KatieLoeb

I just enjoyed dinner at Han Dynasty last night, and had some of the leftovers when I got home from work tonight. Han helped me pick out a delicious meal to share with my friend who swore he didn't love spicy food. He did by the time we left. But I still got all the leftovers because he was still shellshocked by his first Han Dynasty experience. Definitely a win-win for me! I still have some flounder and soft tofu left over for lunch tomorrow. Really looking forward to it... The PW review is excellent and well deserved. It's nice to see that favorable word-of-mouth and the local press has been so beneficial to the restaurant. But we all still need to go there and keep them busy. Often.

Sharing a predominantly vegetarian Passover feast (there will be some fish for those that want it) with my friend and her family that I always share Passover with. Am making the usual horseradish, haroset and will help with the vegetarian matzoh balls and a walnut torte for dessert the night before.

Bob: The aquavit recipe is one I cobbled together after research and a test batch. I'm using organic spices from an excellent source in Eugene, OR. It's predominently caraway, but there's cumin seed, coriander, dill, fennel, star anise, clove and some fresh citrus peel as well. Spices are toasted and then bruised and allowed to infuse for two weeks. The color is quite similar to the example in your photo next to the beer. I've tasted the Aalborg and the Linie and I humbly submit that this one's better. More complex and less sticky sweet. But definitely better ice cold. You still get the caraway upfront but the other layers reveal themselves slowly as it warms on your tongue. I'll certainly be happy to pour you one as I'd be very interested in your expert opinion. Thanks for sharing the pictures of Fryet! What a cool bar! I'll be adding that to my list of future places to visit...

Whole new menu hitting the hands of our guests starting on Monday 3/15. Many new cocktails, including the False Alibi and the Say Goodnight Gracie seen above, as well as new formatting done by our own Andy DeGiulio, one if my cohorts behind the bar who is also a very talented graphic artist. Also new is the first batch of housemade Aquavit which we're serving Scandinavian style - ice cold in small stemmed glasses to sip with your oysters.

Rick Nichols is doing some sort of follow up story about this - he asked my opinions on the brew-haha when he was in OH a couple of nights ago. There's quite a bit more to this story than meets the eye. I happen to be well acquainted with legal counsel for the wronged bar owners. Obviously we couldn't discuss the case or the facts directly, but suffice to say the PLCB ought to be very afraid that they're going to get strung up for this one. The raid a couple of days later at Origlio appears to have been a decoy to deflect attention away from the world of shit they've created for themselves and now stepped in. Personally, I can't imagine holding the bar owners liable for the registrations. The breweries are clearly responsible for that end of it. Not to mention the fact that the website that lists the registered products so bar owners/restaurateurs could check that what they're serving is legit is woefully out of date and inaccurate. Bar owners probably have a pretty wide berth to sue for loss of inventory, interruption of business and damage to the products if/when they're returned. No telling how they'll be (mis)handled and stored by the PLCB or for how long. I'll report back if I learn anymore dirt about this case.

I tend to take an Igloo filled with what appears to be iced tea or lemonade but it's the :cough: Big Girl version that's been appropriately spiked with vodka, gin or whatever. Harmless looking punches that pack one also work well. If I'm taking a flask that's in my sock or whatever, then it's just usually bourbon that I'll add to my Diet Coke I've bought at the concession stand. Boring but does what it needs to...

The Antique Collection stuff is delicious and was my favorite table at Philadelphia Whiskey Fest last November. Good on 'ya! That is indeed fantastic and we are forever on the "mission" to get folks to drink better. Speaking as one that's been pushing that rock uphill here in Philly for quite some time (with the added joys of the state run monopoly known as the PLCB thrown in) I applaud your choice to have the dinner and congratulate you on the sellout. Amen Brother. Always true...

Depends which two days you're spending. The PA Dutch vendors are generally only at the market Wed. or Thurs.-Saturday. Go to the Arch Street side of the market and check out the Hatville Deli. They have great Lancaster style cold cuts (including delicious Lebanon Bologna), cheeses and fresh tubs of whipped butter. The other PA Dutch vendors are centered around the Arch Street side of the market, so you should be able to find all those things that you miss.

