The Beard Awards Find Room for the Bar

From Diner's Journal, news of a needed change at the James Beard Awards:

James Beard Awards Are Late (but Welcome) to the Bar

By ROBERT SIMONSON

The outstanding-wine-program category of the James Beard Awards was born the same year the food-world prizes were first given out: 1991. Now, 21 years later, the Beard Foundation has finally gotten around to honoring the other half of every restaurant’s liquor regimen.

The five inaugural nominees for outstanding bar program were announced on Monday. They include two bars from New York (Pegu Club, PDT), two from Chicago (Aviary, The Violet Hour) and one from San Francisco (Bar Agricole).

For many professionals in the spirits and cocktail world, the reaction to the advent of the category wasn’t so much “Great!” as “What took them so long?”

“It was an acknowledgment that as much time, if not more, is being spent on the bar programs these days as the wine program,” said Mitchell Davis, vice president of the James Beard Foundation. “We’re in the midst of a cocktail frenzy.”

(The food part of the program, of course, went on as usual: The finalists,announced Monday, included several New York names: David Chang and Daniel Humm for outstanding chef; Balthazar and Blue Hill for outstanding restaurant: and Isa and Tertulia for best new restaurant.)

Mr. Davis, who is a cocktail enthusiast himself — martinis, gimlets and Manhattans are his go-to drinks — does not think the foundation is necessarily arriving late to the party. “The foundation is always criticized for being too late,” he said. “But I think there’s a benefit to not jumping on trends too fast. I certainly don’t think we’ve missed the moment. The bar revival hasn’t peaked.”

“This is a collaborative process,” he added. “We have committees and judges that make decisions. You have to get a lot of people to agree” on the creation of a new category.

The folks behind the honored bars think the award will only do the industry good. “The craft bartending industry has made enormous strides in the last number of years, investing great amounts of time an effort into both education and refinement of technique,” said Audrey Saunders, of Pegu Club. “Now we’re witnessing the fruits of our labor with a true ‘raising of the bar,’ and it’s extremely gratifying to see the change in public perception that’s taken place along with it.” She added that she believed the new award “will inspire many more bars to excellence, and thus encourage further fortification of our industry.”

Jim Meehan of PDT observed that the Beard foundation was merely acknowledging what chefs have for years. “I’ve persuaded chefs, culinary schools and amateur cooks to consider the similarities between the bar and the kitchen for years,” he said. “Linton Hopkins in Atlanta, Barbara Lynch in Boston, José Andrés in D.C., Wylie Dufresne in New York and Charles Phan in San Francisco have nurtured sophisticated bar programs for years, and now we have chefs such as Daniel Humm and Grant Achatz taking it to the next level.”

A ballot listing the five nominees will be submitted to a panel of roughly 400 judges, who will vote in the bar program awards. All the winners will be announced on May 7 at a ceremony at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center..

Now that the bar program hurdle has been cleared, might the foundation created an outstanding mixologist category sometime in the future? “I would not be surprised,” Mr. Davis said.

A Cocktail Book for Your iPad

Cocktails books can be frustrating. You're given the recipe and a few instructions, but that doesn't necessarily lead to a great drink. Much is lost or unspoken between the page and the glass. And how-to cocktail videos aren't much better, simply because they're not convenient. Who mixes a drink while sitting in front of a television or computer screen?

A new iPad book would seem to combine the pluses of these two formats and shed the minuses. I had a chance to browse through "Speakeasy Cocktails: Learn from the Modern Mixologists," and found it quite fluid and visually attractive. It was released on Aug. 11. Here's the article I wrote about it for the Times:

Mixing Drinks on Your Lap With No Spills

By Robert Simonson 

Now subway riders can use their iPads not just to catch up on the latest best seller, but to prepare for the cocktail hour that awaits them at home.

On Aug. 11, “Speakeasy Cocktails: Learn from the Modern Mixologists,” a cocktail book for the iPad, will be released by Open Air Publishing. It was created by the New York mixologists Jim Meehan (of PDT) and Joseph Schwartz (Little Branch); Rob Willey, a freelance writer who has written about drinks for The New York Times and other publications, and Jon Feldman, president of Open Air.

The book — which will be available for $9.99 through the iPad apps store — combines text with the how-to mixology videos. A reader can surf from a scholarly treatise on tequila to a list a tequila-based cocktails. Click on a specific cocktail and you’re transported to the recipe. With select libations, there’s an accompanying video of either Mr. Meehan or Mr. Schwartz building the drink at their respective bars. Specific techniques (how to stir, shake, cut a twist, rim a glass with salt, even how to adorn a Pisco Sour with a swirl of bitters) are covered in separate linked video clips.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Mr. Schwartz said. “You get the recipe, but also someone making it, so you can see how it’s put together. And you learn the finer points of different kinds of ice, how to flame an orange peel — lots of different pointers that you can access piecemeal as you need them.”

“Speakeasy Cocktails” will feature more than 200 cocktail recipes. They are divided into four sections: “Master Drinks” (time-tested formulas that work with almost any base spirit); “The Canon,” which covers classic cocktails; “Rediscovered Classics,” including old drinks that have been resurrected in recent years; and “New Standards,” libations invented by today’s crop of ambitious mixologists, including Kirk Estopinal of New Orleans’ Cure, Jackson Cannon of Eastern Standard in Boston, and Kevin Ludwig of Beaker & Flask in Portland, Ore. There are videos for 15 bedrock cocktails, including the daiquiri, negroni and bloody Mary. “The drinks were picked not only because they were classic drinks,” said Mr. Feldman, “but because each had multiple components of technique to demonstrate.”

