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.

Danish Drinking in the East Village

I have heard from a few colleagues recently that the cocktail scene in Copenhagen had come into its own. I took in the news and then sighed heavily, knowing my chances of experiencing it anytime soon were narrow. But living in New York is great that way. Very often, the thing you want to experience will come to you, rather than you having to go to it.

On Oct. 5, PDT, the East Village speakeasy, played host to Nick Hobbernagel Hovand, a bartender at the Danish cocktail bar Ruby—which, like PDT, has a secret entrance. For the occasion, Hovand, a friendly chap in a brownish-reddish scruffy beard, came up with a guest menu of five drink, all of them served at Ruby.

The theme of the menu was "Salt and the Sea." Indeed, salt could be found in four of the five beverages. Hovand explained that he simply wanted to have the menu stand out from PDT's usual choices; salt isn't necessarily a staple ingredient at Ruby.

I tried two drinks. The first, the Rapscallion, has been on the Ruby menu since it open in 2007. It's a Manhattan riff featuring 2 parts Talisker Scotch, 1 part Pedro Ximinez sherry and a dash of Richard, which is used like bitters in this case. It's a simple, silky, sweet drink, but complex in taste. The ingredients almost war with one another, but stop just short. Instead, you get an ever-intriguing interplay of flavors.

I preferred my second choice, the 866, an on-the-rocks sipper made up Dild Aquavit, Campari, Grapefruit juice and salt. Dild is a modern Danish brand of Aquavit unavailable here. Its key note is not caraway, but dill. It has a fragrant, freshly cut nose and a taste to match. The drink was refreshing and piquant and only slightly bitter. I know from Beta Cocktails how well salt can play with Campari, and it did the same trick here. But, really, it's the unexpected taste of dill that makes the drink. For some reason, I thought the cocktail would go wonderfully well with pickled herring.

The rest of the menu is below.

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.

The Bitters Maker of Brooklyn

Brooklynites, these days, have forged a reputation for making just about everything needed for a bar from scratch. Beer, spirits, wine, not to mention the various infusions, potions, sweeteners and such that one finds behind the best bars. The only this missing from the borough-wide, liquor-industrial complex is bitters. Oh, yes, many bars make there own house bitters. But there's no non-bar-owning entrepreneur that specializes in bitters production.

Louis Smeby, a 28-year-old from Minnesota with a newsboy's youthful face, is out to seize that territory. A waiter at The Modern who lives in the South Slope, he has been whipping an alarming number of original bitters in his kitchen, and has managed to place them at such estimable watering holes as Gotham bar & Grill, Braeburn, PDT, The Vanderbuilt, Buttermilk Channel, Quarter bar, White Star, and The Modern, among others.

The bitters are sold under the name A.B. Smeby Bittering Company. Smeby had the interested idea of applying the now-entrenched dining and drinking notion of seasonal menus to the world of bitters. He produces different potions based around the flavors found in each season. So the bitters available from him in the winter may not be the ones available in the spring. "Also important to the concept is the size of the bottle that I sell the product in," he said in a recent interview with Off the Presses. "It is a 2 ounce bottle. Bitters have a shelf life, especially when they are made with all-natural products."

Smeby says that most of the brands of bitters sold commercially are full of adjuncts, additives, and artificial ingredients that help maintain their shelf life, "but also offer a very synthetic tasting product. To add to this, they are all sold in bottle sizes too large for their flavor to be maintained before the product is finished, leading to inferior product at the end of the day."

The bars using Smeby's bitters so far seem to be taking them on a drink-by-drink basis, as they find applications for them. The Modern has used his Spiced Cranberry, Black and White (which actually tasted like a classic New York Black and White cookie), Vanilla and Forbidden Bitters in specialty cocktails. PDT has used only the Lemon Verbena bitters on the menu, but owner Jim Meehan thinks the Hibiscus Rose are great, too.

