Archive for the ‘’ Category
August 27th, 2010
Watch out when making off-hand remarks around Devin Hahn, author of the blog Periodista Tales. He will record everything you say. Then publish it. The thing is, you’ll be (mostly) thankful he did.
Hahn began writing the engaging, real-time narrative of his quest to find the origins of the Periodista — a drink found on multiple cocktail menus in Boston but apparently unknown in other cities — a mere few months ago. And already, the description of the Periodista on the menu at Eastern Standard pays homage to him. Already, cocktail historians around the country know about him.
In his most recent installment, he describes a sit-down we had at the Franklin Cafe to talk about this apparently Cuban cocktail (of which he now knows more than probably anyone alive) and other matters of the Boston drink scene.
If you dig cocktail history and haven’t checked out Hahn’s blog yet, I suggest you start from the beginning.
Tags: Cuba, Devin Hahn, Periodista
Posted in Books & resources, Cocktails, Rum, drinkboston in the news | No Comments »
August 12th, 2010
A friendly reminder that this coming tax-free weekend doesn’t just apply to TVs, leather armchairs and solid-wood shellcases for your iPad. It also applies to booze. Have your eye on a bottle of green Chartreuse VEP ($130)? Strathisla 1967 Speyside scotch whisky ($175)? Remy Martin Cognac Louis XIII Grande ($1700)? Well, grab your shopping cart and boogie down the aisle of one of these fine establishments.
» Boston wins. Damned if Boston didn’t hit it out of the park during Tales of the Cocktail in July. First of all, more Boston bar industry folk represented our city at New Orleans’ annual drinks convention than ever before. Second of all, Drink won the Grand Marnier-sponsored Barroom Brawl, besting five other top-notch cocktail bars from around the U.S. and earning the title Best Bar in America. Third of all, Drink’s Misty Kalkofen won the Pisco Sour Pentathalon and will in the near future enjoy her prize: a trip to Peru to see how desert-grown grapes turn into white brandy. Congrats to all! Liza Weisstuch offers a vivid snapshot of the competition and, more generally, the Boston slant on Tales in today’s Phoenix. Good stuff.
» Remixology. Speaking of contests, there’s a new bar celeb in town: John Mayer of Cambridge’s Craigie on Main. A relatively new member of the staff there, he wowed everyone at the Appleton Estate Rum Remixology contest earlier this week with his mixing skills, sense of humor and ability to explain how a favorite song inspired a new cocktail. His presentation involved Frankie Valli’s “Sherry Baby,” a powder-blue brocade blazer, three mixing glasses spinning on a turntable, a small disco ball, a history lesson on Jamaica’s first prime minister — Alexander Bustamante — and the year 1962. He will compete in the national finals of the competition in NYC on August 30. Go, John! Here are recipes for the Bustamante and the other semi-finalists’ tasty drinks.
» Literature. Geoff “Psycho-Gourmet” Nicholson’s fantastic essay, Drink What You Know, appeared in the New York Times’ Book Review recently. He starts by comparing the advice writers dispense about drinking to the way they depict drinking in their literature, and arrives at his thesis:
“When you think about it, rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing. Many of these are so familiar they’ve become truisms: Write what you know. Write every day. Never use a strange, fancy word when a simple one will do. Always finish the day’s writing when you could still do more. With a little adaptation these rules apply just as well for drinking. Drink what you know, drink regularly rather than in binges, avoid needlessly exotic booze, and leave the table while you can still stand.”
Read it. And then check out the response over at Jezebel: the Reader’s Drinking Game.
» History. I was putting off going to Plymouth to learn about Pilgrims until my retirement years, but now I have a reason to go earlier. Pilgrim Hall Museum (“America’s museum of Pilgrim possessions”) is running an exhibition called “Plymouth History in a Glass: The Artifacts and Culture of Beverages and Drinking” until December 31. Silver tankards. Ceramic punch bowls. Glass tumblers. Ooh, I’m getting hot flashes. Not only that, there are two related lectures: one on historic Plymouth-area taverns on August 25 and one on September 29 called “The Design of Drinking: from the Jazz Age to the Space Age.” Far out.
» Name that bar. What would you call a bar frequented by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and hardworking graduate students from all over the world who converge on the high-tech cluster that is Kendall Square, Cambridge? The people behind the in-the-works “Venture Cafe” are seeking a more clever name than the working title for their “place-based social networking” project. They have partnered with restaurateur Gary Strack from Central Kitchen and the Enormous Room and are scouting Kendall Square locations for a 2011 opening. With any luck the place will liven up the woefully nightlife-less neighborhood. Got a suggestion for what to call the place? Chime in on their Facebook page.
