Sneakeater

I'm going to recount something that happened last night at Clover Club, just in case anyone reading this thread doesn't know how Serious Cocktail Bars work. I was there with H. du Bois. We each had ordered our first two drinks from the menu. As we were drinking each drink, the bartender -- I can't remember his name; he's excellent but not, I think, a city-wide "name" (yet) -- lightly asked us how and why we liked it. For my third drink, I asked the bartender to make whatever he thought I'd like using a base liquor I noticed they had that I was eager to try (Hayman's Old Tom Gin). Meanwhile, H. had gone to the lady's room. (I'm not sure she's going to appreciate my going into this much detail.) When she returned, she asked the bartender for some drink she'd seen on the menu. He said that he'd already made her something else he was certain she'd like more. And at least according to H., it was perfect. That's the value of a Serious Cocktail Bar. And that's why there's all this mania about going off-menu. It's like an omakase at a first-class sushi bar, where the chef makes the meal up as he goes along, based on your reactions to each dish.

And -- I know we're just repeating points now -- they were designed to function as works in themselves, not as adjuncts to a food menu concept that have to appeal to a non-cocktailian crowd.

Whereas -- to state the obvious -- if Pegu has a temporary fallow period because of dilution of talent, you know it's going to bounce back, because unlike a place like Ellataria it has a genuine commitment to excellence in cocktails.

What I'd like to add to Nathan's taxonomy is to repeat a point I made above. There are also a bunch of very pretentious nightclub/bars in New York that purport to be part of the Cocktail Movement but aren't. They're pretending; using the Cocktail Movement as a hook for their entirely different purposes. The Gold Bar is the poster boy for this tendency. There are others I've mentioned above (some of them fall into Nathan's taxonomy as Charlotte Voisey-consulted places), and more as well. I think an article such as FG is proposing could do readers a real service by pointing out that these places are complete bullshit, as far as Serious Cocktails are concerned. Go for the crowd and the scene if you want, but don't go thinking they're valid "cocktail destinations."

Which kinda proves slkinsey's point.

I think that was a great post (except that I don't get the appeal of White Star, another topic entirely). The only thing I'd say is that to me, Tailor is different from the other restaurant bars. As Nathan notes, it's unique. I don't care about going off-menu at Tailor, because the menu itself is so interesting. The bar at Tailor is like a restaurant, almost, in that you go there to have that menu. As for the rest of the restaurants, you hit the problem. Take Grayz. Obviously, I'm a big fan of Barry's there. But you can't consider Grayz a "cocktail destination", because if Barry isn't there you're SOL cocktail-wise.

The same thing happened to me (although I got away with only $800 or $900 for two). It's just how much it costs. I went in there knowing it was ridiculously expensive. I was the only male at the sushi bar who wasn't either or both of (a) middle-aged Japanese or (b) a hedge fund manager (in case you're wondering, I know the latter because the hedge fund managers never stopped saying they were hedge fund managers). This place isn't catering to people who can't swing the charges.

I certainly never have.

To me, Carpano Antica is so superior in this drink to anything else I tried that it's not even close.

"Perfect" is just a term meaning you use half sweet and half dry vermouth. So they're accurate in calling that a Perfect Manhattan. (Too bad about the CC as base liquor, though.) A Perfect Manhattan isn't necessarily a perfect Manhattan. BTW, based on a cocktail I had at Convivio (a restaurant in New York) last month, I've taken to doubling the amount of Carpano Antica I use in my Negronis, and halving the amount of Campari. Maybe I'm a wimp, but I think it produces a drink with a delicious flavor.

I can beat you on Audrey. I first got to know her as this young girl assisting Dale at Blackbird in Midtown. I remember when my friends and I used to be disappointed when we got that girl at the bar instead of Dale. That didn't last long.

Bemelman's was a hoot in the old days, before we knew about Quality Cocktails. My wife and I used to go there all the time, just to watch the old guys with their dates. (Little did I realize that my wife would die -- on the day Pegu Club opened, if you want to talk about strange coincidences; I went there opening night to drown my sorrows -- and that I'd turn into one of those old guys with inappropriately young dates whom my wife and I used to laugh at.) And it was GREAT under Audrey. (It was there I first had her fabulous Earl Grey MarTEAni, among many others.) But are you saying it's equally great under the new guy from Per Se? I haven't been -- but I also haven't heard that.

