Current Cocktail Descriptions
Note: All portions in parentheses are for large format drinks
Jamaica Farewell $12
2 oz Amaro di Angostura
.5 oz Orgeat
.75 oz lime
.25 oz Averna
Shake. Dbl strain over ice to rox glass. Cocktail parasol
This cocktail is a play on the Trinidad Sour, invented by Giuseppe Gonzalez in New York. The Trinidad Sour is an odd duck as it’s primary spirit base is actually Angostura Bitters (yes, those puppies are alcoholic, clocking in at 100 proof). From there, the classic citrus and sweet combination of a sour holds, with the use of orgeat to create the creamy, soft texture associated with the egg whites in traditional sours. Orgeat itself is an almond and orange blossom syrup found in a variety of classic tiki drinks. We make ours here in house from real almond milk. Please be aware of that allergen existing on our back bar! Angostura recently released an amaro to the market, which we are using instead of the bitters because it captures the same flavors of the bitters with some darker, richer tones. The final cocktail is dry, richly textured, with a hint of limes and cherries for an awesome patio cocktail. The name is the title of a song by Harry Belafonte, dubbed the “King of Calypso.” He was instrumental in popularizing Calypso and Caribbean music in the US in the 1950’s.
Counterfeit Collins $10
2 oz White Vermouth (8 oz)
1 oz Benedictine (4 oz )
.5 oz lemon (2 oz)
3 dash Orange Bitters (10 dash)
1 dash Hopped Grapefruit Bitters (3 dash)
Soda.
This little gem originated as a Chrysanthemum: a classic cocktail made with white vermouth and Benedictine, martini style. I thought it sounded delicious, tried it with our white vermouth, and it just didn’t work texturally. So I added a little citrus to brighten it up, some bitters for a bit of depth, And a splash of soda. And realized I made a collins-style cocktail that isn’t a collins. It’s a counterfeit. Note that in the large format, the amount of bitters added to a pitcher is not proportional to the scaling up of the rest of the ingredients. This is because bitters tend to intensify as you add them. If you put the full amount in a large format, they’ll take over and smother the rest of your flavors.
Ferdinand’s Flowers $12
2 oz Pisco
1 oz Fino Sherry
.5 oz Green Tea Oleo Saccharum
.5 oz Lemon juice
Shake. Double strain, coupe. No garnish.
We brought PIsco onto the back bar due to popular request amongst our bartenders. Pisco, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a grape brandy native to Peru. It has some briny, funky aromatics, and a fruity yet dry core. The rest of the cocktail was inspired by capturing the bright, leafy quality of spring. Fino sherry adds great depth to cocktails. Oleo saccharum is a traditional base for punches; some experts argue that without oleo, whatever large thing you’re making is not a punch. It means “oiled sugar,” and you make it by extracting all of the citrus essence from the peels of citrus fruit (orange and lemon, in our case) into sugar. We then take that intensely aromatized sugar and turn it into syrup by adding a double-strength green tea. Our powers combine, and you have a lovely, floral, leafy, spring concoction. We have ingredients from Spain, Peru, and Japan, so the name is a nod to Ferdinand Magellan. It’s also a nod to Ferdinand the Bull, because all I want to do is just sit and smell this cocktail, much like he wanted to sit and sniff the flowers in the bullfighting ring.
The Paramount
1 oz GTD Angelica
1 oz Green Chartreuse
1 oz Carpano Antica
1 dash Angostura
Stir. Strain to coupe. Flamed orange twist
A Brief History of the Bijou:
In the cocktail renaissance of the last decade, many classics have been exhumed, polished, and updated for modern palates. Some have taken hold and are now as common on bar menus across the country as the gin-and-tonic. The Bijou is not one of them.
Which is a shame—the drink has a bright sweetness up front that soon gives way to a velvety mouthfeel and wonderfully complex bold herbal and bitter notes on the back end. The original 19th-Century recipe for the Bijou—which calls for equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and green chartreuse (a sweet, herbal, and pungent liquor with a high alcohol content that has been produced for centuries by French monks), a dash of orange bitters, a twist of a lemon peel over the glass before discarding it, and a cherry—embodied a new direction for cocktails. "Beginning in the early 1880s, American bartenders, seeking to cater to a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan clientele, turned to vermouth and other European aperitifs, digestifs, and cordials to broaden the range of colors on their palettes," says David Wondrich, cocktail author, historian, and longtime Esquire contributor. "These proved to be the keystone that capped the structure of the classic mixologist's craft."
The Bijou had a decades-long run of popularity. But while its famous contemporaries, the Manhattan and the martini, continued to thrive post Prohibition, the Bijou—perhaps because it was never updated to reflect evolving tastes—faded into obscurity with only weathered cocktail-recipe books serving as proof it ever existed
So what’s in a name? Broadway’s original Bijou Theater opened in 1880 on the site of what had been a bar run by Jerry Thomas, the creator of the Bijou cocktail! The original Bijou used the layout of the bar within the design of the theater. The Paramount Theater in Downtown Crossing is one of the oldest in the city, recently restored to it’s art deco prime when purchased by Emerson College. Bijou Cocktail → Bijou Theater → Bijou Cocktail variation → The Paramount Cocktail.