*BUMP* TWO whole years with no commentary?? Astonishing. I just had to bring this back up to include this article from today's CNN.com about Babies Barhopping in Brooklyn. Discuss amongst yourselves...

The gold is not the liquor licenses that bars and restaurants possess, but the DISTILLING licenses that the large liquor companies possess. I do believe that Todd is right, and there might be something much larger and more trendy afoot here. I've seen every flavor of nonsense being hawked by salespeople of late (one particularly horrid Acai flavored vodka that made me shudder), and if the large distillers want to get behind a movement to force bars and restaurants to buy their flavored stuff rather than make their own, they certainly have the money and lobbying power to make that happen. I just wonder if stifling the creativity of their best accounts is really in their best interest in the long run...

Andy: I'm not offended nor did I believe you were impugning my professionalism. We clearly work both in very different sorts of restaurant settings, as well as in different cities with different tastes, different levels of customer cocktail knowledge and commonly ordered items. Believe me, nothing pleases me more than having the time to geek out with a bar guest and get up close and personal with them about their Old Fashioned or whatever it is they're consuming that night, and putting on that "show" for each and every bar guest. But part of my job is trying to streamline procedures and such so that even the highest volume evening with the highest maintenance mix of items ordered can be handled efficiently and speedily. Sometimes I have to cut a couple of corners (compared to the standard Old School preparation methods) to do that, but I still try to make everything with fresh, real ingredients (no polluting of cocktails with artificially colored and flavor Maraschino cherries or bottled lime cordial in the gimlets on my watch) that taste like fresh real ingredients. I'm flattered you believe I've brandied the cherries myself, but for the record we use the La Parisienne brandied cherries. They are consistent and delicious and actually resemble something that was once an organic object hanging off of a tree... I have to agree with Campus Five's comments about the gritty/oversweetened OF's that result from the muddled sugar cubes. I'm a big fan of using the syrup for consistencies sake as well. The syrup mixes through the drink more evenly and the drink tastes delicious from the first sip to the last without a puddle of sugary sludge at the bottom of it. And if everyone is using the same measurements then no matter which bartender's shift it is that night, the customer's drink tastes just like it did the last time they ordered it. That's most certainly another important reason I make and use the syrup.

I've found that a glass "rinse" tends to be too imprecise, and depending on how much liquor is poured in to rinse with, how carefully coated the inner surface of the glass is, and how much of the rinsing agent is actually dumped out can yield wildly varying results. For a Sazerac or whatever it's part of the ritual but I've tried to solve the glass rinsing problem by putting the absinthe into a dasher bottle and using a standard 3 dashes to rinse with (seems just enough to coat the interior surface of the short rocks glass we serve the drink in). For other applications I use an atomizer bottle and a standardized number of "spritzes" for either dry vermouth or Laphroaig scotch for a smokey componenent in a drink.

And how I do that for recreational use or when I have the time to discuss it with my guest and really tell them what that's about is very different than being functional in the heat of service on a busy shift in a high volume restaurant. Doesn't mean I'm not taking it seriously, nor that I don't recognize the difference. In fact, I think I'm finding the very best/most flavorful possible shortcut given the circumstances. I'm still muddling real brandied cherries with a wee bit of the brandy and a fresh wedge of orange in that Old Fashioned mix. The waitstaff and the unrelenting/merciless service bar printer couldn't give a fig about whether I'm muddling a sugar cube or not, and I/my cohorts have to stay ahead of drowning in a sea of service tickets. There are two bartenders serving both the dining room and the bar guests and trying to stay out of each other's way and remain efficient and speedy. It is what it is. If I worked at Violet Hour, Pegu Club or Death & Co. I'd have the luxury of having both the guests and the staff know that they'd have to wait for their drinks to be "created" or "conjured up". Sadly, it's not a luxury I live with at the moment. :shrug: We do our best to overcome adversity...

