Much like it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day busy-ness of work and then put off a blog post for a week plus, a post that you’ve been meaning to write every day (but then the corporate hive masters crack their electronic whips over you like you’re a sled dog pulling their dollar-making sled along until you just can’t take it anymore and end up constructing an example like this one, with mixed metaphors and long clauses that go on like a particularly annoying work day), much like this in a really small way is how it’s easy to get caught up in the vast array of ciders and beers available in the smaller towns in the U.K., and forget that there are some tip top cocktail slingers there, too, and that London has a sparkling array of cocktail spots. Whew, after that sentence we all need a drink. If you’re reading this in London, I suggest you find that drink at the Lonsdale, which is the focus of U.K. Drinks: Part Two (if you missed Part One, follow the link or scroll on down).
I was taken to the bar by cocktail-loving pals Ean and Reba (also known as Tales from the Birdbath), and accompanied by them and wife Natalie, but was given the suggestion of the Lonsdale as a tight cocktail spot by the fine writing-publishing folks Jared Brown and Anistatia R. Miller (who are also co-founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail). As a quick aside, if you haven’t picked up Mixologist: The Journal of the American CocktailVolume I and Volume II, which they published, edited, and contributed to, then I’m not sure you can call yourself a cocktail lover, as these collections are bubbling over with essays from today’s top cocktailians about topics sure to wet your literary whistle. They’re also the authors of a range of books (from Champagne Cocktails to Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini). What I’m trying to get to in my roundabout way is that if they’re nice enough to suggest a spot for cocktails, it’s going to be reliably awesome. Which the Lonsdale was. The crowd may have been a bit stock-brokerish, and have wondered at my Mighty Boosh buttons, but the wait staff was sweet and the drinks were fantastic. I started with what I thought was a fairly under-utilized early-part-of-last-century-ish cocktail that I wasn’t sure was being poured today anywhere outside of my garage (I’d never had it outside of my garage at least. I had it first there when putting together Good Spirits), the Whizz Bang. From the Lonsdale’s in-depth and multi-page menu, I learned the drink was invented by Tommy Burton in 1920 at the Sport’s Club of London (I knew it was named after high-velocity shells in the war, due to the sounds they made). Here’s the picture (it was dark in there, so the photos aren’t the best) and the recipe.
Ice cubes
1-3/4 ounces Baillie Nicol Jarvie Scotch
3/4 ounce Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
1/4ish ounce absinthe
1/4ish ounce pomegranate syrup
1 dashes orange bitters
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add everything. Shake well. Strain. Serve.
In the past, I’d made my Whizz Bangs with bourbon and Pernod instead of scotch and absinthe (due to necessity until recently on the latter). But the scotch here gave it a polite backbone and light smoky undertone. It may have been one of the best drinks I’ve had out (okay, take this with a grain of “I’m given to large pronouncements and going overboard about oodles of things,” but wow, it was delish), with the balance of flavors and hints of absinthe peeking through like the last rays of sunlight before dusk.
This may seem like an odd move for a cocktailing evening, but for my second drink I went for a Pisco Sour. After the knock out success of the Whizz Bang, I thought it’d be fun to get a more recognized classic, and see how the bartenders (who, sadly, I didn’t get to meet, as the bar area was overtaken by some sort of bungling birthday party, with ridiculous revelers who weren’t even taking advantage of the bar’s white hot staff of shakers, instead drinking beer and causing enough of a traffic jam that trying to get to the bar would have been an ordeal taking far too much time away from drinking) served it up. And, they served it up on the edge of marvelously (in the way that Dombey & Son is marvelous. It’s so marvelous, but not quite as marvelous as Bleak House), with an almost too serious head frothed up, as you can see in the picture below. The Macchu Pisco was exquisite, and the balance of sour to smooth walked the line perfectly. It would have been hard to follow up the Whizz Bang for any drink, though.
For my final drink of the evening, I went for a dessert number (and if anyone reading this wants to take offense with my dessert drink then fooey on you-y), a Coconut Flip, made with La Diablada Pisco (see, I was trying to follow a more natural path between drinks 2 and 3), Velvet Falernum (which I’ve been playing around with my-own-self recently), egg yolk, and sugar, with a touch of nutmeg on top in Flip style (a style which, the menu lets you know, traces back to pre-1810 England. They’re good country promoters at the Lonsdale). It was a great capper, with sweetness that didn’t overwhelm and a nice chewy (I’m not describing it exactly right, but it had a mouth feel that was more robust than most drinks due to the yolk) nature. By that time, I’d given up on taking snaps, due to lighting, but picture a smallish glass (a Delmonico glass, to be precise) of wet fluffy whiteness. Like a beautiful romantic ghost-in-a-glass, in a way. So, here’s to the Lonsdale, again, and to Ean and Reba again for taking us, with thanks for a delicious cocktail evening.