Some of the flavors Smeby comes up with boggle the brain. Apple Cinnamon with Molasses; Licorice-Nectarine (a favorite of mine, though, as of yet, I have no idea how to use it in a cocktail); Highland Heather; and Cherry Vanilla. Semby puts the most stock behind his Forbidden and Diesel bitters. The latter he promotes as a possible substitution for Angostura. I made an Old-Fashioned with it and found the result striking. It added a certain punch to the drink, familiar yet persuasive in its own way.

Smeby's ingredients are mainly locally sources (Lemon Verbana comes from Long Island), but he does go out of his way for some vitals. His cranberries come from Wisconsin; Buddahs Hand Lemons from California; nectarines from the west coast. Most of his spices and seasonings are bought from very small companies that specialize in only two to six products.

The Modern sent over the following original recipe, which I found equally winning:

Devil in White

1.5 oz. Death's Door White Whiskey

1.5 oz. Dolin Vermouth Blanc (not the dry!)

5 dashes A.B. Smeby Black & White Bitters

Stir all ingredients over ice. Strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with two cherries.

Smeby has recently started filling orders to clients in Eugene, Oregon, and Albuquerque. He hopes to take his bitters to the retail market sometime in the future. In the meantime, you'll have to visit one of the above bars to sample his wears.

The Aughts in Cocktails

Confronted regularly with so many new cocktail creations, as I have been over the past few years, I've often fell to musing, "Which of these libations are for the ages?" It's easy enough to decide if something is a good-tasting cocktail or not; that can be ascertained on the spot. But that doesn't necessarily equal staying power. Are we currently sipping, unknowingly, what will be considered by future generations to be our Martini, our Manhattan, our great contribution to the bar?

I had the opportunity to dwell on this matter in a very public way recently, writing a list of lasting libations for the Dec. 30 edition of the New York Times. Some of the entries—Audrey Saunders' Gin-Gin Mule, Don Lee's Benton's Old Fashioned, Phil Ward's Oaxaca Old Fashioned—were easy choices. I had long regarded them as modern classics which will have their place in coming histories of 21st-century drinking, not only because they are great drink in and of themselves, but because the embodied and/or kicked off significant mixology trends. Others I had originally thought to included—Salvatore Calabrese's Breakfast Martini and Julio Barmejo's Tommy's Margarita—I was forced to nix when I discovered from their authors that they were, in fact, created in the '90s, not the '00s. To back up my conclusions, I consulted with a couple dozen cocktails authorities on the East and West Coasts, as well as London.

Here's the article:

A Decade of Invention, and Reinvention

By ROBERT SIMONSON

WHEN you hoist a leg over a barstool these days, you’re as likely to find Tom Edison as a Tom Collins. Light bulbs have been popping up behind the bar, with more cocktails developed in the last 10 years than probably any decade since Prohibition. Some of them have emerged as modern classics, standing out not only as culinary creations, but also as signposts of the decade’s most significant mixology trends.

GIN-GIN MULE This Audrey Saunders invention is often the first thing that cocktail pros mention when asked about new classics. “Bartenders all over the world tend to know the Gin-Gin Mule,” said Gary Regan, author of several cocktail books, including the recent “Bartender’s Gin Compendium.” Ms. Saunders — a leading light in darkened bars — created it before founding her SoHo bar, Pegu Club. Essentially a gin-based version of the ginger-minty Moscow Mule — one of the few vodka cocktails still granted respect by the avant-garde — the drink was a symbol both of the cocktail crowd’s enthusiastic reclamation of gin and its curled-lip repudiation of vodka. (Gin is also the base of Ms. Sauders’s Earl Grey MarTEAni, an early and influential example of the tea-infusion trend.) By decade’s end, the Gin-Gin Mule could be found on cocktail menus across the country — as could gin.

BENTON’S OLD-FASHIONED Don Lee, formerly of PDT in the East Village, credits Eben Freeman, the mad-scientist mixologist of the recently demised Tailor, with opening his eyes to “fat washing” liquor. But it was this instantly cultish concoction, which infuses bourbon with Allan Benton’s Tennessee bacon, that revved up interest in that technique, which melds flesh and firewater. Created by Mr. Lee in 2007 at PDT, it perhaps best epitomizes the advent of savory cocktails, which draw herbs, spices and vegetables, including chilies, into the world within the glass.

