Archive for the ‘Boston bars’ Category
January 5th, 2007
Max Toste and Aaron Sanders were still upwrapping stacks of coasters and wiping sawdust off the bar last night when we walked into their brand-new joint, Deep Ellum (477 Cambridge St. in Allston), on opening night. The former management team of Bukowski Tavern in Cambridge, Max and Aaron partnered with Bukowski chef Josh Velasquez to realize the dream of running their own place. I am going to make a bold statement about a bar that’s only been open 24 hours: Deep Ellum is the coolest bar in Allston. Not that there aren’t other good drinking spots in this neighborhood, but these gentlemen made Bukowski one of the Boston area’s best bars, and I fully expect them to do the same with the new place.
Deep Ellum is named after a hip, “urban village” in Dallas, Texas, which is Aaron’s hometown. (We can only hope someone in Deep Ellum opens a bar called Allston.) The place is small — a narrow room with about 10 small tables and about 20 seats at the bar. The wood is dark, the walls are a light, muted green, and the acoustics are favorable (Love played over the nice, new sound system.) “International comfort food” is the theme of the menu: burgers, Hebrew National hotdogs, grubbins (fried cod served between potato pancakes), Moroccan lamb shank, cassoulet. I don’t think there’s anything on here over $18, which is a relief. Not surprisingly to anyone who watched him in action behind the bar at Bukowski, Max has put together a top-notch beer menu. It includes all the finery (Trappist ales) and none of the fluff (Seadog Blueberry Ale) found at Bukowski. The 22 drafts include De Ranke XX Bitter from Belgium, Thomas Hooker’s Liberator Dopplebock (Connecticut), and Mahr’s, a delicious pilsner from Bavaria, Germany that you rarely see in the U.S. Of course, you can get a can of ‘Gansett, too, and there are 100 different bottled beers.
The thing that really makes Deep Ellum a “new style of beer bar,” as Max puts it, is the fact that they’re making classic cocktails in addition to offering great beer. Wow! “I’m making my own grenadine, my own cocktail onions. No bullshit, no Rose’s,” Max says. One of his specialties is the Green Opal — gin, bitters, absinthe and sugar — not to mention a wide selection of good bourbons. Deep Ellum is open seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 a.m. For more information call 617.787.BEER.
Posted in Beer, Boston bars, Cocktails | 1 Comment »
December 29th, 2006
Every barfly knows that the worst day of the year to go out drinking is New Year’s Eve. “It’s amateur night” is a phrase that has been beaten to death, but that doesn’t make it untrue. With its cutthroat competition for barstools and its glittering expectations, the whole night is designed to make you feel like a failure and a chump. A failure for being unable to find or get into the absolute perfect nightspot on the busiest evening of the year, and a chump for winding up at a place that charges $100 for the privilege of eating some “passed appetizers” and being able to say, ‘Yes, I have New Year’s plans!” Woooo.
One of the best places to be on New Year’s is behind a bar, working. You make a lot of money, and you get to party after hours once all the drunken Todds and Ambers have gone home or hooked up at the Westin. If you’re not a bartender, try to get yourself invited to a party — preferably one you don’t have to drive to.
Often, neither of those options are in the cards, and you think, ‘It’s New Year’s! I can’t just stay home!’ I know. I’ve been there. What I’ve done in those situations is seek out bars that are open on New Year’s but aren’t making a big deal out of it other than passing around some cheap bubbly at midnight. Irish pubs like the Druid and Plough and Stars in Cambridge, the Tir Na Nog in Somerville and J.J. Foley’s in Boston (21 Kingston St.) are generally good for this kind of evening. (The Littlest Bar in Boston was a great place for a New Year’s Guinness or two, but a luxury condo developer killed this treasured spot. Sigh.) The two Bukowski Taverns in Boston and Cambridge throw their annual F*ck New Year’s party, where the first dozen or so people who walk in are handed a dollar — instead of having to pay a ridiculous cover charge. Nice touch.
If you’re looking for a more stylish option, you might want to brave the lines to get into Central Square’s Middlesex Lounge or Enormous Room. Both of these places are charging only $10 and will have plenty of fun-loving hipsters grooving to DJs.
