two down, two hundred to go

[by john]

i've been doing a lot of traveling lately, which means a lot of new bars to visit. rough, i know.

in my latest trip to nyc, i practically had to drag my guy to two cocktail bars. (with cheap happy hour specials and gimmicks like 5 shots for $10, why pay the equivalent of 75 dumplings for a drink? which is a valid point - despite all the cheap food and booze establishments in new york, why are cocktails 50% more expensive than in boston? suffer on, drink geeks.)

pegu club

'man, i had no idea how asian this place was.' i uttered this to te and steven at some point after noting in the geometric wooden window screens, the waitresses' kimono-esque dresses, and, uh, our bartender. apparently, the place is inspired by an old officer's club in burma.

i got a kill devil (rhum agricole, green chartreuse, sugar, bitters), which was agreed to be 'odd'. my guy got an improved strawberry daiquiri with thai basil (it came through great) and an omniscient-third-person view of a first date. steven stuck with a little italy (rye, sweet vermouth, cynar), which was solid, and apparently a pegu original - surprising since i've seen it elsewhere.

the bartending was slow. inefficient, i would say. we were sitting at the half empty bar, so we saw the slow assembly, one restart (cardinal sin of adding the liquor first and then messing up on the syrup amount), stirring one drink at a time, even though he was using wide beaker mixing glasses, and then letting the stirred drinks sit with ice while the citrus one got shaken. eek! if it weren't for the name on the door, i wouldn't know this is one of the top bars in the world.

overall, unimpressed with the skill and the tepid drink list.

mayahuel

after a wtf moment outside death & co (closed for a private event? on a saturday?!), we rallied and got some vegetarian banh mi before heading to the tequila mecca, mayahuel.

the kitschy (yet somehow believable) glazed tile and wrought iron decor felt cozy, minus the icy blasts of snow whenever someone new entered.

i got a red ant river swizzle (mezcal, sugar cane, absinthe, lime), and my guy continued his variation on a theme with a fresa brava (muddled strawberries, jalepeño-infused tequila, and yellow chartreuse). both fine, but not transcendent. no significant complaints, except for the enormous menu, which is almost necessary with such an unfamiliar family of ingredients (except to mike).

but the hipster bartenders commented on my hipster moleskine, so that made it worth the trip.

snoop dogg and my drinking patterns

[by john]

just visited scott holliday down at rendezvous and got him to rant about certain rap stars dropping names and upping prices (as they are wont to do, but with usually riffraff like designer vodka and cristal, not cognac!). i also enjoyed some egg on easter with his cynar flip.

[by Mike]

While John was talking hip hop, my intentions were set on taking advantage of Scott Holliday's experience to garner ideas for the bottle of Creme de Violette I was given yesterday. To this end I started off with something of a Violet Fizz (gin, lemon juice, Creme de Violette, orange flower water, egg white, and soda). The addition of the few drops of orange flower water was brilliant, complimenting the floral notes of the Creme de Violette while at the same time keeping it from overpowering the drink.

The fun really didn't begin until the second round. Inspired by the Cucumber and Mint (Hendrick's gin, mint, cucumber juice, lemon juice, and lime juice) my friend had ordered, I proposed a combination of the vibrant cucumber juice and my favorite spirit, tequila. After some back and forth, we settled on the Cucumber and Mint with Herradura replacing the Hendrick's and I could not have been more pleased.

When it comes to cocktails, my favorite flavor pairing is easily tequila and fruit. While it can be easily abused, the combination can be magical when the taste of the fruit resonates with the grassy, floral notes of a good tequila. Prominent examples include the Mexican Firing Squad (tequila, a good savory homemade grenadine, syrup, lime juice, Peychaud's bitters, and angostura bitters) and a simple strawberry margarita (tequila, in season strawberries muddled with just a little bit of sugar, lime juice, and triple sec).