Ding ding ding! Ladies and gentlemen I think we might have a winner. Wouldn't be the first time a politician did a favor for a buddy, right? Interestingly, there are no Capital Grille locations in California, so the Stoli Doli martinis remain safe in the other states. But what about all those bars/restaurants in San Francisco (e.g. Sip, Elixir, Etiquette, etc.) that are infusing various liquors for their specialty cocktails? There's certainly been enough press about those places and drinks. What of all that? I'm sure there are a million places in L.A. that do the same, not to mention the upscale places in Napa and Sonoma that are undoubtedly doing it as well. Will there be an ABC taskforce running around to write "warnings" like parking tickets? I wonder if a "low enforcement priority" is quite the came thing as a "NO enforcement priority"? This is beyond stupid. Let's see how long this lasts. Seems like they're creating their own worst nightmare in terms of enforcement.

Andy: Go ahead. Be a curmudgeon. I don't have a problem with being a purist. But sometimes when you're really weeded at the service bar at 8:30 on a Saturday night, this is helpful and efficient. And as I mentioned, it does duty for Champagne cocktails and other applications as well. For home use, perhaps not necessary, but in a high volume environment, sometimes a necessary evil. And the syrup is delicious. I'm finding new ways to play with it all the time.

That's disturbing. I'll let my friends at Philadelphia Distilling know about that. That can't be right...

This is just flat out silly. I understand that there have to be laws governing not allowing greedy restaurateurs to replace cheap rot gut well vodka into the empty Belvedere bottles, and there absolutely should be laws governing those sorts of adulterations. But this is just an over reach. And this is coming from the state that named my limoncello recipe one of its Top Ten recipes of 2004 in the L.A. Times. Doesn't add up somehow.

Andiesenji, you are my heroine! Yet another amazing factoid about you is that you know how to hand etch glassware. Why does this not surprise me? You are truly a renaissance woman. Chris, that curlique glass is just lovely! I suspect the rough textural element of the pattern does indeed imply some sort of chemical process, as Andie suggests. Most other etchings don't have that sort of surface texture. I love love love antique glassware of all sorts. It's a problem. And I have expensive taste I can't possibly keep up with, which only makes it worse. I suspect that growing up in my mother's house that was filled with porcelain and glass tchotchkes of every stripe including cut glass bowls/vases/ashtrays/candy dishes, etched stemware of all description, glass animals and all manner of mirrors of various sizes and levels of elaborate decoration caused at least some of that love to rub off on me. I still treasure many of the glasses and things my mother left me. I developed a serious jones to own any and all of the William Yeoward stemware and/or barware when it was used to style a magazine shoot I worked on for a former restaurant employer. While they're reproductions of older discontinued antique patterns, they're so stunningly beautiful it doesn't even matter. I covet this stuff in the Biblical sense. It is a sin just how much I wish I could afford it. I have dreams of setting a gloriously gorgeous table with it. Or just having it live in the cabinets with my other things. A full setting of Yeoward stemware or barware might be one of the first things Id treat myself to upon winning the Powerball lottery. Just because I could.

I've had reasonably good luck with dumping the chemical laden liquid junk out of the jars and replacing it with Noilly Prat dry vermouth. Not the perfect solution, but a step forward nonetheless. I suspect that well poached small Cippolini onions treated in a similar fashion would be a big step up from the commercially available pickled moth balls we're all familiar with...

