His Girl Friday is served up and shimmering with golden gleams, glistening in the lights but looking cool and chilly and inviting. The smell of the grapefruit oil is so pervasive it wafts directly to the nose and burrows up through the olfactory nerve to the brain, triggering all sorts of citrusine memories. Yet, curiously, the grapefruit doesn’t overwhelm the other components. The Beefeater comes through clean and clear and bold. There’s no submerging the essence of gin in this glass; the Beef isn’t fancy or floral, just straightforward, substantial, and commanding; it’s a no-nonsense of a gin.
The Cocchi Americano is bright and bitter and edgy, bracing to the palate and an effective counter to the sweltering heat. Campari adds another dimension of bitterness, as well as the pungency of complex orange aromas. The grapefruit liqueur gives a soft, sweet balance to the drink---and then the grapefruit oil offers up its pungent final statement with authority and persistence. It’s like going on a trip and coming back to where you started.
His Girl Friday is a substantial drink, a lip-smacker and a head-nodder in the best pre-prohibition unapologetic booze-forward style, with that stirring initial jolt of bombastic aggregation of flavor grabbing your attention, and the slow opening emergence of the many little complexities trickling out in the aftermath. Or afterglow; take your pick.
Full article: http://www.examiner.com/article/portland-bar-scene-his-girl-friday-at-the-rum-club