And if you think you might want some decent food to go with your celebratory beverages, for the love of god do not fall into the trap of the mediocre $150 four-course meal. B-Side Lounge does not charge a cover and serves a few special New Year’s dishes on top of its regular menu of superior comfort food. Same format but bigger menu at Eastern Standard, where the dining room is fully booked but the spacious bar area is a free-for-all. You’ll get great cocktails and really good food at both these places without feeling like a penniless chump afterward. And maybe you’ll meet some accommodating soul who’s on his/her way to a good house party.
Posted in Boston bars, Events | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2006
Our latest mission took us to two of the posh Charles Hotel’s watering holes: the bar at Rialto restaurant and the cocktail lounge Noir.
It had been quite a while since I’d ventured over to the elegant brick fortress in Harvard Square. I remember, when Rialto opened in 1994, how gaga everyone was about chef Jody Adams’ Mediterranean-inspired cuisine. The restaurant was a lot of people’s Special Occasion destination, including mine. Greater Boston has exploded with new bars and restaurants since then, and I have to admit that the whole Charles Hotel complex came to seem beige and corporate over time. Even a cool-looking, low-lit lounge like Noir had an uptight vibe to it. Then I happened to meet two barmen — one from Rialto and one from Noir — who said, “Come and check out what we’re doing.” Any iffy impression I have about a place gets shoved aside when I’m sitting across from a bartender who knows what he’s doing. So I headed to the Charles.
First stop, Rialto at happy hour. Trays of complimentary bruschetta with succulent prosciutto were being passed around the bar. Nice. Todd Maul, a North Bennet Street School grad who makes furniture when he’s not on the stick, handed us a cocktail menu. It featured stuff that is popular in high-end restaurants, drinks using ingredients like blackberry puree, pear nectar, and pomegranate juice that sound more complex than they really are. Todd told us about his mission to infiltrate the upcoming winter menu with a few interesting vintage cocktails, like the Gin Fizz. We tried one, and it was deliciously silky, thanks to egg white shaken up hard with dry gin, sour mix, sugar and a splash of soda. We also tried a Diabolique Bourbon Manhattan ($11) with locally produced Diabolique infused bourbon (Maker’s Mark with figs, cinnamon and vanilla), sweet vermouth, and fresh figs for garnish. This drink was spicy and rich, like hot gingerbread right out of the oven. I’d call it a perfect beginner’s Manhattan, since it lacked the hard edge of straight bourbon.
Todd has an easygoing, unphony but polite way with customers, who during our visit ranged from younger couples on a date to well-heeled, Martini-with-olive guys in town for the annual Harvard-Yale football game. Instead of stirring his cocktails, he gently shakes them until they’re nice and cold. The vibe in this bar was warm and friendly, and we’re looking forward to seeing what Todd has up his sleeve this winter, particularly in February when Rialto reopens after a month-long facelift.
We went to Noir on a Sunday to catch Ben Sandrof in action. Hired as a manager just six months ago, he’s only behind the bar Sunday and Monday nights. Too bad. He’s a suave guy, which I mean in the good sense, i.e. “effortlessly gracious.” And he’s passionate about mixology. Noir has one of the few cocktail menus I’ve seen that manages to please disparate constituents: people who like their drinks pretty and accessible, classic cocktail enthusiasts who like strong, vintage spirits (yeah, that’d be me), and those who prefer hybrid mixtures that combine new and old ingredients. My favorite drink of the evening actually fell into the last category: a concoction that Ben invented called the Chartreuse Basil ($12). When I saw the ingredients — green Chartreuse, fresh lime, basil and simple syrup, shaken and served straight up — I thought, ‘Oooh, that’s going to be too sweet. And possibly too basil-y.’ But I was wrong. It was well balanced, tasty, original and, like most good cocktails, more than the sum of its parts. Then there was the Champagne Cocktail. While the idea of paying $13 for a drink with no hard liquor in it gives me pause, this thing was damn good. ‘Just because you’re dumping bitters, sugar and lemon juice in it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the Louis Bouillot Grand Reserve,’ is what I’ve always said.
OK, the Charles Hotel might still come across as a bit too slick, but I know I can get good drinks and friendly service there, and that’s enough to bring me back.