OAXACA OLD-FASHIONED Tequila didn’t play much of a role in the early years of the cocktail renaissance. And mezcal, tequila’s rough-hewn relation, had none at all. Both are used instead of bourbon or rye in this south-of-the-border twist on the Old-Fashioned, with terroir-specific agave syrup instead of sugar. Invented in 2007 by the tequila specialist Philip Ward at Death & Co. in the East Village, this drink quickly appeared on menus across the country and became a harbinger of the Mexican spirits’ ascendancy. It’s now just one of many tequila- and mezcal-based drinks at Mr. Ward’s bar Mayahuel.

RED HOOK COCKTAIL Rye whiskey roared back in the last decade after decades in eclipse. With it came new homages to pre-Prohibition rye-based cocktails like the Manhattan and the Brooklyn. This mix of rye, sweet vermouth and maraschino liqueur, created by the former Milk & Honey bartender Enzo Errico, inspired at least a dozen more sub-riffs by other ardent cocktail classicists, with almost all the drinks named after Brooklyn neighborhoods, including the Greenpoint (which uses Chartreuse), the Cobble Hill (Amaro Montenegro and cucumber slices) and the Bensonhurst (maraschino liqueur and Cynar). New spins on the Old-Fashioned (see above) were nearly as common.

ST-GERMAIN COCKTAIL If you didn’t notice that, starting in 2007, St-Germain was in about half of the new drinks you were cradling, you just weren’t paying attention. The elderflower-based elixir with the sui generis floral flavor almost single-handedly invigorated the moribund liqueur category. Suddenly semi-forgotten potions like Drambuie, Cherry Heering and Chartreuse (the current mixer of the moment) were being dusted off and tarted up. And every new liqueur wanted to be as big as St-Germain when it grew up. A list of new St-Germain cocktails could fill a few columns, but the mix of the liqueur, Champagne and sparkling water known as the St-Germain cocktail was perhaps the most common, mixed by high-end watering holes like Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco and the Zig Zag Café in Seattle. Unusually, the recipe came not from a bartender’s brain, but the company’s marketing department. “It doesn’t happen that often that a drink that comes from a manufacturer gets so well received,” said Ann R. Tuennerman, founder of the Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans.

ABSINTHE DRIP When a liquor that has been unavailable for nine decades hits the shelves again, it creates a stir. For many cocktail mavens, absinthe, the Victorians’ embalmer of choice, was the missing piece to so many liquid puzzles. Bottles began reappearing on our shores in 2007, after it was realized that a nearly century-old ban had actually been overturned decades ago. By the end of the Bush administration, absinthe was even being made in America, like St. George from California and Trillium from Oregon. Soon, it was not unusual to find an absinthe water drip at the end of the bar, slowly clouding a glass of the green liquid with dissolved sugar, the classic way to drink absinthe. It would only be old hat if you happened to be Degas.

BARTENDER’S CHOICE Ten years ago, the suggestion that a barkeep name your poison would have been greeted with a withering fisheye. But “Bartender’s Choice” is an option seen on cocktail menus from the Varnish in Los Angeles to the Violet Hour in Chicago to any of Sasha Petraske’s joints in New York. Bartenders nationwide have raised their level of skill and scholarship. Customers have followed them with an increased sense of adventure and a willingness to swallow whatever they dish up.

In Praise of Don Lee's Celery & Nori

One of the best new cocktails in New York has got to be the Celery & Nori at the Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village. This is a bit ironic, since it's a drink you can't get by itself, but must order as a companion to a meal. (Momofuku is too small and too popular a restaurant to waste one of its precious bar stools on a mere tippler.)