“I made a point of talking about every single thing I was doing,” added Mr. Meehan.

A number of drinks feature an “after” picture that can be rotated 360 degrees, showing how the completed drink should appear. “Some drinks look the same from every angle, like a sazerac,” Mr. Feldman said. “With the mint julep, Jim explains how you want the mint to be away from the nose. So a person making that at home can see what that drink should look like from the back.”

“In some places we wanted the text to function almost as the guy on the barstool next to you,” said Mr. Willey, “like, ‘See, you’ve really got to shake the thing.’ “

The Corn Harvest Arrives at PDT

For some time now, I listed the Imperial Silver Corn Fizz under the Damn Good Cocktails column to the right. Which has been rather cruel of me, since you couldn't order the damn thing anywhere in the country.

That changed on Aug. 30, when Jim Meehan, bar master at PDT, and author of the drink, added to the fizz to the PDT menu.

I was lucky enough to try the cocktail on it's initial voyage, at a cocktail dinner in fall 2009. It is a combination of homemade corn water, whiskey, honey syrup, champagne and egg white, shaken into a frothy concoction that is pale yellow at bottom, white on top. As I wrote then, if there was such a thing as creamed corn whiskey, it might taste like this lightly sweet, absolutely unusual drink.

Meehan has tweaked it a bit. He switched from Maker's Mark to George Dickel, which is not a small thing, since we're talking Tennessee Whiskey now, not Bourbon. But I like Dickel better anyway. So good.

So go and try it and see if you don't agree with me. Enjoy the fruits of the harvest.

Sommelier Smackdown

I was invited recently to an event at the Midtown restaurant Nios called a "Sommelier Smackdown," a title which was about half right. On one side, trying to find the best wine pairings for each course of a three-tier meal was Emily Wines, the San Francisco sommelier, whose first New York wine program Nios is. On the other side, however, was Jim Meehan, the owner of the East Village speakeasy PDT.

This is not what you'd call a fair fight. Not that Wines and Meehan aren't both talented—they are, abundantly. But, to my mind, 9 times out of 10, nothing marries better with a meal than wine. Not beer, not spirits, not cocktails. Also, inviting Meehan to a "Sommelier Smackdown" is like asking Johnny Appleseed to complete at the annual orange festival. Wine and cocktails are just too different.

Still, all parties seemed game. And it was designed as a lark to begin with, so why carp. So off we all went to the first course, a corn risotto. Emily Wines—who has the most professionally advantageous name is the history of specialized labor (and it is her real name)—poured a Gary Farrell Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2007. It was round and buttery, not the sort of Chard I typically like. But I had to admit is was a good partner to the risotto. I like a bit of butter on my corn, don't you?

But Meehan countered with a surprisingly sophisticated creation. (Not surprising in its invention, since Meehan has plenty of that, but in the way it perfectly coupled with the food.) The cocktail was called an Imperial Silver Corn Fizz. It was a combination of homemade corn water (you read that right—corn water), Makers Mark bourbon, honey syrup, champagne and egg white, shaken into a frothy concoction that was pale yellow at bottom, white on top. If there was such a thing as creamed corn whiskey, it might taste like this lightly sweet, absolutely unusual drink. The crowd adored it. I told Meehan the drink was good enough, and strange enough, to become a permanent fall-time edition to the PDT menu. People will take about his corn water the way they talked about Don Lee's bacon-infused bourbon.

For the next course, a rack of lamb with grilled figs and fingerling potatoes wrapped in jamón serrano, Wines, with be-baubled neck, leaned over with a bottle of 2006 Gai'a Estates Agiorgitiko, a well-chosen, light-bodied, dark-colored, woody Greek with bark-like tannins. Meehan was on less-certain ground, offering The Senor Smackdown, a mix of tequila, lime juice, Dry Sack sherry, Benedictine, fig jam, and lime zest, shaken. It was a great cocktail, which easily sucked me down into its intoxicating world, but it felt out of context. The fig connection was not enough to tie it in.

Meehan bounced back a bit at dessert, which was a rose petal panna cotta with pomegranate foam. His Raspberries Reaching cocktail was one of the most beautiful and elegant mixed drinks I've ever laid eyes on. Maybe too beautiful. Fragile, even. Trimbach Framboise eau-de-vie, 5 Puttonyos Tokaji Aszú, pomegranate liqueur, and a few drops of rose flower water, were its ingredients. A rose petal was its garnish. An almost magically floral drink, a fine match was such a delicate dessert. Wines' parry was, I felt, her major slip-up of the evening. Trying a bit too hard, she topped a perfectly fine off-dry sparkling wine from the Savoie region, NV Patrick Bottex Cerdon de Bugey "La Cuille," with rosewater and floating pomegranate seeds. The seeds made it a frustrating business getting your mouth to the wine, which, frankly, would have suited on its own. There's a wine for every dish, I say. Trust it. Don't adorn it.

Everyone voted, assignment a numerical score to each contestant per course. When the tallying was done, Emily won, 216 to 205. Meehan was the first course; Wines the second and third. But Meehan's Imperial Silver Corn Fizz was without question the drink of the evening.