Posted in Bartenders, Boston bars, Cocktails, Gin, Liqueur | 1 Comment »
November 17th, 2006
Does this mean war? I hope so. In Boston Magazine’s November issue, Liquids columnist Anthony Giglio throws the glove down in “The Bitters Truth.” After a somewhat systematic evaluation of cocktails in Boston and Cambridge bars, he says, “I’ve come to realize that Cambridge is to cocktails what Berkeley, California, is to food — the little city in the big city’s shadow that’s the breeding ground for creativity, integrity, and dynamism. I’ve never met so many scholarly barkeeps in my life as I have in Cambridge. And after much scholarly research of my own, I can now say with absolute certainty that Cambridge makes better cocktails than Boston.”
Of course, this isn’t exactly news to us. Many of the bars and bartenders lauded on this site for their cocktail prowess are the same that Giglio cites in his article: Green Street (where drinkboston.com recently had its launch party), which boasts three of the Boston area’s best bartenders (Dylan Black, Misty Kalkofen and Joe McGuirk); B-Side Lounge, which, as a training ground for serious barmen and women, is to the local bar scene what Harvard Law is to the U.S. Government; plus Chez Henri, the Blue Room, etc. Giglio points out that “the great Boston exceptions — John Gertsen at No. 9 Park, Jackson Cannon at Eastern Standard, Nathan Bice at Beacon Street Tavern, and John Byrd at the Alchemist — all perfected their trade in Cambridge.”
So, what is it about Cambridge that nurtures a great cocktail culture? Cheaper rents and bar ownership by individuals rather than restaurant groups or hotels mean that bars can afford to make drinks with quality ingredients and take risks like not stocking Apple Pucker; a quirky, discerning population that appreciates variety and challenges to the palate; and the community of bartenders themselves, “a tight circle of avant-garde drink experts who pass down their expertise and help aspiring mixologists start out on their own,” writes Giglio.
What all this means, I hope, is that more Boston bars will get jealous of the praise being heaped on Cambridge drinking establishments and decide to rise to the challenge of making drinks that break out of the safe, chocolate-mint-martini mold. The prospect of a Mixologist War between Boston and Cambridge should have us all salivating.
Posted in Bartenders, Booze in the news, Boston bars, Cocktails | No Comments »
November 5th, 2006
Experimentation can be a tough thing to do at a neighborhood bar, but Jess Willis, the general manager of the Independent (75 Union Sq. Somerville), has boldly ventured backward in time to create the Indo’s current cocktail menu. She put the Fitzgerald, the Brandy Alexander and the Algonquin on there. Then she dug deep into the vault and dusted off the Gin and It. Praise the lord.
This is one weird cocktail by the standards of the contemporary world, where anyone who orders a Martini expects a mixture of about 50 parts gin or vodka to one part dry (white) vermouth. Well, get this: the Gin and It calls for sweet (red) vermouth, and lots of it. (Vermouth is red or white wine flavored with herbs and spices, lightly fortified with grain neutral spirit and, in the case of red vermouth, lightly sweetened.) The recipe in Dale DeGroff’s book The Craft of the Cocktail consists of equal parts (1.5 ounces each) gin and sweet vermouth, plus a dash of Angostura bitters and an orange peel. DeGroff explains: “The Gin and It was actually ordered in the Hoffman House and other New York bars of the 1880s and ’90s, simply as a Sweet Martini, and later as a Gin and Italian. During Prohibition, Gin and Italian was shortened to Gin and It.”
A brief web search turned up recipes for the drink varying from the half-and-half version above to two parts gin, one part sweet (Italian) vermouth. But Jess decided to trick her version out with three parts vermouth to one part gin. Eeewww, you’re saying. That’s because vermouth has unfairly come to be viewed as a necessary evil to be administered only by the nano-liter so that people can claim they’re drinking, say, a Manhattan instead of a chilled whiskey with a cherry. The fact is, without vermouth, the “cocktail” would not exist. It’s an ingredient as essential to the pantheon of mixed drinks as bitters and spirits. The Indo’s Gin and It, which also benefits from a dash of orange bitters, is tasty proof of this. Check it out for $8.
Posted in Boston bars, Cocktails, Gin, Vermouth | No Comments »