The drink is the work of Don Lee, late of PDT, but now in charge of Momofuku's growing drinks program. Lee, of course, is the man who rocked the cocktail world with his technique for "fat-washing" bourbon, resulting in the Benton's Old Fashioned, the massively popular (and much imitated) PDT staple.

Several of the original cocktails at Momofuku have a Asian bent. There's the Sake Lemonade, and the Reverend Palmer, which is grounded on Ceylon black tea-infused Elijah Craig bourbon. But, by Lee's own admission, the most interesting cocktail on the menu is the Celery & Nori (sometimes call the Celery & Nori Old Fashioned). A lot of new cocktails today give you a sense of déjà vu. They taste like something else you've had before. But I've never quite tasted anything Celery & Nori.

The drink is made of nori-infused Laird's apple brandy, celery syrup and celery bitters (nori, by the way, is the Japanese name for various edible seaweed species you see wrapped around your sushi rolls). It's a serious "up" drink, like a Sazerac, though not nearly as moody. You're meant to sip it, take your time. The aroma tickles your nose, like the first breaths of springtime. There are leafy, slightly minty notes, which go nicely with the apple flavors from the Laird's. Unlike most new drink, upon having one, I immediately wanted to have another.

Wish I had taken a picture of it. (That photo up top is of another Momofuku cocktail.) Guess I was enjoying it too much to think that far ahead.

More on Circular Ice

Because you asked for it? No. Because I wanted to write more about it! Here's a piece just published in Time Out New York that elaborates on my initial posting for the TONY drink blog about the round ice being made at PDT.

Sphere of Influence

The cocktail world has always been a stylish one. From the glasses to the garnishes, a drink’s look is almost as vital as its taste. The latest in cool cocktail accessories can be found floating in the Lower East Side Globe Trotter ($13) at PDT (113 St. Marks Pl between First Ave and Ave A, 212-614-0386). This elegant, citrusy blend of rye, cognac, Creole Shrubb and Bénédictine—the creation of Jean Georges pastry chef and part-time barkeep Johnny Iuzzini—is a vehicle for PDT’s latest foray into specialty ice. Each Globe Trotter is cooled not by a cube—that’s totally squaresville, man!—but a huge sphere made with a coveted Taisin Japanese ice press. The Taisin uses only the natural forces of gravity and temperature to turn frozen chunks into perfect spheres. The globe is a good match for the Trotter—this sipping drink benefits from its steady chill. Since each ball takes a couple of minutes to form, the prep happens pre-service. Sorry, gadget geeks: no demonstrations of the press. You’ll have to order a drink to orbit this globe.—Robert Simonson

Cooling and Chilling Just Like a Snowman

I first saw the super-geeky Japanese Ice Presses in London, at Nick Strangeway's restaurant Hawksmoor. He has been sent, gratis, one of the expensive contraptions, which turn a block of ice into a perfect sphere. These huge round ice "cubes" look mighty impressive as the single cooling agent in a rocks glass. All and sundry gathered around to watch the thing, agog.

I next saw the golden magic machine a couple weeks ago at PDT, James Meehan's place in the East Village. James was introduced to the spheres by Johnny Iuzzini, who also came up with the drink, the East Village Globe Trotter, that will first feature the special ice. He has ordered a few presses and plans to wow the Gotham cocktail populace with by plopping the icy orbs into cocktails. I suspect he will wow them. I wrote a quick item about the phenom for Time Out New York's drink blog. Here is is:

Anyone who knows cocktail wonks knows they are obsessed with ice. The frozen water found in mixed drinks must be the right size and the right shape. It must be fresh and carry no odors. You must not skimp on the crushed ice in a Derby and the numerous tiny chunks in a proper Cobbler must be the approximate size of a ball bearing.

Well, sheriff, there’s a new ice cube in town. It’s big, it’s round, and you only need one.

In the next couple weeks, Jim Meehan of the East Village neo-speakeasy, PDT will introduce the latest in cocktail coolers: a perfectly spherical piece of ice about the size of a decent snowball. They are made with a costly Japanese ice press. Just place a large chunk of ice between two gold metal cylinders, each with a half-sphere cavity in the center. As the ice melts, the press closes in on itself, creating the ball of ice inside. The process is slow, taking a couple of minutes to produce each globe.