Tags: Bustamante, Craigie on Main, Drink, history, John Mayer, Kendall Square, literature, Plymouth, Tales of the Cocktail, tax-free weekend
Posted in Bartenders, Booze in the news, Cocktails, New Orleans, Nips, Pisco, Rum | 1 Comment »
July 14th, 2010
Boston bar professionals, think of a song that really grabs you — one that makes you want to jump up on a table and sing into an empty beer bottle, or slow-ride in a convertible down Mass Ave., or grab a dark-haired stranger in a Buenos Aires cafe and do the tango. Translate that song into a cocktail with Appleton Estate Reserve Jamaica Rum. Submit your recipe and the tale of its musical inspiration by July 26. Why? You could win a trip to Jamaica — and global renown.
There are cocktail contests that are about chops and style, and there are cocktail contests that are about mixology and heritage. Then there’s Remixology. The brainchild of former Boston bartender Willy Shine and his consulting company, Contemporary Cocktails, Remixology mashes both traditions together — to the tune of your favorite song and featuring a quality rum. Here’s how it goes:
- Once all submissions are entered by July 26, 15 contestants will be chosen and featured on the Appleton Reserve Mixology Challenge and Contemporary Cocktails websites and in press materials.
- Five of the 15 will be selected to compete in August at Drink. This will involve “performing” your cocktail to the tune that inspired it, as well as mixing a second cocktail that is locally inspired (“No Charles River ice,” warns Willy.) Yes, you can sing and dance — but you don’t have to. Get creative. We’re not talking Tom Cruise or Coyote Ugly — you’re cooler than that.
- The top Boston finisher moves on to the finals in Manhattan August 30-31 to show bartenders from the other competing cities — NYC, Miami and San Francisco — who’s boss.
- The winner of the finals wins a red-carpet, all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica in October to participate in the Global Showcase with bartenders from nine other countries.
How cool is that? Get all the details here. Represent for Beantown!
Tags: Appleton Estate Reserve Rum, bartending contest, cocktail contest, Contemporary Cocktails, music, Remixology
Posted in Bartenders, Cocktails, Rum | 3 Comments »
June 13th, 2010
I couldn’t resist spending a night in Chicago for a taste of the bar scene before continuing on to Kentucky for my first excursion on the bourbon trail. I hit up a storied tavern and two craft cocktail bars. It was a fine whistle-whetting that only left me thirsting for more.
Billy Goat Tavern. Why I had never been informed of this place I have no idea. I was beckoned here by a large “Billy Goat Tavern” sign on a Michigan Ave. overpass, then another that said “Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger” and something about this being the birthplace of the 1970s Saturday Night Live skit that also brought us the catchphrase, “No Coke, Pepsi.” The dark doorway looked a bit sketchy, but I bet that there was a gem awaiting me on the inside, and I was right. The tavern moved to its current location in 1964 and appears not to have changed since. One side of the room is a diner, the other side a bar. A formica bar. With Schlitz on tap. And a bartender who has worked there for a really long time. He told me about how the tavern became a shrine to the Cubs, and how it was a hangout for hard-drinking newspapermen back when there was such a thing. Luckily, no one seemed to think it was an abomination when I set my laptop on the bar to get a bit of work done. In fact, the regular sitting next to me said in a tone of pleasant surprise, “They have wi-fi here?”
Sable Kitchen & Bar. New, sleek spot next to the Palomar Hotel with a futuristic glowing service bar and LCD screen playing a roaring fire. Mike Ryan, formerly of the Violet Hour, was tending bar that night. With an understated, gentlemanly manner, a sweet smile and a tattoo of bacon strips on his forearm, Ryan mixed a strong Ti Punch (La Favorite rhum agricole, cane syrup, limes) and then poured a flight of unusual and tasty whiskies, including Templeton rye from Iowa, Amrut single malt “scotch” from India and a “white dog” (unaged whiskey) made from spelt at Chicago’s Koval distillery. Sable boasts some superlative bar snacks, including BLT sliders where the B is (pork) belly.
Violet Hour. You take a cab a little way out of downtown, past what’s left of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project, and look for an unmarked door on North Damen Ave. Wow, is this a romantic spot. Even if great classic and classic-inspired cocktails could not be found here, it would be worth spending an evening swathed in the dusty-violet aura of this sort of Gilded Age parlor gone minimalist. It gets its name and concept from the oft-quoted-in-cocktail-circles The Hour by Bernard DeVoto (which, coincidentally, has just been re-published): “This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow again and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen magically along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.”
After my delicious Hush and Wonder (Methusalem rum, creme de violette, fresh lime, grapefruit bitters), I saw no unicorns, but I did see a night in my future when I’d return to Chi-Town for some more quality drinking.
