Author Archive
February 7th, 2007
Today’s New York Times features a great, quote-rich article on London’s cocktail scene, The Best Town to Make an Upper Lip Stiff. I want to point to an excerpt that encapsulates the philosophy and mission of drinkboston.com:
Of course, lemon grass and ginger syrup in the hands of the wrong bartender can lead to disaster. Few people understand this better than Robbie Bargh, the creative director of the Gorgeous Group, the consulting concern behind many of London’s splashiest new joints. An ebullient, opinionated former mixologist and bar manager with 16 years’ experience, Mr. Bargh said he has no time for “egotistical demigods” behind the bar who don’t bother with the fundamentals.
“We’re going through a big backlash to over-mixology,” he said. “I think like a chef. Like a chef, you can’t deliver innovation without renovation. You can’t modernize without a basic understanding of what it takes to make a great classic drink — why a Negroni is so different made with Aperol rather than Campari.”
In short, if you go to a bar where the bartender doesn’t know how to make a Negroni but instead offers you an Earl Grey-Chocolate-Chipotle Pepper-tini, pause and ask yourself: would I spend my money at a restaurant where the chef could whip up all manner of trendy foams and sculptural appetizers but couldn’t grill a steak to save his life? If your answer’s no, then move on to the next bar.
Posted in Booze in the news, Cocktails | 1 Comment »
February 4th, 2007
Meet Me in the Bar: Classic Drinks from America’s Historic Hotels, by Thomas Connors, is a travel guide for the cocktail tourist. The book lovingly describes a couple dozen or so grand, old hotel bars, along with signature drinks concocted therein. Representing Boston are the Oak Bar at the Fairmont Copley Plaza and the bar at the Ritz-Carlton. Philadelphia, where we spent a recent weekend, has the Library Lounge in the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue. Or at least it did in 2003, when Meet Me in the Bar was published. We should’ve called first.
Ironically, Connors writes of the Library Lounge, “These days, as hotel operators jazz up old properties for a younger clientele, it’s possible to walk into a sober-looking hotel and discover that that sensible bar you once knew is now a scene. Luckily, the 19th-floor Library Lounge is nothing like that.” He goes on to describe its intimate scale, its rich woodwork, its fireplace and its book-lined walls. Sigh. That would have been great. The brand new bar that we found in its place, XIX (aka Nineteen), has most decidely been “jazzed up for a younger scene.” The only thing that remains from the Library Lounge is a large painted portrait of a well-to-do Quaker ice skating.
XIX is a posh but beige bar that could be in any first-class hotel in America. Sure, it’s a nice, polished-marble oasis high above the city, and the bartender was a welcoming and competent guy who had just moved up from Baltimore. But he had never heard of a Clover Club. That drink — gin with egg white, lime, raspberry syrup and bitters — originated at the Bellevue, and Connors calls it “the spiritous equivalent of the famous Philly cheese steak.” Unfortunately, the Clover Club seems to have gone the way of the books that once lined the walls of this bar. Vodka is now the dominant spirit on the cocktail menu, as it is in every other posh hotel bar in the country. At least they had Yuengling Lager.
Posted in Philadelphia | 2 Comments »
February 2nd, 2007
A couple of months ago, a guy named Goran Berntsson emailed me and asked, “Would you kindly answer my question on Sidecars? I wonder about the word ‘Boston’ in ‘Boston Sidecar.’ Does it just mean the drink is shaken in a Boston shaker or is there anything more, something historical, behind ‘Boston’ in this connection? I do think there should be, but if so: What?”
I had no idea. How embarrassing — drinkboston.com had never heard of a Boston Sidecar. I found the recipe in the Old Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender’s Guide (1961 edition) I received for Christmas: 3/4 oz brandy, 3/4 oz rum, 3/4 oz triple sec, and the juice of half a lime shaken on ice and strained. But I didn’t know why it was called the Boston Sidecar. I asked around, but none of my bartender pals had any answers about the drink’s origins. I was only able to tell Goran that the Boston shaker likely had nothing to do with the drink’s name, since most cocktails are mixed in this apparatus. I noticed that Goran asked the same question on squidoo.com but didn’t get an answer there either.
