The Violet Hour

[newbie21]

Thanks!!

[Alchemist]

The Violet Hour Blog is up and running. We are going to be posting Punch techniques and recipes as they change. Summer is coming and it's time to get ready for BBQs.

http://partyondamen.com/

Cheers,

Toby

[gfron1]

I'm heading to Chicago next week for an r&d trip to Smyth, and wondering where we should go for cocktails - not just bars, but possibly restaurants doing amazing things. They need to have all sorts of vials and squirt bottles and mason jars full of house-made stuff that goes into their cocktails. Thoughts?

[Dave the Cook]

These are probably already on your list, but just in case: The Aviary and The Violet Hour are two of the most outstanding cocktail establishments in the country.

[Alex]

Dave's two, of course. Also these:

Bar Sótano, Rick Bayless's new speakeasy underneath Frontera Grill,

Kumiko, "a formal bar," by former Oriole folks (the restaurant, not the baseball team)

The Albert, a restaurant, features "science-minded cocktails" (Albert = Albert Einstein) 

[lemniscate]

Wow.

The Violet Hour closes permanently in Wicker Park after 18 years

[weinoo]

2 hours ago, lemniscate said:

Wow.

The Violet Hour closes permanently in Wicker Park after 18 years

I believe Toby is opening a new place in Vancouver.

[Katie Meadow]

This is completely irrelevant, but I always loved the name The Violet hour. I also liked Bar None in SF. But the latest great name for a sports bar that only screens women's sports on the TVs is in Portland. It's called The Sports Bra.

[Alex]

24 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

I always loved the name The Violet hour

 

Indeed -- from The Waste Land, part III, The Fire Sermon

Quote

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing, waiting...

-----

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from the sea...

 

Oh, and a couple of weeks ago, Kumiko won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar.

[Dave the Cook]

Toby himself flagged Eliot (and that passage), but he also invoked Bernard De Voto:

Quote

There is a point where the marriage of gin and vermouth is consummated. It varies a little with the constituents, but for a gin of 95 proof and a harmonious vermouth it may be generalized as about 3.7 to one. And that is not only the proper proportion but the critical one; if you use less gin it is a marriage in name only and the name is not martini. You get a drinkable and even pleasurable result, but not art’s sunburst of imagined delight becoming real. Happily, the upper limit is not so fixed; you may make it four to one or a little more than that, which is a comfort if you cannot do fractions in your head and an assurance when you must use an unfamiliar gin. But not much more. This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow again and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen magically along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn. But it would not be a martini if we should see him.

 

Bernard DeVoto, The Hour (1949)

Link here.

[Katie Meadow]

On 7/1/2025 at 10:25 AM, Dave the Cook said:

Toby himself flagged Eliot (and that passage), but he also invoked Bernard De Voto:

Link here.

To respond "like" means the sun has not stated to set. That's just lovely.