Top of the Morning to You!

Sometimes my job treats me very well.

For a recent article in the New York Times, I was forced to explore at various bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan the world of morning and afternoon cocktails. I drank Clover Clubs and Ramos Gin Fizzes and Bourbon Milk Punches and Corpse Revivers and many another drink you've never heard of, all while munching of various comestibles, which only rarely didn't feature bacon. Decadence was never so civilized.

It's been a pleasure in recent months seeing some of the best cocktails bars in New York City throw open their doors before the sun goes down. And it's been a convenient pleasure, since more of the trailblazers in this movement—Clover Club, Ft. Defiance, Prime Meats—are an easy walk from my home.

Here's the article:

The Final Frontier? It’s an Eye-Opener

By Robert Simonson

ON a recent Sunday, at Clover Club, six young women giddily compared impressions of their mixed drinks. Nothing unusual in that. People come to this tavern in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, expressly to indulge in finely honed cocktails. But the sun, slanting brightly through the front windows, glinted off the iced glasses. And at the next table a young couple coddled their newborn. It was noon.

Drinking at brunch is nothing new, of course. But brunching at places where people go mainly to drink is.

Clover Club is one of several bars known for alcoholic alchemy that are exploring daylight drinks that go beyond the bloody mary and the mimosa.

At Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, you can begin your weekend with a New Orleans-style bourbon milk punch. A meal baptized with a Breakfast Cocktail, made of Old Tom gin, dry vermouth and orange marmalade, is available at noon Saturday and Sunday at Henry Public in Cobble Hill. And Mayahuel of the East Village has decided that many of its tequila and mezcal-based concoctions are well suited for brunch.

Among the bars letting the sunshine in out West are the Alembic in San Francisco and the Hungry Cat in Los Angeles. At both you are on sound footing ordering the ornate Ramos Gin Fizz, arguably the most storied of the forgotten morning drinks and certainly the most complicated (it has eight ingredients, including orange flower water).

“I found that cocktail-wise, there was a lack of variety” during the day, said the Clover Club’s owner, Julie Reiner, whose trailblazing brunch is a favorite of brownstone dwellers as well as bartenders. “People focused on having a great bloody mary, but other than that, there wasn’t much.”

The shift in hours has been driven by both passion and necessity. “Everybody always talked about brunch as a reason to go drink early on Sunday,” said Phil Ward, owner of Mayahuel. “But most places I’ve ever been, they’ve never had anything I wanted to drink.” Mr. Ward conceded, however, that he had another motivation. “The more you’re open, the more profit you make.”

Establishing a brunch trade often requires a few new hires because most bartenders, like vampires, are not morning people. “My night staff, heaven forbid they should ever have to work brunch,” Ms. Reiner said, laughing.

The notion of sunrise tipples is an old one. In the 19th century, it was not unusual for a gentleman to begin his day with a bracer at a tavern. “You always read about these ‘eye-openers,’ ‘fog-cutters,’ ‘phlegm-cutters,’ ‘morning glories,’ ” said St. John Frizell, who owns Fort Defiance. “They were arguably more popular than cocktails at night.”

But as the 20th century rolled along, a stigma was attached to daytime drinking. Perhaps because of this, “eye-openers” are among the last classic drinks to be resurrected by the current cocktail renaissance. “It’s kind of the last frontier for cocktails,” Mr. Frizell said.

What makes a morning drink? The category can be divided into two families: the nutritional and the effervescent — these drinks either feed you or wake you up. The nutritional contain ingredients associated with breakfast, like eggs (the Ramos Gin Fizz), milk (Bourbon Milk Punch), coffee (Irish Coffee) or juice (the bloody mary). The wake-ups take on a dose of Champagne (the mimosa or French 75) or cava (used in Phil Ward’s Agridulce Royale), or just plain seltzer (as in the Italian Fizz — a Fernet-Branca and sweet vermouth mixture — at Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn). Otherwise, said Ms. Reiner, daytime drinks veer toward “lighter liquors,” like gin, or “lighter flavors,” like lemon juice.

