If I were stranded at a desert island cocktail bar that served just one drink of my choosing, I’d make it an old fashioned. I suppose that would be a little like using your last genie-granted wish to ask for more wishes, since an old fashioned can take numerous guises. The basic ingredients are always booze, sugar and bitters; the cardinal sin is making it too sweet. Read more…
The Yardbird
I’ve stopped wondering how many artisanal cocktail bars the East Village can sustain, because the answer, judging by the thirsty crowds, always seems to be “more, of course!” Evelyn Drinkery, which opened two months ago on ever-fancier Avenue C (right up the street from Summit Bar and a craft beer store) is a refreshingly laid-back spot in an often riotous neighborhood. Read more…
There’s merely-creative cocktails, and then there’s “experimental” cocktails. You can sip a well-made drink mixed with an infused liquor or unique housemade bitters at any number of mixology dens; but the esoteric ingredients on the menu at Experimental Cocktail Club will make your eyes blur and your imagination fizzle. If you’re a fairly experienced cocktail imbiber, this perplexity can be pretty exciting. Read more…
The old fashioned’s recent resurgence may have something to do with Don Draper hopping behind the bar to mix a couple in season three of Mad Men. But this cocktail has been kicking around since at least 1806, when the recipe was first printed in a Hudson, NY newspaper. The original recipe called for “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters.” Over time, whiskey became the spirit of choice and the drink simply became known as an old fashioned. Read more…
After-work cocktailing should be as easy as possible and I can’t think of an easier, more refreshing beverage for this sudden spell of warm weather than a dark and stormy. This concoction originated in Bermuda after World War I, but the name is trademarked, meaning if you’re making a true “dark and stormy” you are only supposed to use the trademark-holder’s brand of booze: Goslings Black Seal Rum. Read more…
The first time I tasted a penicillin was unforgettable. In fact, you could probably pin the blame for my home cocktailing zeal on this moment. There was a nose full of scotch smoke up front, a bit of numbness on the lips at first sip, and then a fiery kick of ginger on the tongue. This was followed by a surprisingly smooth finish, balanced between honey, lemon, and a mellower scotch. Read more…
I met madame X at Louis 649, a cocktail bar in the East Village. Although no longer a jazz venue, Louis 649 has a vast spirits menu and seems a world apart from the shouty, weekend warrior swarms you’ll find in bars in the area. If I still lived nearby could see myself coming here with just a notebook and a pen for company, to sip whiskey and scribble. That is, if I were someone with the mental fortitude to not feel weird drinking alone in public. Read more…
I set out to buy some scotch for cocktails and ended up with a lease on a one-square-foot plot of land in Scotland. When you buy a bottle of Laphroaig the bottle is tagged with a unique ID number that you can enter at www.laphroaig.com/plot. A few moments later they’ll send you a deed promising to pay you a yearly rent of one dram of Laphroaig for use of the plot, to be collected at the distillery. Read more…
Recently I attempted to recreate a billionaire cocktail, my favorite drink on the menu at the famous Employees Only, without the long wait and $15 sticker shock. I pulled the recipe from the New York Times, but made a few changes. Read more…
This was my first stab at reproducing a drink I had at Milk & Honey, a cocktail bar in the Lower East Side. Milk & Honey has been around since 2000, and may be single-handedly responsible for kicking off the speakeasy trend in New York City. In the past decade a number of bars have opened downtown, each boasting about serious mixology and decked out in Prohibition-era decor. Read more…