Meehan plans to showcase the ice in a new drink, fittingly called the East Village Globe Trotter. The drink, made of rye, cognac, sweet vermouth and Benedictine, is a riff on a famous New Orleans nip called a Vieux Carre. He expects the ice ball to catch eyes and catch on. Or, in other words, what comes round, goes around.—Robert Simonson

"Nick and Nora on That Prince of Wales"

That's what I heard a bartender say to another on my recent visit to PDT in the East Village. And a choicer bit of counter lingo you won't find outside the oldest greasy spoon truck stop on Route 66.

Translation: The Prince of Wales is a cocktail, the Nick and Nora a specialized Martini glass that PDT employes. The bartender wanted the drink in the compact Nick and Nora glass, which is smaller and rounder than a typical Martini glass, because otherwise the champagne in a Prince of Wales overwhelmed the cocktail. Thus, "Nick and Nora on That Prince of Wales."

Two With Champagne

The East Village near Tompkins Square is turning into a little warren of boutique cocktail havens. In addition to Death & Co. on E. 6th between First and A, and PDT on St. Mark's between First and A, there is The Bourgeois Pig on E. 7th between the same blocks.

The Bourgeois Pig is owned by one of the same people who run Death & Co. It was for some years in a small space on the south side of the street, but very recently moved to a larger space on the north side. My heart received a jolt when I first approached it as I saw the address was precisely that of the bygone Tompkins Square Books, a beloved used book store of my youth. To see a bar installed where stacks once stood was disorienting.

The interior in on the louche side: red light, silvery tin ceiling, an ornate chandelier of blown glass pieces which look like something between deer antlers and exploded champagne flutes. A curving bar dominated the left side of the room. At present, BP is more a wine bar than a cocktail joint, with an emphasis on French vino. There were, however, sections for champagne cocktails, wine cocktail and, uh, beer cocktails, as well as a couple champagne punches.

While the wine cocktails intrigued me, I was in the mood for something light and refreshing, so I chose the Violetta, a combination of 3/4 ounce each of Creme de Violette, lemon juice and Maraschino liqueur, topped with Champagne (they used Pol Roger). It was piquant, mildly tart, refreshing, a romantic drink. Wish I could have seen the color, but it was dark.



From there I walked a block to PDT, which is hidden behind a fake telephone booth door in a hot dog joint called Crif Dogs. (A telephone booth in an East Village hot dog place! You can't find a telephone booth at even the high-end places anymore.) Like Death & Co., like PG, it's a small, intimate place dominated by a beautifully lit bar and ringed by booths. The novelty of the bar is that imbibers can order franks from the low-rent Crif Dogs and eat them with their cocktails. (Hey—salty food and beer have always been a drinker's staple.)

I was hungry and ordered one such dog, wrapped in bacon and topped with kimche. (I kid you not. And it was good.) I then asked my extremely helpful and friendly bartender to point me in the right drink direction. He suggested an off-menu concoction called a Jimmy Rutledge, which was a riff on an old drink I'd never heard of called a Jimmy Roosevelt, and was named after the master distiller at Four Roses Bourbon, who is celebrating 40 years on the job this year.

The drink was a fairly complex little ditty. The champagne glass was coated with syrup. Then in went a sugar cube dotted with bitters, Four Roses, champagne and a thin layer of Chartreuse on top. I find champagne-brown liquor mixtures hit my palate in an odd way. Still, the brisk, mature cocktail stood up nicely to the dog. The man knew his cocktail-food pairings.

I must have passed the bartender's test as a curious and learned gentlemen, because after that he asked me to test a bourbon they had been working on. It was infused with bacon! They planned to use it in a version of an Old Fashioned. I was hesitant, but it was delicious, the bacon very subtle and marrying well with the meatiness of the bourbon. Can't wait to taste the drink.