As bar owners loosen their twilight image, so are their customers loosening their inhibitions. “They don’t feel that there is any taboo anymore,” said Tim Staehling, the general manager of The Hungry Cat, which also has a bar in Santa Barbara, Calif. “It’s ‘Bring it on.’ ”

While the revolution has begun, the old guard hangs in. Most bar owners admit that half their daytime drinks are bloody marys, although they offer three or four versions. The mimosa, though, has been blackballed. “The thing with a Champagne drink in the morning is the effervescence of the wine helps to clean out your mouth of that layer of gunk from the night before.” Mr. Frizell said. “When you add orange juice, you’re just adding a new layer of gunk.”

A Visit to Ft. Defiance

Too many of the menus at the new cocktail meccas are overly complex. They read like the multi-page, laminated menus you find at entrenched Greek diners; too many sections, categories and choices, confusingly arranged. So the clean and simple bill of fare at Red Hook's Ft. Defiance is a welcome deviation from the norm.

I'm sure owner St. John Frizell, a former bartender at Pegu Club and The Good Fork (as well as a fellow journalist), could make you any drink you cared to order, but he's listed only nine on his debut menu, three of them being twists on that neglected and somewhat disdained standard, the Tom Collins. (Simple drink for a simple menu—makes sense.) Similarly, the wine list is compact, 12 choices in all; there are only four beers (Six Point and Abita among them) offered on draft; three cheeses and meat apiece; and the lunch menu boasts four sandwiches only.

The key to the success of Ft. Defiance's approach—and it is a success—is every item is selected with care and, in the case of the cocktails and the food, meticulously prepared. The delicious coffee, each cup individually dripped, comes from North Carolina's Counter Culture. The egg creams are made with a sophisticated seltzer system set up by a Brooklyn seltzer man whose father used to own egg cream carts all around the city. The Tom Collinses benefit from homemade lemonade made with that seltzer. (The seltzer, available for $1, is delicious on its own, with a crystalline purity that led me to think of it as the Vodka of Seltzers.) The bread for the muffuletta, which is patterned after the famous version of the New Orleans staple made at Central Grocery, is made with bread specially supplied by Brooklyn's Royal Crown. Wherever you look at Ft. Defiance, you see the results of careful forethought.

I've had the muffuletta sandwich three times and can attest to its excellence, and its resemblance to the same sandwich as served in New Orleans. (For the uninitiated, the muffuletta is large circular sandwich, typically served in quarters or halves, owning to its great size. Inside are layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, swiss, and provolone, covered with a marinated olive salad, though the ingredients can vary.)

The cocktail list reflects the places visited by Frizell, who is an authority on Charles H. Baker Jr., the globe-trotting mixologist and cocktail writer of the mid-20th century. The Colonial Cooler, a type of Pimm's Cup, was invented at the Sandakan Club in British West Borneo in 1926; the Bardados Buck came to life at the British Club in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1930. The Prescription Julep, one of the most expensive drinks on the list ($10), comes from a 1957 copy of Harper's Monthly "via David Wondrich." It used Cognac and rye and, if my eyes did not deceive me, a splash of Gosling's rum on top. Frizell serves it with a sprig of mint and a cherry. It's a powerful and satisfying drink to be approached with caution and a smile.

There's plenty to simple refreshment to be found among the cocktails. The Watermelon Gin Punch, a Frizell invention, was was made for summer, as is the Tom Collins and the Cucumber Collins. (I did not sample the SUMO Collins.) Moreover, Ft. Defiance is more relaxed than many other cocktail joints I've been to in recent months. There's no hauteur or pretense. The vibe is a corner hangout where they just happen to do everything well.

I'm happy I got to Ft. Defiance as many times as I did in the past few weeks, because today, intending to lunch there, I was greeted by a sign saying the place had been closed down by the Department of Health for a very curious reason. The DOH decreed on Sept. 11 that "a restaurant with gas equipment—and no gas service—cannot be allowed to operate." Apparently, Ft. Defiance has been trying to hook up its gas for weeks, but to no avail. Frizell expects to open within a week.