Here's a drink I created a few months ago for one of the local papers that was seeking good starter Absinthe recipes for home bartenders to try, hence the very specific instructions and explanations. I used the Vieux Carre absinthe since it's a local product and because it's herbal profile takes quite well to the addition of the mint in the drink. Absinthe Martini
 “This drink isn’t quite as dry as a true martini, but is a good way to introduce absinthe and its herbal flavors into your usual repertoire of cocktails. It makes for a very tasty and refreshing aperitif to get your appetite up before dinner.”
 1/2 ounce Vieux Carré absinthe
 2 1/2 ounce gin or vodka of your choosing
 1 ounce Lillet Blanc (a French fortified wine similar to vermouth)
 1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh mint leaves
 1 dash orange bitters (Fee Brothers or Angostura Orange bitters)
 Optional (for a sweeter drink): 1 teaspoon simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar dissolved together) or Agave nectar (available at Whole Foods)
 Garnish: Fresh lemon twist Pour absinthe into a cocktail/martini glass and rotate to coat the inner surface. Pour excess into an iced cocktail shaker. Add remaining ingredients (except for the garnish) and shake vigorously. 
 Strain into glass. Remove a strip of peel from lemon, taking care to remove only the yellow peel and none of the white pith. 
 Point the twist over the glass, peel side facing the drink and fold the peel in half lengthwise, spraying the surface of the drink with oil from the peel. Rub the rim of the glass with the peel side of the twist and drop twist into the drink. Here's a nice picture of what it looks like when it's done, garnished with a mint sprig rather than the lemon twist. This photo was taken by Jeff Stockbridge. The drink is on the antique milk glass rail by the front window at the Oyster House.

I learned a great trick from Archie, my favorite bartender at the Champagne Bar on the cruise I went on last May to Bermuda. Make an old fashioned mix to keep in a squeeze bottle for speedier drink making. Make a quart of 1:1 simple syrup with the peel of one orange removed with a veggie peeler (all zest - no pith) boiled into it. Strain and add 2 oz. Angostura bitters (or more to taste - I like a few dashes of Fee Whiskey Barrel Aged bitters as well. I can tell it's right from the color, I guess) and a splash of Cointreau. Use a squirt of this to muddle your fruit (or not) when making your Old Fashioneds. Makes a great instant Champagne cocktail too, and there's no overly sweet sludge at the bottom of the flute. Mixes through completely and tastes delicious from the first sip to the last. Not bad for a Faux-Zerac either, if you're lacking Peychaud's.

Lior: I think you might wish to go back and re-read what actually happened with the diner in question from the OP. Turns out she was as full of shit at a Christmas goose. Eating forbidden foods right off of her neighbor's plates, tipping poorly, etc. No good deed goes unpunished. Any decent restaurant is way too busy just making the dishes that really are on their menu to be taking the time to cook a customer's recipe for them, fancied up or not. If someone has a genuine allergy issue then they should either outline it completely to the kitchen (within reason), or seek advance permission to bring something in a container so they can join their dining companions that will be ordering off the regular menu. And if they're lying to seek attention they should stay home and seek the help of a good therapist and not waste everyone's precious time.

I'm a big fan of all three of those vermouths you mention, although I consider them for completely different applications. I like the Boissiere sweet as my "well" vermouth, the Antica for making the Turbo version of any cocktail that has sweet vermouth prevalent in the flavor profile (essential in what I've dubbed the Money Manhattan), and the Punt e Mes for Red Hooks and other places I need that little bit of bitter to dial back the drink.

Mike's dilemma illustates my point about PA and the PLCB perfectly. I can get B&B here, but currently I simply can't get Benedictine in PA. The PLCB, and the IIC in Harrisburg, have "delisted" that product, so legally, no one in the Commonwealth should have a bottle, or at least be able to buy a new one. It defies all logic and reason. It will come back, eventually, but for now consumers and restaurants are just screwed. The answer is what Mike alluded to. Cross the border into Delaware or NJ. Total Wine on Naaman's Road spitting distance over the DE border has a good selection of spirits and would have Benedictine, Galliano, Punt e Mes, etc. You New Yorkers have it so easy. You have no idea what's it's like to live/shop in the wine and spirits Gulag that is PA...

<Ahem> And downstairs from Nodding Head you could always stop by Oyster House for some raw bar, fresh seafood, good beers, wine or a cocktail. Happy Hour Buck-a-Shuck oysters and $3 Kenzingers on draught not a bad deal either...