Not Just for Wimbledon and New Orleans Anymore

I had my first encounter with Pimm's No. 1, appropriately enough, in Wimbledon. It was 1999. Business has relocated a college friend there temporarily. While visiting with him in his lush back yard, he made me a Pimm's Cup and told me he was mad about the stuff. Didn't I love it?

I'll be honest. It didn't make much of an impression at the time. I assumed that my friend was passing through an acute case of Anglophilia and had lost all sense of perspective where English-made goods were concerned.

Pimm's didn't truly leave its mark on me as a drink until 2006, when I stepped across the threshold of the Napoleon House in New Orleans. Everyone was drinking Pimm's Cups, and the bartender was making them by the half-dozen. When in Rome, I thought. 

I liked the drink immediately this time. That it was July and scorching outside, and the cocktail was light and refreshing, certainly helped stoke my affections. I've had many Pimm's Cups at Napoleon House since, as well as at other bars across the world, and at home, where I build them fairly frequently between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

It was a pleasure to report, in this article for the New York Times, that you can walk into almost any respectable bar in NYC today and order a Pimm's Cup with confidence.

Cocktails to the Maks

There are two things every serious New York drink should do at least once on a Monday night. One is take in a "Tiki Monday" at Lani Kai. The second is experience one of bartender Maks Pazuniak's "Something Like This" sessions at the Counting Room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The menu is different every week, featuring five of Pazuniak's original, bitter and beguiling liquid creations (and sometimes a classic or two). Monday is the only day of the week Pazuniak works at the Brooklyn bar (though he designed the place's entire cocktail menu). So if you want to experience his work first-hand, that's when you go. If you merely want to taste one of his drinks, go to the The Counting Room any night and order a Salt & Ash, or Wire & String. Or go to nearby Maison Premiere and take in a Carondelet—a remnant of his short bartending stint there.

Here's a story I wrote for Wine Enthusiast about him:

A Brooklyn Absinthe Fountain, Dripping as God Intended

I recognized the thing the moment I walked into Maison Premiere last Thursday. Standing behind the bar was a ditto of the famous green marble absinthe fountain found inside the Olde Absinthe House in New Orleans' French Quarter. I'd stared at the original enough times to know the specimen. (The original, upon which the new one is based, is below).

The fountain at Maison—a new cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg meant to evoke old New Orleans—is not just a decorative monument. It is in full working order, making it (unless I am much mistaken) the only absinthe fountain in New York that is actually connected to the premises.

Most of the water drippers we've seen in bars, ever since absinthe became widespread again three years ago, are the chintzy, glass, tabletop items that the bartenders must constantly fill with ice in order to keep the water cold enough to make absinthe cocktails. Maison's has a customized water line inside that feeds directly from the basement, through a chill block that rests in the bar's copper basin, and through a series of three reducer valves which control the rate at which the water flows out. (You want a slow, steady drip, not a wild spurt.)

Does this make the resulting absinthe taste any better? I don't know. But it make the experience of ordering an absinthe that much more pleasurable and authentic.

Recreating the fountain wasn't easy. In fact, it was an ordeal. Here's an item I wrote about it for the NY Times' Diner's Journal: