, my wife and I enjoyed dinner and wine at Bistro Don Ggiovanni in Napa during our trip to wine country..thanks for the headsup

I did discover, with the help of my sons, a very nice small local Irish Pub that has 24 beers on tap - major imports to micros - and 15 cent chicken wings that can be ordered in over 30 ways, from Buffalo style mild to various BBQ styles (the Jack Daniels are tasty) to grilled jerk to musabi. And they're good wings - nice size and cooked properly.

Sadly, that price may not last long...

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/01/21/cruz.ny.buffalo.wing.shortage.wivb

We have a little place here in Asheville called "Scratch," where the house makes its own bitters and even its own tonic water. I ordered an Old Fashioned, a drink my parents enjoyed in the 1950s, and while the cocktail was constructed strictly by the book, the home-made bitters lent the drink a unique personality.

Hey Hoke! I'm a Kansas City area native, and here's a recommendation for you the next time you're in KC: downtown, there's a little place called Sienna Bistro. A sort of modern Italian place. The owner tends the bar, and brings you your drinks personally. They make a fabulous coffee liquor in-house; when I asked for Cognac, the waitress came back and asked me 'all we have is Petite Champagne, is that OK?;' I ordered a glass of Gigondas, and got to talking to the owner about Rhone wines, and he goes and brings me tasters (on the house) of Rhone blends from Cali and Australia for comparison. Small but very thoughtful wine list featuring small production wines. And the food was fabulous.

Sienna Bistro
303 W 10TH St
Kansas City, MO 64105-1615
Phone: (816) 527-0220

Good questions, Peter.

Is there a single 'cast iron' way to make cocktails. Well, Daniel has already covered that pretty well, I think. Yes, in some cases with the classics. Generally, no.

Is there room to be creative? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I cherish that when I meet the creative mixologists. I am not in any way against bar experimentation and individual creativity. Far from it. But when you're dealing with a classic cocktail, you'd better pay attention to the details----because people are ordering it because of the details.

Take the Manhattan, for instance. Seemingly a simple drink: but that makes the making of it more important, because it is so simple. Whiskey, vermouth, bitters. Bingo, that's it. But what if you leave the ice in contact with the ingredients for too long a time? You get dilution, and that takes away the "bite" the drink must have to be a Manhattan. Or you you put a dash or two too much Angostura? Changes the balance of the drink totally. Or if you 'freehand', and you're not very good, or very experienced at pouring freehand? Once again, you get the balance wrong. Or if you pour from the well whiskey---which is generally the cheapest and blandest swill around? Well, obviously there are differences in brands or types that will impact flavor.

Case in point with Sazerac, another very simple drink. If you don't use a good rye whiskey, you get a pallid drink. You need good rye because it has a spicy, complex tang to it that you simply don't get from, say, a heavily wheated whiskey, which is usually sweet and simple. So a rye made with mediocre whiskey is going to be a mediocre drink. Then, add in ice dilution, temperature too warm in the glass and the contents, and no acidic citrusy/oily bite of lemon peel---and you've got a pale imitation of a Sazerac.

Now, on the other hand (getting back to the Manhattan), where there is faithfulness, there is also creativity. It's like the great Impressionist painters: they could go off on as many tangents as they wished, but first they had to master (and understand) the existing metier by copying the predecessors well. With the Manhattan, you've got an immediate derivation, where you can substitute half dry/half sweet (red) vermouth instead of just red vermouth. Called a Dry Manhattan. Different drink.

Then there's the Totally Dry Manhattan, with all dry vermouth. Or you can elect to use something like Carpano Antico, which is considerably more complex, and considerably more bitter, than vermouth. Heck, just switching from Martini & Rossi to Noilly Prat or Boisset vermouths will give you a very different drink.

Then you consider the bitters. Most people use Angostura, and that's okay, it's great stuff. But some bartenders prefer Fee's Brothers Original Bitters, because it has a different palette of flavors (for one thing, it actually has angostura bark in it, which oddly enough Angostura Bitters does not). Or you can make your own bitters, which a lot of mixologists do now. Or you can use a relatively new brand called Stirrings, although I generally find them too sweet and not of the highest complexity. Then there's the two crazy guys in Germany that are making these strange and wonderful concoctions called The Bitter Truth (you can mail order them, I believe).

So yes, there are recipes, and then there is unlimited creativity. Otherwise, we wouldn't have ever come up with something as ghastly and revolting as a
Chocolate Martini. (abomination)

We've had a few cocktail bars spring up around town lately that purport to take these drinks seriously. You can actually get a really good Sazerac or a good Aviation here. These drinks rely heavily on getting just the right balance and ingredients and they're great when made right, awful when made wrong. On the more creative end of things, we had one bartender vary a Sidecar with a couple of dashes of Fee's Peach Bitters. This changed the drink in a really delicious fashion (and inspired us to run out and get a bottle of those bitters for home use). Same went with a Lemon Drop that was made with gin rather than vodka and shaken with a couple of sprigs of fresh basil. Absolutely wonderful stuff, and the bartender couldn't really be accused of going too far away from the original because he didn't even have a name for that one.

Mike, I love the Fee Brothers bitters line. The grapefruit is awesome. The only one I'm not really sold on is the Mint Bitters; the tone just doesn't seem right to me, and I figure the primary reason for using that flavor is to shortcut when making a Mojito----and I really hate shortcuts like that.

Regan's Blood Orange Bitters is pretty good too. Bitters made out of desperation by an expert in spirits, because he couldn't find a commercial one he liked.

So I've got Angostura, Peychaud, various and sundry Fee Brothers, and Regan's Blood Orange. Had Stirrings, but didn't really care for them, so I didn't replace.

Really want to latch on to some of The Bitter Truth (you can google it). I hear those guys make some tremendously good, and very intense, concoctions.

And I'm getting more and more interested in making my own.

Other Mike: I love the KC area, and go there whenever I have a chance. Jimmy's, American Place, and some others on the Plaza are all great places to eat. And I love staying at the old stately Raphael----it's more Euro than anything else, and a lovely building. Good wine and spirits store there now too. Cellar Rat, I think it's called. Great selection and a thoroughly wine geek owner.

By the way, since we've been talking about the Sazerac, I thought I'd mention, for the puristas:

Sazerac originally was a concoction of absinthe, bitters and French brandy (cognac) devised in New Orleans by a gentleman from the French Caribbean at his apothecary shop (and genteel drinking emporium, this being New Orleans). M. Peychaud concocted his very own bitters, which of course became known as such eventually.

Well, over the years the Sazerac had to drop absinthe because of the ban, so the local imitation, Herbsaint, replaced it. And the drink base permutated somehow from the Cognac to the local then dominant Rye Whiskey!

Completely changed the drink, of course, but it remained the cocktail of New Orleans: Rye Whiskey in an iced glass rinsed with Herbsaint, Peychaud's Bitters, rim with lemon peel, drop lemon peel in glass, and voila!

When I was in Vancouver BC an amazingly talented youg man who is doing dynamic things behind the bar, showed off his original version of the Sazerac...with Cognac, Absinthe and Peychaud's. An interesting reactionary twist. And it was great. So now there's the Classic Sazerac and the New Sazerac.

Hoke,

I noticed that you use the term “mixologist” for what I, and most regular Joe’s, call a bartender. The last thing I would want to do is offend a bartender by calling them a bartender. Is that no longer acceptable? I know we are not supposed to call a butcher a butcher but is it no longer correct to call a bartender a bartender?

Other Mike: I love the KC area, and go there whenever I have a chance. Jimmy's, American Place, and some others on the Plaza are all great places to eat. And I love staying at the old stately Raphael----it's more Euro than anything else, and a lovely building. Good wine and spirits store there now too. Cellar Rat, I think it's called. Great selection and a thoroughly wine geek owner.

