Kingcocktail

Hi Cabrales, I have some great spots for you to check out…First a bar owner here in NYC has two happening bars in Paris. Phillip Morgan who owns Suba here in the city owns Stolly in Paris and the Lizard Lounge in the Marais District. A bar crawl would be incomplete in Paris without a stop at Hemingways favorite bar the American Bar in the Ritz Hotel Dress for this one, and please say hello to Colin Field the Master bartender in residence. The original Harry's New York bar opened in 1911 is a must for a hamburger and a Bloody Mary. Finally near the Plaza Vendome is the bar in the Hotel Costes very classy Bon Voyage Dale

Hi Glenn, Absolutely! Well-made vodka will produce a better tasting drink. The type of drink will of course determine how obvious that difference is to the guest. A screwdriver made with a no-name vodka that burns all the way down when taken straight will be less offensive than a vodka martini made with a no name vodka that burns all the way down. Because vodka is not in the category of big flavor the differences between the well made premium vodkas and the mass-produced cheaper spirits are subtler. A cheap vodka will have off flavors because of the water and because there is no strong supervision from a master distiller monitoring the grain from the field to the mash bin or choosing the heart of the still run. The result is a harsh spirit that burns and has strange off flavors, and lacks consistency. Stay with the premium well you have to charge a bit more but the guest will notice and reward you with their business. Dale

Hi Gordon, Well Gordon, I am also a gin straight up martini drinker but having said that I make a portion of my income each year by crafting those new-age martinis for restaurants and spirit companies. The Martini since it’s inception in the 1870s has been an evolving drink. It started out with sweet gin and sweet vermouth to which any numbers of other ingredients were added over the years. And even when dry gin and dry vermouth were finally married in the fist “dry” martini at the Knickerbocker Hotel in NYC, orange bitters was still part of the mix and the vermouth and gin were used half and half. The extra dry martini of recent years is just another stage in the on going evolution of the drink. I am encouraged by one aspect of this new age martini movement it heralds a healthy growth of creativity and enthusiasm in a profession which has been stagnant for years. They can call it whatever they want as long as it tastes good. Remember the cocktail itself was a very narrow catagory in the beginning...spirits, a mixer, and bitters but by the end of the 19th century a cocktail was any mixed drink with spirits, and there are many people still upset about that term. Dale

See the reply to nightscotsman about bar books..happy Holidays Dale

Hi Rail Paul, That is the twenty thousand dollar question!! Staffing is the key to success in the bar and restaurant business. Friendly, knowledgable, honest, and efficient staff that is all I want…what so difficult about that? At the Rainbow Room after my initial hire in 1987 of a complete staff I never hired bartenders again with maybe one or two exceptions. I designed the beverage staff at rainbow with a full compliment of barbacks as well as bartenders. The style of drink making required that kind of staffing and the price of the drinks reflected the staffing and the fresh and premium ingredients we used. I had an apprenticeship program in place that worked like a charm. I hired barbacks that were hungry to advance to bartender and after a year on the job most of them were capable of picking up shifts behind the bar. I used them as replacements for vacationing or sick bartenders and eventually when a bartender moved on I could move an experienced person into the position and hire an entry-level barback to replace the employee I advanced. Whatever size staff you have there are a few things you can do to make the staff turnover smoother. 1. Put in place a training program that is on-going. 2. Don’t be to quick to give up on an employee that you have invested in…find the problems and see if they can be solved before dismissing a staff person. 3. Hire on the basis of personality and people skills even above experience. If you have a cracker jack training program it will allow you to do this. I don’t want an unfriendly very skilled bartender, I can teach bartending but not friendliness. 4. Do pole your employees and find out where they really want to be…maybe a waiter would prefer the bar and maybe a bartender would much rather be in the kitchen. If you have ongoing and thorough training, mandatory for some but open to all staff in all areas horizontal and vertical movement within the existing staff can solve lots of problems. 5. Keep a really complete file of resumes. 6. Work with culinary schools to offer internships etc. 7. Create a good working environment with good benefits, learning opportunities and hands on management to avoid large staff turn over. Many of the bartenders I stated with in 1987 at the Rainbow room we still with me in 1998 when we lost our lease. 8. Finally the most important quality a prospective employee can exhibit is passion for what they do. Dale

