Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
February 23rd, 2007
First, it’s pronounced “pees-co.” Second, it’s the national drink of Peru and Chile, and the two countries are fighting over its appellation (this BBC article will tell you what you need to know). Third, it’s a clear, grape-based spirit, or unaged brandy, made famous in cocktails like the Pisco Sour, Pisco Punch and Piscola (OK, that’s just pisco and coke over ice, but what fun to say).
On Tuesday, March 6, Alchemist Lounge bartenders John Byrd and Nicole Poirier will mix these classics, along with a special menu of new pisco cocktails they created. International DJ Brother Cleve will spin 1970s Peruvian funk and soul, and the kitchen will whip up some Peruvian- and Chilean-style snacks for the occasion.
A new company called Macchu Pisco (the name is a play on Machu Picchu, the ancient city in the Andes Mountains of Peru) will supply the pisco for the evening’s cocktails. The company’s Peruvian brandies are Macchu Pisco, a mixable spirit made with quebranta grapes, and La Diablada, a super-premium pisco made with muscatel and italia grapes that can be sipped neat, like a good cognac. Macchu Pisco’s owner, Melanie da Trinidade-Asher, was born in Peru and has ties to the Boston area; she formulated her company’s plan at Harvard Business School.
The party starts at 7:30 p.m. Pisco cocktails are $8 each. No cover charge or tickets, but RSVP to the Alchemist at 617-477-5741. Groovy music. Yummy snacks. Bring your friends.
To get on the email list for drinkboston.com events, email drinkboston at comcast dot net.
Posted in Events, Pisco | No Comments »
February 21st, 2007
David Wondrich, drinks writer for Esquire magazine and cocktail book author, was in Boston last Thursday night for a Martini and Rossi-sponsored cocktail party at Eastern Standard. Luckily, I and a group of local bartenders got to hang with the guy for the duration of the evening. Through his writing in Esquire and as a founding member of the Museum of the American Cocktail, Wondrich has done much on the national level to revive the classic cocktail. And you may not even realize it, but the drinks you enjoy at certain Boston bars may have been pulled from his books by any number of admiring bartenders. Example: the B2C2, a champagne cocktail featured at a recent drinkboston.com event at Green Street, comes from Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails: An Intoxicating Guide to Sophisticated Drinking.
Wondrich graduated from high school in Long Island, NY, in the same class as Manhattan’s “libation goddess” Audrey Sanders, owner of the SoHo cocktail shrine Pegu Club. Up until about nine years ago, he was an English professor at New York University who was experimenting with making his own absinthe and mixing vintage cocktails. He contacted Esquire’s editor one day proposing to revive the magazine’s cocktail and party guidebooks. (These books were essential tools of the American bon vivant’s trade before that breed of gentleman was unfairly branded a limp-wristed elitist by Bud Lite-swilling NASCAR Dads.) The editor liked the idea, and Wondrich eventually switched to a writing career that allowed him to fully pursue his hobby.
Our evening’s topics of conversation included
- unusual cocktail strainers (Beyond the Hawthorne and the Julep — ask bartender Ben Sandrof about these strange implements.)
- homemade bitters and defunct brands of bitters (Wondrich once made an unusual batch of bitters with Ardbeg single-malt scotch for a scotch-based cocktail event he presided over. For the record, he prefers Angostura and Fee Brothers over other kinds of aromatic bitters, including the old brands, like Boker’s and Abbott’s, that are often extolled by cocktail enthusiasts.)
- beer geeks vs. wine snobs (“Wine snobs are critics. Beer geeks are reverent,” summed up Portland, ME bartender and MOTAC board member John Myers.)
- the continued, tragic popularity of Cosmopolitans and Grey Goose vodka
- the best bar in midtown Manhattan (Keen’s Steakhouse, a century-old establishment whose atmosphere, says Wondrich, makes up for your mediocre Canadian Club-based Manhattan)
- the disappearance of independent bookstores in downtown Boston (Wondrich planned to take the Red Line out to Davis Square in Somerville the next morning to shop for books at McIntyre and Moore’s.)
- the elegant simplicity of the gin-based Aviation cocktail (below).
Posted in Boston bars, Events | No Comments »
February 14th, 2007
What better way to spend a Monday night in February than at a cozy neighborhood restaurant drinking champagne cocktails mixed by some of Boston’s best bartenders? That’s the sound reasoning that brought 60+ people to Green Street last night for drinkboston.com’s sold-out champagne cocktail party. Misty Kalkofen of Green Street and the B-Side Lounge, Ben Sandrof of Noir, Dylan Black of Green Street and John Gertsen of No. 9 Park mixed four distinctive classic cocktails using champagne: the Diamond Fizz, the Black Velvet, the B2C2 and the Seelbach (recipes below). Not only that, they visited each and every table in the room, explaining the drinks’ origins (or alleged origins, given that the history of cocktails is usually as unverifiable as the provenance of traditional folk songs). The evening was festive and informative — well worth the price of a small headache on Tuesday morning.