Sadly, the cucumber was so fragrant that it was all too easy to fall into the illusion of summer which made the cold, windy walk home all the more painful.

alembic

[by john]

even though i lived in the sf bay area for 4 years (3 of which with a car), i left much of the region criminally unexplored. i'm trying to right that - at least a little - this week, and the first stop was the haight, a cultural mecca for hippies and architecture buffs alike. to think the closest i had come to the district previously was running bay to breakers...

alembic, a cocktail bar smack in the middle of haight street, has been getting a lot of attention. rather than make a beeline for it, though, me and my guy slurped down a humongous bowl of noodles at the citrus club (above) before heading in. (delayed gratification mixed with alcohol poisoning prevention, in noodle form.) great noodles, fresh tofu, and heaping amounts of tom yum paste. simple and filling.

we found two seats waiting for us across the street at alembic. their verbose, jocular menu featured about eight classic drinks (sazerac, pisco sour, ward eight, bee's knees...) and the same number of originals. their bottle display is gorgeous - long shelves three bottles deep with no repeats (or so it seemed from my vantage). and they didn't push the weird liqueurs to the back.

my guy started off with a gilded lily: gin, yellow chartreuse, orange flower water, bubbly, and freakin' gold dust as garnish. the surface of the drink was shiny, awesome. the nose was all chartreuse, but the gin definitely took over for the taste. a little two dimensional, in my opinion, but he claimed it was merciful on his tongue and tasted full of courage, heh.

i had a vow of silence: rye, benedictine, bitters, and two barspoons of creme de griotte, a cherry brandy. a fine manhattanesque drink.

my ex-roomie joined us for a couple more rounds, including a pisco sour and one of alembic's molecular mixology creations: still life with apples. bourbon, maple syrup, and a smoked apple cider foam in a double shot glass with a sprig of thyme. we noted that the thyme was rather superfluous, not adding to the sensory experience like, say, the mint in a julep does.

i went off-piste for my final cocktail, asking for something herbal. ended up with a cognac + cynar + orange bitters + lambrusco, a red sparkling italian wine. cool combo, but i think the last ingredient smothered everything (that can be the problem with 'floats'). it did taste like a carbonated sangria, though - mmmm, spain.

i was not blown away by alembic by any means, which may be a function of high expectations. i should mention one cardinal sin: they poured almost every drink into fairly big (6 ounces?) coupes, which made the 3 ounce cocktails look miniscule. but in all, i was impressed with the level of craft, as well as their neighborhoody feel.

(citrus club.)

burying the lede

[by john]

at the risk of living up to my own title, i'll put my point up front: i went to drink last night and tried two new spirits, but had them in cocktails with other ingredients that, well, buried them. lesson learned.

my friend steven is visiting from nyc for the weekend, which is more than occasion for a trip to drink. i was excited to show off boston's best to steven, who had taken me to some great nyc speakeasies last month.

we found perches at the ice peninsula, where misty was holding it down. we held her captive for a while, asking her what she was working on (a lot, it turns out, but no names yet). steven went for the laphroaig-rinsed apple brandy cocktail, with some benedictine and muscovado (molasses-like) simple syrup. my interest was piqued when misty mentioned dolin vermouth (this stuff is hard to get).

the dolin drink was mostly dolin blanc (not your typical cocktail), with smaller amounts of rye and green chartreuse. the effect was intriguing - a pale colored drink with ebbing hints of rye. but the chartreuse (one of my favorite spirits, don't get me wrong) cut through everything, leaving little to taste of the vermouth. we got to try some of the dolin alone, and i think its delicate profile would be more suited towards a gin drink like the marguerite. steven's cocktail, incidentally, was fantastic - the dry, peaty hint of scotch acted as guardrails for the driving, complex sweetness of the rest of the drink.

for our second round, we both went the digestif route to settle our dinners from the south street diner. i had been eyeing the cynar bottle the whole night, having never tried the artichoke-based liqueur. when misty said a ponte vecchio contained equal parts cynar and fernet (the you-drink-it-if-you're-in-the-industry drink), and a bit of citrus, i was sold, on curiosity alone. the fernet's sharp, minty elbow overpowered the body of the cynar, but the drink was easier to sip than a shot of fernet, for sure.

steven, again, chose inspiredly and got an appetizer l'italiene: 2:1 punt e mes to fernet, with dashes of absinthe and simple syrup. the nose on this drink was crazy...sort of savory, reminding me of bacon. the taste, though, was sweet and nicely rounded. cool.

so to set this extended metaphor to rest, the next time i try to discover the story of some new alcohol, i'll have it in a drink that doesn't make me read between the lines.