I promise to get up “U.K. Drinks: Part Two” soon (Part One’s below if you missed it), but to tide you over until that time (a time that’s, honestly, dependant on whether or not I can quit watching the new Robots in Disguise video for “The Tears” over and over), here are three cocktails for you to sip from the drinker’s blogosphere.
Remember the Maine: Over at Oh Gosh! you’ll find two variations (one drier) of this rye-based cocktail, which is from one of my favorite books, Charles H. Baker’s The Gentleman’s Companion. If you don’t try both, you’ll only have yourself to blame. And that would be a sorry way to spend the weekend.
The Scofflaw: Wow, I love this drink. Cause I’m sort-of an outlaw (well, only when dreaming–and even then it’s more like a silly comic book outlaw. Like Stilt Man maybe), much like the libatious ladies at LUPEC Boston, who bring this cocktail up as part of their Endangered Cocktails of the Month.
Damson Gin: Okay, you won’t be able to drink the results of this recipe from The Spirit World this weekend, but darnit, if you don’t start now, you won’t be able to drink it any weekend. Which would be a crazy shame. And you don’t want to be crazy, do you? At least not the kind of crazy that doesn’t have their own homemade Damson Gin to drink.
Just flew back in from a U.K. vacation (and I have to say, boy are my arms tired. No, really, I had to say it. I was forced by the lame jokes union, who said they’d cut off my supply of Strega if I didn’t use that particular line), where I not only had the brilliant pleasure of seeing the almighty Mighty Boosh live (a show I suggest everyone see before they shuffle off unless they’re very, very lame), but also had some fine drinks. The drinks came in the cocktail, highball, cider, and beer varieties, depending on the place and time and situation. The trip started in London, and started heavier on the cider and beer sides of the bar. I’m a large cider lover (take that as you will–there are what, at least four ways to take it), and the U.K. is an ideal spot to try out members of the cider species, including Aspalls Suffolk Cider, which I had at the Royal George Pub (in the Charing Cross neighborhood–I think), a punkish pub suggested by pals Stereolad and Schtickergirl, who came along for this U.K. adventure and who know their London spots. The Aspalls was “light, dry, and flouncy.”
Wife Natalie was a bit pooped by the time we hit the George (we’d been doing the London market experience all the live-long day), and went for an old reliable: the ice-cold Peroni, which is good no matter what country you’re visiting.
We also went in for the Pimm’s multiple times during the trip (and even brought back a bottle of Pimm’s No. 3, which is the brandy-based winter version, and hard to get over here in the WA), which only makes sense, with Pimm’s being an English standby and a favorite on warm days, which we had plenty of–who says the U.K. is cloudy and rainy and gothic-novel-melancholic 365 days a year by the way? That’s crazy talk. We had a few fine Pimm’s Cups, but the absolute finest, the tip top Pimm’s Cup, maybe in all of the U.K., but definitely in the parts we visited, was discovered at the White Bear Hotel, in Masham, in the Yorkshire Dales (a part of the country we spent some lovely days hanging out within). Masham is a nice village, with a market on Wednesday, a couple good hotels, quaintness to spare, and (like any English village) plentiful pubs on every street. Maybe my favorite Masham pub was the Bay Horse, which had a great veggie Ploughman’s Lunch loaded with 7 kinds of cheese, a meal I consumed while being watched by a little dog named Hank. Oh, but back to the Pimm’s at the White Boar (I start to go tangential, like a monkey flinging through the forest, right after a vacation, cause I miss every bit of it so much). They gave us the option of having it with lemonade (which is lemon soda) or straight soda, but every glass was packed with strawberries and grapes to go with the Pimm’s and mixer, and then topped off with the traditional cucumber slices.
A delicious bubbly treat, indeed. We also had an assortment of cocktails to swoon over at the Lonsdale in London, but I’ll hit those up later in the week.
A drink I picked up from the classic Savoy Cocktail Book, the Oriental has become a reliable mid-week (or weekend) hit for me, making me giddy every time I take that first sip, with its balanced nature and life-saving qualities. Oh, if you don’t know, as the Savoy tells it, “In August, 1924, an American engineer nearly died of fever in the Philippines and only the extraordinary devotion of Doctor B. saved his life. As an act of gratitude, the engineer gave Doctor B. the recipe of this cocktail (the Oriental).” Hence the life-saving nature of this drink. And, isn’t it always good when a drink comes with a built-in story, to start off those bar conversations that are so memorable (if a bit hazy in hindsight here and there). I love it. If you ever want to impress that certain someone, or just goof it with pals while soaking in the pleasures of being off work for a while, then the Oriental is a good drink to order up or make up and swill up.
