how to throw a cocktail bash in four easy steps

[by john]

this past weekend, i threw a two night cocktail fête. it was perhaps the closest i will come to opening a bar, with different guests every night, waves of drink orders, and gourmet bar food. (mad props to mike and andy for the crispy shredded pork awesomeness, gravlax, and bone marrow.) i had tremendous amounts of fun without drinking anything, save for a few dozen milliliters from test-straws. homing in on each guest's taste proved to be a delightful challenge. i will certainly do this again.

now, easily:

create a menu

i put up my menu last time, but gave no indication of how hard it was to make. i tested tens of drinks over the course of a week to see which would appeal to a wide sample of palates. and, in addition to the pet pet, i created two originals - a st. germain/applejack marriage (la pomme rouge), and a constantly varying - popular, too, it turned out - tequila cocktail (the ho[a]rfrost).

everything on the menu got great attention and compliments, except for the poor martinez. being the oldest drink on there, maybe it couldn't hang with this hip crowd. noted. but otherwise, i am elated for converting many guests to the wonders of sloe gin, regular gin, spicy finishes, and flamed chartreuse.

go into debt

having settled on a menu, i then biked around boston/cambridge for another week trying to gather the necessary ingredients. the word is out on rittenhouse, quality bourbon, and old monk rum, apparently, because i had to discover several new liquor stores to hunt them all down.

after all my shopping, i went (a predicted) $200 over my normal budget for the month. i calculated the cost of each drink: usually around $3, and $4 for the tipperary. i figured each guest would go through ~3 rounds, so asked for $10 donations. in the end, i recouped exactly $200, perfect!

for the nth time, i'd like to reiterate how cheap home bartending is, compared to going out.

focus on the freezer

at some point, maybe 10 days before the party, i realized with growing dread that i would need a lot of ice. like, 200 cubes per night. only the brute force solution was viable: i bought two more tovolo trays and pushed out batches each day and night into ziploc bags. by friday morning, i was satisfied with five gallon bags, four trays in reserve, and five non-cubical trays in super-reserve.

some further creative maneuvering allowed me to fit cocktail glasses in there, too, so they could chill before service. good thing we weren't serving gelato or something.

stand around

the hard parts are done. now you only need to stand in one place for three hours and shake or stir the shit out of lots of drinks. stand, and also listen, steer, cajole, charm, engage, introduce, rinse, muddle, crack, and pour.

i had not expected the rush i got from bartending. it's like being on a kitchen line, but colder and solo. some hardcore multitasking - remembering orders, mixing, chatting people up, and monitoring the glassware situation all at once, with outward aplomb. and the repeated delight on guests' faces with the first sip made it even better.

tiki!

[by john]

(conga room via flickr)

my former self knew nothing about tiki. about the island culture that can flavor your drink beyond the falernum and tiki bitters. about the music, the forget-the-weather-outside vibe, and the crazy carved demigods. that former self is, well, still drunk on three kinds of rum, leaving me to tell the tale.

eastern standard held a tiki bash this weekend that only eastern standard could throw. jackson cannon greeted mike and i with trader vic's punch (rum, more rum, even more rum, orgeat, orange and lemon juice) from a flower-laden tropical punch bowl. that knocked us into our seats, where we played bobby's captive audience.

bobby mccoy is a bartender at e.s. who caught the tiki bug, and taught us a bit about the rise(s) and fall(s) of tiki culture in the states. tiki apparently got big in the early 1900's, when travel by sea (to, say, polynesia) became easier. it was revived during prohibition when peopled traveled to drink, then re-revived after prohibition when (unaged) rum was easier to come by than (aged) whiskies, by the enterprising don the beachcomber, then re-re-revived in the '80s, and currently re-re-re....revived due to the focus on fresh citrus and complex spice flavors.

he made a zombie punch, with FOUR (count 'em) ounces of different rums. smooth sailing from then on, needless to say. paired with a coconut shrimp salad.

brother cleve was next up, and detailed a rambling musical history of tikification, including the necessary cocaine use. he presented his drink from the last tales of the cocktail, the cactus flower. eleven ingredients (including prickly pear puree - ask mike about it) later, i had a tasty drink and part of a roasted pig in front of me. i was starting to understand this tiki thing...

sugar-crusted donuts and a wild, spicy batavia arrack-based non-standard tiki drink rounded out the polynesian afternoon (did i mention it was still light out?).

before i stepped back into the cold, bostonian real world, i had come to realize that the flavors weren't the whole tiki story; a large part was the other fun people sitting at the long table, enjoying the alternate world they had entered and agreeing, 'yeah, this drink is a strong one!'. tiki transports to a -state-, more than a place, and that is why it is alive and well in new england.

nopa

[by john]

i've been reading line cook religiously since i found it. i love the candid style, the cursing, and the peeks into one of california's up and coming kitchens, nopa. so naturally, i had to take my guy when i came to town.

the word from my sf friends is that it's a damn hard reservation to get. and i'd believe it. i made one a couple of weeks ahead for 10 pm (they serve dinner 6 to 1...) and there wasn't a lull for the entire two hours we were there. it's been accruing mad press, so no wonder.

we sat at the 'chef's counter' overlooking the open kitchen, right in front of the wood fired oven. the decor was fresh and hip. enormously high ceiling with windows and mirrors to match. good noise level from the spirited conversations all around.

i had read good things about their bar, so went straight to their cocktail menu. for me: a sloe samba (cachaça, sloe gin, ardbeg [an islay whiskey], lemon juice, egg white), and for him, a last word*. i was actually disappointed by both. the samba had a bad tequila smell going on - maybe the islay ardbeg vapors mixing with citrus. and the last word - while a pleasure to see on a menu - was...off. bad lime wedge garnish, and a gin that competed too much with the green chartreuse.

but those false starts were soon forgiven. we got the calamari salad, which was made right in front of us in the wood oven. perfectly roasted calamari, greens, jerusalem couscous, spicy dried chickpeas, and a sort of middle eastern spice 'vinaigrette'. we could not stop gushing long enough to get two consecutive tasty bites in.

next, the sausage and kale floret (what!) flatbread (or 'pizza' as we so uncouthly termed it). perfection. crispy crust, sweet fennel flavor, and wonderful texture on the florets. also made right in front of us.

and then the pork chop. oh my, the pork chop. obscenely delicious. sweet seared crust, juicy meat, and just the right amount of bitter zing from the whole mustard sauce. simply plated, with a handful of roasted vegetables. a life-changing dish, as far as the pork part of my life is concerned.

i pounced on the skillet bread/whiskey-praline ice cream dessert because it had (wait for it) bacon brittle. like peanut brittle, but with bacon. the savory flavors worked well together, though in the end everything was distractingly sweet.

a fantastic experience, reminding me, as naveen has noted, why restaurants are still pertinent to at-home-foodies. i just can't make these dishes. i should mention, finally, that the service was impeccable, always charming and never obtrusive enough to keep my smile of content from fading.

(the view from the counter.)