Of Pitcher Cocktails and Cecchinis

Pitcher cocktails will play a central role in the cocktail program at Greenwich Village's Frankies 570 Sputino, the latest in the growing Frankies empire, set to open Sept. 6. Staking out a middle ground between cocktails and punches, pitcher cocktails (and we're not talking Sangria here) have been picking up steam for a couple months now, popping up at Mayahuel, 1534, Prime Meats and Vandaag (whose erstwhile beverage director will now be working some shifts at 570).

One other intriguing aspect to the Frankies 570 cocktail menu, which didn't make its way into the Times article below, is the fact that new restaurant will have a seasonal cocktail called a Cecchini. "We don't have cranberry juice behind the bar, so we're not going to make Cosmopolitans," said Cabell Tomlinson. "Instead, we're going to do a season 'pink drink' and call it a Cecchini, after Toby Cecchini. It will be a variation on the Cosmopolitan." Cecchini is the well-known New York bartender who helped to popularize the Cosmopolitan in the late 1980s, and has never quite escaped from the shadow of that modern "Sex and the City" classic. Tomlinson checked with Cecchini before using his name. "He said, 'I'm never going to get that albatross off of my neck, so go ahead.'"

The '70s Live Through Cocktails at Fatty Johnson's

Who says today's mixologists don't have a sense of humor?

On Feb. 16, Brian Miller and Toby Cecchini, two of the more talented bartenders in New York, deigned to employ their nimble fingers in the creation of such cocktail world bête noires as the Alabama Slammer and Appletini, and other creations of the 1970s and 1980s—the era considered to be the nadir of cocktail culture of drinks historians. On Facebook, they christened this evening "The Night the Cocktail Died." The menu at Fatty Johnson's read "Goose and Maverick Present Lipstick on Pigs." ("Top Gun" did not play on the bar's television sets. Rather we were treated to a swath of Chevy Chase films.) Cecchini, whose early work at Odeon was partly responsible for the popularity of the Cosmopolitan, showed particular good humor by including that "Sex and the City" staple on the list.

Of course, mixologists will be mixologists, and Miller and Cecchini couldn't let well enough (or bad enough) alone. The Jello shot on offer was a Bramble, the highly regarded, modern classic created in London. And nobody was using DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker for the Appletini. There was even an "off-menu" special, the super-trashy Flaming Dr. Pepper, made up of Luxardo Amaretto and Lemon Hart 151 Proof Demerara Rum lit aflame in a shot glass and then dropped in a glass of Brooklyn Pilsner. And, yes, it did taste like Dr. Pepper.