It doesn’t hurt if you can embellish the story a bit as well. Lead up to the fever by giving the engineer a little more history (maybe he’s your uncle? maybe he was building a bridge to save a village from extinction? maybe he wears a jaunty hat?), and bring in the jungles of the Philippines, and then the engineer slowly succumbing to the fever, with the mosquitoes buzzing around his head like little planes around King Kong, and the lights getting dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer, the darkness creeping and the fever rising and our brave engineer (who looks a bit like George Clooney) descending into his fate . . . and then the tent flaps rise and the mysterious Doctor B walks in, surrounded by sunlight. Cut to the next scene where the engineer is making the Doctor the Oriental for the first time, and then sliding the recipe across the table as the Doctor’s eye’s gleam with thankfulness (he’s on his third Oriental by now, and the gleam is partially backed by that third round). It’s enough to make you tear up a bit. Or is that tear just because you’ve been waiting to get the recipe for so long? The following is how I make them. I tried experimenting with different orange liqueurs and such, but kept coming back to that basic curaçao, which isn’t quite as sweet (and the drink can be a tad sweet for some anyway, so it’s good to keep a handle on it). Be careful with the lime juice pour as well, as it tends to want to take over (those fresh juices are always a little, well, fresh). I even experimented with subbing in Aperol (that invigorating Italian afternooner) for the curaçao one time, and while it wasn’t a bad drink, it was different enough to where it was actually a different drink. But fun to play with.
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounce rye
3/4 ounces sweet vermouth
3/4 ounce orange curaçao
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
1. Fill a cocktail shaker half way with ice. Add everything. Shake well.
I feel bad I haven’t put any of my own drink-making fun up this week (cause I’m lame, or busy, or tipsy, or all three), but still wanted to point you to three mighty mixes from the blogosphere, to make sure you spend the weekend in high spirits.
Anticipation: Paul at the Cocktail Chronicles is always good for teaching not only about a drink, but about the history behind it, with fun bounding around everything. Here, he details a drink found in William Schmidt’s The Flowing Bowl, from 1891, that still tastes swell.
Natural Harmonic: Take a trip to the Spirit World and discover thisintriguing combination that uses a syrup made from I.P.A. (that’s beer, folks) to balance out Damrak gin. Old pals lemon juice and Marashino round out the orchestra in a manner sure to transport you. Consuming it while playing a hydrocrystalophone is suggested.
Tropical Rum Infusion: The knockout photos at Rejiggered of this fruity mixer made me unabashedly start salivating. Wow. Every time I look at them I realize that yes, even though silly Seattle is a bit cloudy it’s still summer most spots, and a pitcher full of booze and fruit is something summer wears as comfortably as Natalie Portman wears skinny pants.
Not the best pocket book ever, but still worth a read (and the cover is sweet, with the tag line “the girl stepped over the edge of the tub”), George Harmon Coxe’s Murder with Pictures is a “Kent Murdock Mystery.” Kent’s a photographer, who solves a bit of crime on the side. You could do that in the 1930s. Here are two quotes from the book, both of which are worth repeating.
“A hot bath, a cocktail, and a change of clothes–these made a difference.”
“She contemplated the dress a moment, then stepped over to the bedside table and picked up the cocktail shaker, a severe cylinder on chromium and black enamel. She shook it five or six times, poured dark red liquid into the single silver cocktail cup. Manhattan’s were her favorite. But she had to be careful.”
Bring on the weekend, and the sooner the better. Speaking of “better” and “weekend,” make your upcoming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday rise to the occasion by trying out these three cocktails from the booze-y blogosphere.
Heirloom Martini: From A Dash of Bitters, this elegant mixture matches up with the current-and-upcoming (depending of your locale) harvest season, as it matches up gin and heirloom tomato water.
Shanghai Gin: In the Scofflaw’s Den you’ll learn about this variation of the Last Word (and learn about the Last Word for that matter, if you don’t know it), a variation that combines gin, yellow Chartreuse, Benedictine, and lemon juice.
The Hop Toad: On SpiritAndCocktails, Jamie Boudreau sings (in written format, but lovingly all the same) about Matusalem Gran Reserva rum and then blends it into an old favorite that traces back to the venerable Waldorf-Astoria.
Bring on the weekend, and the sooner the better. Speaking of “better” and “weekend,” make your upcoming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday rise to the occasion by trying out these three cocktails from the booze-y blogosphere.