To get on the email list for future drinkboston.com events, email drinkboston at comcast dot net.
The cocktails
B2C2
1 oz each of brandy, Benedictine and Cointreau shaken over ice and strained. Top with champagne.
Misty learned of this drink from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails: An Intoxicating Guide to Sophisticated Drinking. It was “created by American intelligence officers at the end of WWII. They had all of these wonderful goods that had been looted from the French by the Germans and then left behind during the Germans’ retreat,” she says. Luxurious bubbles.
Diamond Fizz
2 oz gin, 1 oz lemon juice and 1/2 tsp powdered sugar shaken over ice and strained. Top with champagne.
A dressed-up gin fizz (which uses seltzer instead of champagne). Also similar to the French 75, only it contains less sugar and no garnish. The Cocktail Database recipe calls for a highball glass with ice, but we served it straight up in a saucer. Delicious either way.
Black Velvet
1/2 stout and 1/2 champagne in a wine glass or flute.
Said to have been created at London’s Brooks Club in 1861 during mourning over Prince Albert’s death. Also called the Bismarck, as the drink was a favorite of German statesman Otto von Bismarck. Dylan used Mackeson’s Stout for this drink. Dark and rich.
Seelbach
1 oz bourbon, 1/2 oz Cointreau and 7 dashes each Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters poured into a flute and stirred. Top with champagne.
Invented at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1917. The recipe was lost, probably during Prohibition, until being rediscovered by the hotel in 1995 and later printed in Gary and Mardee Regan’s New Classic Cocktails. This is one of the great whiskey drinks.
Posted in Bartenders, Beer, Brandy, Champagne, Cocktails, Events, Gin, Liqueur | No Comments »
January 19th, 2007
Champagne is special. Cocktails are special. Put the two together and you get something even greater than the sum of its fabulous parts, a champagne cocktail. And I’m not talking about the drink where you drop a sugar cube and some bitters in a glass of champagne (though that is a good drink). I’m talking champagne with booze in it. I’m talking the Seelbach: bourbon, Cointreau, Peychaud’s bitters and Angostura bitters, topped with bubbly. To the uninitiated, that may sound scary, like the liquor equivalent of PCP. But one sip and you realize it’s just the opposite — oh so sophisticated. The champagne mellows the bracing effect of the bourbon and bitters, which in turn give the champagne a dangerous quality. One Seelbach makes you feel like you’re at a lawn party at San Simeon. A few Seelbachs make you feel like you’re in a nightclub balancing glassware on your boobs.
On Monday, February 12, Green Street (280 Green St., Central Square, Cambridge) and drinkboston.com will host a party featuring the Seelbach and other champagne cocktails presented by four of Boston’s best bartenders: Dylan Black of Green Street, John Gertsen of No. 9 Park, Misty Kalkofen of Green Street and the B-Side Lounge, and Ben Sandrof of Noir. Tickets are $20 and include four champagne cocktails, passed apps, and the fun of mingling with other imbibers who appreciate an expertly mixed drink and a little cocktail history in one of Boston’s best bars. This 7:00 p.m. event will likely sell out, so order your tickets in advance by calling Green Street at 617-876-1655 or emailing owner Dylan Black at dylanblack (at) verizon (dot) net.
The drinks:
Black Velvet (stout and champagne)
Dylan Black, owner of Green Street
Said to have been created at London’s Brooks Club in 1861 during mourning over Prince Albert’s death. Also called the Bismarck, as the drink was a favorite of German statesman Otto von Bismarck.
Diamond Fizz (gin, lemon juice, powdered sugar, champagne)
Ben Sandrof, bar manager at Noir
A dressed-up gin fizz (which uses seltzer instead of champagne). Similar to the French 75, only it contains less sugar and no garnish.
Bâ‚‚Câ‚‚ (brandy, Benedictine, Cointreau, champagne)
Misty Kalkofen, bartender at Green Street and B-Side Lounge
Misty says this drink was “created by American intelligence officers at the end of WWII. They had all of these wonderful goods that had been looted from the French by the Germans and then left behind during the Germans’ retreat.”
Seelbach (bourbon, Cointreau, Angostura & Peychaud’s bitters, champagne)
John Gertsen, principal bartender at No. 9 Park
Invented at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1917. The recipe was lost, probably during Prohibition, until being rediscovered by the hotel in 1995.
Posted in Champagne, Cocktails, Events | 2 Comments »
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 »