Assuming that you were referring to me as "Other Mike," (no offense taken - it's my middle name, actually) I've been to Cellar Rat once. Nice little place, interesting selection. Didn't make a special impression on me, but no complaints.

Since you were in that part of KC, you should try Michael Smiths as well. French-trained continental cuisine, very good wine list. Make your way over to Parkville, MO sometime. Quaint little boutique kind of town, but there are two highlights: a French cafe called Cafe d'Amis (best boeuf bourguignon I've ever had), and a little wine shop called Wines by Jenny (a little pricey but good selection, and very interesting taster flights available at a reasonable cost).

Hoke,

I noticed that you use the term “mixologist” for what I, and most regular Joe’s, call a bartender. The last thing I would want to do is offend a bartender by calling them a bartender. Is that no longer acceptable? I know we are not supposed to call a butcher a butcher but is it no longer correct to call a bartender a bartender?

Actually, I use both terms, and I generally use them interchangeably. I staunchly resisted using mixologist for a long time, figuring there was nothing wrong with being a bartender, since I consider that a noble occupation.

But now I am comfortable with the term, and with the intent of trying to differentiate from a bartender (one who simply tends the bar and produces certain concoctions in pedestrian manner) to a mixologist (0ne who invests himself creatively into his chosen profession and studies it carefully; he/she is not merely assembling by rote, but creating something).

Anyone can pull a stick and dispense a beer (and even then do it badly). But it takes someone invested, personally, into doing the absolute best that can be done, to over achieve and become a good bartender/mixologist. And I think over-achieving should be the standard level of achievement in any endeavor.

Hoke -

We also love the Fee's grapefruit, particularly in a gin and tonic. I've heard of the Bitter Truth, but haven't made an attempt to get hold of any. I've also seen some recipes and I think it would be fun to try to make at home. If you ever decide to do that, I'd be interested in hearing about the process and how it works out for you.

With the Manhattan, you've got an immediate derivation, where you can substitute half dry/half sweet (red) vermouth instead of just red vermouth. Called a Dry Manhattan. Different drink.

Different drink, Hoke, no question (and much to my preference). I've always heard it called a "perfect" Manhattan, myself, and that strikes me as the "perfect" name for it! Out of curiosity, what are your favorite straight ryes? Rye used to be the default brown liquor around my neck of the woods, but those days are sadly gone.

JJ's is my favorite restaurant in KC, partly because of their wide selection of Ports. Agree on Raphael Hotel. We stayed there to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. I really like Kansas City and have sometimes talked about moving there when I retire, but it now looks like I will be staying in Fayetteville, NC, at least for seven or eight more years and then I may reassess my situation.

With the Manhattan, you've got an immediate derivation, where you can substitute half dry/half sweet (red) vermouth instead of just red vermouth. Called a Dry Manhattan. Different drink.

Different drink, Hoke, no question (and much to my preference). I've always heard it called a "perfect" Manhattan, myself, and that strikes me as the "perfect" name for it! Out of curiosity, what are your favorite straight ryes? Rye used to be the default brown liquor around my neck of the woods, but those days are sadly gone.

The favorite---that I can afford to drink on a regular basis---is Old Rittenhouse 100 proof, Clinton. Hands down.

Then the Old Rittenhouse 80 proof.

I'd like to be able to drink the Rittenhouse 21 Year Old, but that crosses the 'casual affordability' line for me, sadly.

Also just past the affordability line, but one of my faves is the Van Winkle Rye. Yowza!

In a pinch I can go with Sazerac or the standby Old Overholt ( Old Overcoat).

I'm with you on the Rittenhouse 100, Hoke. Very good stuff for a very good price. It's a little hard to come by around here, but worth looking for. I'd put Rittenhouse 80 on a par with Wild Turkey rye, with Overholt the value leader.

I've had the Michter 10 year and although it's good, I'm not sure it's worth the money. Got a bottle of Vintage Rye for Christmas and it's maybe the best I've had along with Black Maple 23 year. Of course, those are special occasion bottles.