Dear Steebles, Crafting signature drinks for liquor companies or for bars is actually one of the ways I make my living. When I am approached by a spirit company with a new product or an old product they wish to breathe new life into usually they have spent a lot of time and money with their agency team trying to decide which demographic audience they want to target. Some cases they wish to target several different demographic. For example 24 to 34 single professional who spend most nights out but do not have a lot of disposable income, as opposed to 35 to 45 married with children who entertain in the home with more cash to spend. These define where I will start my search for the right kind of cocktail. Reading between the lines I think you want to settle on a cocktail that can be your house signature though and so I would keep it simple and choose your favorite spirit and start there. When you create a cocktail, remember that if you use a sweet ingredient a sour ingredient must balance it. Bitters are flavor additives that bring needed accents to cocktails, for example I don’t think there is a tropical cocktail recipe around that wouldn’t be a bit better with a dash or two of Angostura Bitters (available in the Grocery store). Creamy ice cream style drinks are sort of easy to succeed with but how many can you drink and can you drink them with canapés? So you might want to explore other areas for your house cocktail. Sweet and sour drinks that have a balance of lemon or lime juice paired with a strong and a sweet ingredient are a bit harder to make but so much better with food. Just have some fun with your friends and play with a lot of possibilities…as a matter of fact I think you should throw a party to create your house signature cocktail!!…. Everyone brings a bottle and you supply all the mixers the juices, the condiments and the fruits. Dale

Dear Nightscotsman The books high on my list are: The New American Bartender's Guide by John Poister Esquire Drinks by David Wondrich The Savoy Cocktail Book (the new edition with original graphics) The Bartender's Best Friend by Mardee Regan American Bar by Charles Schumann Classic Cocktails by Salvatore Calabrese Cocktail by Paul Harrington and Laura Moorhead If you can find out of print : The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by David Augustus Embury Good Luck, Dale Edited for links with Dale's permission.

Hi Perry, I would alter the three drinks according to the season …For a winter or fall cocktail party I would serve a great whiskey drink like the Old Fashioned, or the Manhattan, the Margarita, and a sexy new martini recipe(of course I would be sure to have ingredients on hand for a classic martini as well, the classic is the king of cocktails and should always be available at a cocktail party…gin, vermouth, and an olive ) For a party in the summer I would offer fruit Caipirinhas, cherry and mango maybe, again Margaritas (they are so popular a party isn’t a party with out margaritas) and maybe something tall and cool like Lemoncello lemonade or a tall rum punch.

I am delighted with Eben’s drinks and have enjoyed them on many occasions. I love to see that kind of creativity in the profession, but my ambition is inspire a widespread return to fresh fruit and fresh ingredient cocktails, then I will turn to the exotics. I am pleased to see an operation return to fresh lemon and lime juice and sorry that so few have, especially some of our first class hotels and hotel chains that prior to prohibition were the home of the classic American Iced cocktail. The fact that I cannot get a fresh sour drink in the King Cole Bar of the St Regis or the beautiful bar at the Marriott Marquis is shocking. Lets get the basics back before we get too ambitious, and I don’t mean to imply that young creative bartenders shouldn’t pursue these kinds of drinks they absolutely should. Dale

Sorry I forgot to mention that Schiller's SazeacCoffeehouse opened in 1859 and the second owner Thomas Handy (1870) changed the name to Sazerac House and the cocktail changed from Brandy to whiskey. The late date takes the Sazerac out of contention as the first cocktail. Dale

There are a lot of variables in your question…I work in London about every six weeks and I have been tasting all the new entries in the Absinthe category…there aren’t many good ones. The Le Fee is one of the best …made in France for sale in the UK (still illegal in France to purchase Absinthe but not to produce it for export). I haven’t tasted it yet but the Pernod Company is producing the original formula Absinthe from the 19th century I plan to taste that when I return. As for how it will effect the flavor of the Sazerac cocktail, true absinthe is bitter not sweet, that is why the original cocktails made with absinthe included sugar cubes or sweet ingredients. The Absinthe substitutes are sweet and don’t need additional sweetening. In the case of the Sazerac since the absinthe or the substitute is just used to season the glass the sweetness is not a factor …just the anise top note in the flavor. I suspect that whether true absinthe or Pernod is used the drinker would have a hard time distinguishing any real flavor difference. What was the first cocktail is always a great source of argument, but the answer is really quite obvious. It couldn’t be the Sazerac because the cocktail was defined as a category in 1806 and the Sazerac cocktail as we know it today was first served at the Sazerac Coffee House 13 Exchange Alley, New Orleans by John Schiller. Schiller served a brandy Sazerac, remember the town was very French and they liked Brandy but the drink evolved into a whiskey drink over twenty years. Legend has it the at the turn of the century Antoine Peychaud the man who created the formula for Peychauds Bitters used to gather his friends in his Apothecary shop for cognac doused with his bitters. Since the addition of bitters to the alcoholic concoctions of the day defined the emerging category cocktail Peychauds friendly gatherings could be the birth of the cocktail and the cocktail party. The cocktail was described in print in 8106 as a bittered sling so my guess if those first cocktails were simple concoctions based on brandy whiskey or gin doused with bitters and sweetened with sugar or curacao.