Which brings me to the fact that I still have no background on this drink, but that this site ought to at least compile a list of drinks either with “Boston” in their name or that originated here. Here are a few:
- Boston Sidecar (recipe above)
- Boston Cocktail (from Michael Jackson’s Bar & Cocktail Companion: 1.5 oz dry gin, 1 oz apricot brandy, 1 tsp lemon juice, dash of grenadine)
- Ward Eight (probably the most famous forgotten Boston cocktail. From CocktailDB: 1.5 oz bourbon or rye, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 tsp sugar, 1/4 oz grenadine)
Of course, it being the Old Mr. Boston guide, that book has recipes for the Boston Collins and the Boston Sour, but those appear to be simply variations on the Rum Collins and the Whiskey Sour. I’ll do some cross-referencing and start a page of Boston cocktails whose recipes come from more than one source. In the meantime, if anyone knows how the Boston Sidecar, or the Boston Cocktail for the matter, got its name, chime in under Comments, will you?
Posted in Brandy, Cocktails, Gin, Rum, Whiskey | 4 Comments »
January 30th, 2007
In a nice alignment of the stars, both drinkboston.com and one of Boston’s best bartenders, John Gertsen, are currently featured on Playboy.com. John, principal bartender at No. 9 Park, makes Playboy.com’s list of America’s Top 10 Bartenders. Congrats, John! Well deserved. You can see this guy in action at drinkboston.com’s upcoming champagne cocktail party at Green Street.
Another article, Brew Romance, describes 10 top American microbrews selected from votes by a panel of beer experts. That panel included drinkboston.com’s publisher, me. Yep, that’s right — it’s not all about cocktails for this imbiber. You can find a few of the Ms. Mug columns I write for the beer newspaper Ale Street News here.
Posted in Bartenders, Beer, Booze in the news, drinkboston in the news | No Comments »
January 26th, 2007
You know that when a bar is willing to stick its neck out and make cocktails with egg white, it is serious about drink mixing. John Byrd, a bartender at the Alchemist Lounge (435 S. Huntington Ave. Jamaica Plain), wants to convince customers that egg white is a legit cocktail ingredient, and not some weird, gross thing that people in the olden days used to put in drinks because they didn’t know any better. It’s an uphill battle, but one worth fighting. That’s because anyone who tastes John’s Boston Sour will suddenly get it: egg white, shaken up hard with liquor and ice, lends a soft, fluffy texture that is really pleasant. Egg white does the same thing for drinks that it does for desserts like lemon meringue pie and tiramisu.
The Boston Sour, like most drinks on the Alchemist’s menu, is a variation on a classic, with Benedictine, fresh orange juice and bitters dressing up the whiskey, lemon juice and egg white in the bare-bones version. The Ginger Gimlet naturally consists of gin and lime, only the gin is infused with raw ginger and, instead of Rose’s, a house-made lime cordial is used. The Alchemist’s play on the Sidecar is the Cable Car: house-made spiced rum, triple sec and lemon juice with a cinnamon and sugar rim. You get the idea.
Like many of the city’s great bartenders, John Byrd is a former employee of the B-Side Lounge. He thrives on the combination of speed and craftsmanship he perfected there, and he has a demeanor that’s both upbeat and edgy. One of the Alchemist’s owners, Lyndon Fuller, remembered John from his days at the B-Side and convinced him to tend bar in Jamaica Plain even though he now lives in New York City. John seems unfazed about spending Wednesday through Saturday in Boston and the other half of the week in NYC.
When the Alchemist opened last year, lots of JP residents were up in arms about it replacing a beloved neighborhood bar called Triple D’s. This is a story played over and over in every gentrifying neighborhood in every city in America. Change is hard, and yes, sometimes good watering holes are elbowed aside by yuppie foolishness. But I’m going to be callous and admit I have no lament here because a) I never went to Triple D’s and b) the Alchemist is a good bar. It’s a spacious but warm place with brick walls and polished wood floors. The whole gothic, “alchemy” theme isn’t overly played up. The music is cool (musician, DJ and cocktail historian Brother Cleve walked in, and Lyndon cued up a track from Cleve’s old band Combustible Edison), and there are DJs and/or bands Thursday through Sunday. The food is good — get the wild mushroom flatbread — and pretty cheap (entrées from $8 to $18). And finally, the cocktails are a reasonable $8-$9, there’s a house pale ale on tap that comes from the nearby Boston Beer Co. (Samuel Adams), and the Boston Herald calls the wine list hip and affordable. Hey, not everybody wants hip, but you can’t go wrong with affordable.
Posted in Boston bars | 2 Comments »