Shot Across the Bow
1.5 oz Cynar (6 oz)
.5 oz Ancho Reyes (2 oz)
.5 oz lime (2 oz)
Lager
Dry shake all ingredients. Strain to iced collins glass and top with lager. Garnish with an orange swath.
We’re playing with beer and making it into a cocktail! Most of these citrus/herbal/beer concoctions are lumped together under the category of shandies. From Saveur magazine:
Beer is arguably America's national drink, and we tend to like ours just as it comes out of the bottle or the tap. The English, however, whose beer-drinking history goes back considerably farther, have a long tradition of mixing beer with other drinks or other types of beer: consider the snakebite (beer and hard cider), the dog's nose (beer and gin), the half-and-half (half porter, half beer), or the black-and-tan (half stout, half lager). For my money, the finest of these British hybrids is the shandygaff, often called a shandy: equal parts beer, usually an ale, and ginger beer. The origins of the drink are murky. Some accounts attribute the invention to Henry VIII, who purportedly came up with the concoction as a tonic during his matrimonial difficulties; others trace it to the 18th-century novel Tristram Shandy. (The "gaff" in the name is thought by some to be a contraction of ginger and half-and-half.) In a 1918 compendium of essays collected, appropriately enough, under the title Shandygaff, the American novelist and poet Christopher Morley wrote, "[It's] a very refreshing drink…commonly drunk by the lower classes in England, and by…newspaper men, journalists, sailors, and prizefighters."
We’re getting that herbal, spicy backbone associated with gingerbeer from the combination of Cynar and Ancho Reyes. The cocktail is spicy, sweet, dry, and refreshing. Grab me a pitcher and a straw! The name comes from an 1800’s naval reference: when sending a warning from one ship to another to cease and desist, a shot was fired across their bow instead of directly at the opposing ship. This cocktail is a Shot Across the Bow because it tastes super light and refreshing, but there’s danger in those waters.
Division Bell
1 oz. Del Maguey Crema de Mezcal
3/4 oz. Aperol
3/4 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
3/4 oz. lime juice
Shake, double strain, coup. Garnish with a grapefruit peel.
This is a Last Word variation named after the Pink Floyd album that helped Phil Ward get through his NY city restaurant Mayahuel’s five-month build out.
Del Maguey is a 20 year project by Ron Cooper to source, bottle and export Single Village Mezcal. The Crema de Mezcal (which warns “For Women Only… And a Few Strong Men”) is made by combining Miel de Maguey (unfermented agave syrup) with Mezcal San Luis del Rio. Double distilled from agave Espadin.
For a very thorough article on the differences between Tequila and Mezcal, see this awesome article: http://mezcalphd.com/2012/08/tequila-vs-mezcal/
French Chameleon
1.5 Lillet
.75 yellow chartreuse
.75 lime
.25 lavender simple
Shake, double strain, coupe, no garnish.
Named after a famous impersonator, Frédéric Bourdin (born 13 June 1974) who is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "The Chameleon". He began his impersonations as a child and claims to have assumed at least 500 false identities, three of which have been actual teenage missing persons. Delicate, floral, and deceptively potent.
Pimm’s Cup
2 oz Pimm’s No 1 (8 oz)
¾ oz Lemon Juice (3 oz)
½ oz Simple Syrup (2 oz)
Shake, collins. Top with ginger beer. Garnish with a lemon wedge
Pimm’s No. 1 is a gin-based potation made in England from dry gin, liqueur, fruit juices, and spices. Served with lemon soda or ginger ale, it becomes a Pimm’s Cup. Pimm’s No. 1 was created in the mid-18th century by English oyster bar owner James Pimm. The recipe is still a secret; supposedly, only six people know exactly how it is made. It has a dark, golden brown color, a medium body, and a taste of quinine, citrus fruits, and spice. Its low alcohol content of only 25 percent has made Pimm’s a drink to have when you are having more than one.
Aperol Spritz
2 oz Aperol (8 oz)
1 oz soda soda (4 oz)
Top with sparkling wine
Build and serve in wine glass (or pitcher) full of ice. Garnish with orange slice.
The Spritz originated in Northern Italy as a still wine and soda mix. As bitters, amari, and vermouth grew in popularity in the late 1800’s, the bitter spritz was born somewhere around the Veneto (like all things Italian, exactly where is fiercely debated). Sometime around the 1960’s prosecco replaced the still wine after its production experienced a boom. Aperol became ascendant as the bitter used only in the late 80’s and early 90’s, largely due to good marketing. Regardless, Aperol is now synonymous with the Spritz, and it’s the best selling cocktail in Italy and wildly popular in the US as well. It tastes like summer in a glass.
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