Word up for Kozy Shack! One of the best commercial food products out there.

Because it's STORMING out is why.

Actually, as usual, in the end I agree with Daisy. Even at the Flat Iron and Clover Club, which I referred to above as variable, I've never had a problem with ordering from the menu. It's only in going off-menu that I've had problems (as others have had at Pegu). Unlike in the restaurants (like Bobo and Ellataria), I've never had an on-menu drink at any of the places on my list that wasn't excellent.

I wonder if we'll ever see anything like the early days of Pegu Club again.

Just to amplify this, what I meant was: You go to Jean Georges, it isn't really that important whether JGV himself is in the kitchen or not. You can rely on the fact that you'll have supracompetent people executing his menu. You go to D&C, and it makes a big difference who's there. Not in terms of skills. If you stay on-menu, you can assume that the drinks will be nearly perfectly executed. But if -- as is sort of, to me, the whole point of Serious Cocktail Bars -- you go off-menu, it matters enormously who's serving you. Because it matters enormously whether their style accords with your taste. At Serious Cocktail Bars, it's like you're always having the chef "cook for you."

But even saying that, look at the odds. To me, at the places I listed, it's an anamoly if you get a bad bartender. It happens, but it's not the norm. Whereas at the restaurants Bobo and Ellataria, it's more like you're lucky -- or savvy -- if you get the good ones.

With the possible exceptions of Clover Club and Flat Iron,* yes.** __________________________________________ * I hate to say anything bad about Julie, whom I adore, but I don't find she's as much of a maniac about staffing as the others. ** I haven't had the bad times at Pegu that others claim to have had.

Also -- to sort of repeat what Daisy said above -- some of these restaurants, like Bobo and Ellataria (sp?) -- have serious guys making up their cocktails, and have a few serious people on their bartending staff. But they're not like D&C or PDT, where you can walk in anytime and assume you won't have to worry who's on board to get an excellent cocktail (even if, as I said above, the particular staffing can matter enormously in terms of going off-menu). The restaurants' staffing is too thin: they have one or two excellent bartenders and the rest are hacks. You can't list them as "top cocktail destinations" because it matters too much that you go to them when the right people are at work.

I think that's what I was trying to say above. When you could do a list of six -- or eight, if you want to unpack slkinsey's doublings -- that pretty much exhausts what most knowledgeable sources would consider to be the field, it seems not only churlish, but somewhat misleading, to have a "Top 5."

This is certainly right. But even aside from that, I think cocktails function differently at restaurants than at cocktail lounges, giving the cocktail programs different purposes. At restaurants with serious cocktail programs, the cocktails still have to complement the restaurant's cuisine, so that the food and cocktail programs work coherently (see Ellataria (sp?)). Also, I suspect that a good restaurant cocktail might be different from a good bar cocktail. Since the restaurant cocktail is a prelude to a meal, I have a feeling that a mixologist would formulate a restaurant cocktail differently from a bar cocktail, perhaps using fewer flavor components and perhaps tamer ones. Now the distinction I'm drawing here becomes less important the more a restaurant's bar is designed to function as a stand-alone entity. But to the extent we're talking about cocktails that are adjuncts to the food program, I think the distinction stands.

I do, too. It's lucky we all have each other to talk to, because no one else should want to.

I don't mean inconsistency of quality, Daisy. I mean of style. To be sure, each of these places has a house style that's somewhat distinct. But since we all go off menu, the style of each particular bartender becomes important. And there are bartenders whose styles are more to to my taste than others -- even though they're all superbly skilled.

When you're writing about this, FG, one useful thing you can do for your readership is to differentiate between what I'd call Serious Cocktail Bars and what I'd call Douchebag Bars, which also charge a lot for cocktails and also use premium ingredients, but which don't feature balanced, quality mixology but instead cater to people who don't care about culinary quality but just want to be seen spending a lot of money. The Gold Bar. The Jade and Rose Bars. The Eldridge (not that I've been, of course). Etc. (It'll be interesting to see which side Apotheke falls on.)