Tags: Billy Goat Tavern, Sable Kitchen & Bar, Violet Hour
Posted in Chicago, Rum, Whiskey | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2010
The latest happenings in and thoughts on Boston’s world of drink… First, ‘bad guy’ cocktails. OK, two cocktails does not make a trend, but maybe more will follow from this post, and then we’ll have conveniently manufactured one. (I love social media!) What I’m getting at are Eastern Standard‘s Frobisher and the Starlite Lounge‘s Tony Montana.
I was delighted when Jackson Cannon, who, like me, is a devotée of the FX series Damages, told me he was naming a new cocktail on the menu after Arthur Frobisher, the Enron-inspired CEO played by Ted Danson. Frobisher stands out as a bad guy in a show populated almost entirely by bad guys (and girls — the protagonist is the ruthless high-stakes litigator Patty Hewes, played by Glenn Close). That’s because Danson has elevated playing an unmitigated tool to a high art form. Cannon celebrates that achievement with a stirred, straight-up mixture of 2 oz Oxley gin, 3/4 oz ES’ own rose vermouth, 1/4 oz Luxardo maraschino liqueur, orange oil and a Luxardo cherry.
Then there’s the Tony Montana, which Beau Sturm is known to serve while uttering its name in the Cuban accent with which Al Pacino menaces his way through the gangster training video Scarface. The recipe: 2 oz Pyrat rum, 3/4 oz Carpano Antica, 1 barspoon Benedictine and 1 dash orange bitters, stirred well and strained. The thing about these drinks is that they’re not just ridiculous concoctions slapped with a badass name to get people to drink them. The cocktails themselves are badass — all spirits, straight up, not to be trifled with. Never mind that both Frobisher’s and Montana’s substance of choice is powdery and white, not fiery and wet.
» Stoddard’s (48 Temple Place). My first impressions are pretty positive. The place looks beautiful, with its brick walls, massive, century-old bar imported from England, prints of old Boston, and local artifacts including old street lamps and corsets from an early incarnation of the Stoddard’s space (before its days as a cutlery shop of the same name). The lamb sausage sandwich and the steak frites over braised oxtail were really good, as was our bar service by Jamie Walsh. The Gin Sling and Stone Sour, both tall drinks over ice, were well made, but the Brandy Crusta was a bit watered down, and the Pegu Club was out-of-whack — too heavy on the Plymouth gin and without Angostura bitters to balance the orange flavors, as Stoddard’s house recipe strangely dictates.
We were fortunate to get a peek at the already infamous, not-yet-open private club downstairs. For a membership fee of $2,000, you get your own key and entrance (in the Winter Place alleyway right next to Locke-Ober) to this low-lit den, plus privileges to use the space for meetings and parties. Stoddard’s was taken to task several months before it opened when a rumor circulated that the club would be men-only. That’s not the case, although Stoddard’s seems to really, really want to skew its demo to recreate a late-19th-century gentlemen’s bar, albeit with TVs. The bar staff appears to be entirely male, and General Manager Billy Lyons said that while membership for the private club is building, only two women have bought in so far.
» If, the next time you go to Drink in Fort Point, you notice a lot more Europeans than usual, blame John Gertsen. He recently traveled to the 2010 Cocktails Spirits expo in Paris as the representative of an American cocktail bar. He gave a well-received presentation about his landmark bar, including a demo of the Chee Hoo Fizz, a cocktail invented by Randy Wong of the exotica orchestra Waitiki, which spearheaded Drink’s now famous summer Sunday tiki nights. While at the expo, Gertsen also encountered a bunch of rare spirits like Portuguese tequila from 1920 and a 1917 vipérine — booze flavored with a big, ol’ poisonous snake. Here’s a video of a good chunk of John’s presentation, and here’s another one of him and fellow Boston barman Scott Holliday (of Rendezvous) looking at the vipérine and other rare liquids with spirits collector George Dos Santos. (Thanks to Jörg Meyer of Le Lion Bar in Hamburg, Germany, for those videos.) Congrats, John!
» Citizen Public House & Oyster Bar. A new outpost of the growing Franklin South End/Franklin Southie empire, the Citizen will open on Boylston St. overlooking Fenway Park in July. Joy Richard, whom drinkboston has mentioned several times as a cocktail contest winner and founding member of LUPEC Boston, will oversee the bar as she does at the other two restaurants. Expect good cocktails, beer and wine but, most important of all, a whiskey bar! In fact, Joy and I happen to be heading to Kentucky next week to visit several distilleries along the Bourbon Trail, starting with Maker’s Mark and a tasting of its new whiskey, Maker’s 46. I’ll be sending regular communiqués via Twitter from that jaunt. Until then…
Tags: Arthur Frobisher, Bourbon Trail, Chee Hoo Fizz, Citizen Pub, Damages, john gertsen, Paris Cocktails Spirits, Scarface, Stoddard's, Ted Danson, Tony Montana
Posted in Boston bars, Cocktails, Gin, Nips, Rum, Whiskey | 10 Comments »
