Disclaimer: Hard as it may be for you to believe, the bartender in this video is not me.

It’s not me either!

As a final, pre-Tiki Month post, I thought I’d feature the latest in a sea of how-to-make-a-drink videos gracing the Internet from all sorts of sources. This one is for an almost Tiki drink, the mighty Mojito.
Most how-to-make-a-drink videos are largely ignored by those of us in the “serious” cocktailosphere. A few become viral sensations, usually whenever they catch the fancy of the Godfather. If you haven’t read Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s, um, reviews of this Daiquiri video or this Caipirinha video, follow the links.
…After you watch this one.

The instructions here are pretty rock solid, actually. Follow them and you’ll get a classic Mojito. The muddling technique too looks pretty good, though I confess I’ve never heard of the rum used.

I really only have one question: Are they real?

The ice cubes, I mean.

The outfit that did this one, EyeHandy, has 41 videos in total like this. All actually are pretty solid how-tos, within the limits of any 90-second video format. The instructors are all similar, too….

I’ll embed one more video…

Because he can!

Yes. And to illustrate my point about EyeHandy’s reference library. Also, I’ve always wanted to do some gun-blogging.
So here you go. How-To Field Strip and Clean a Glock With Ashley:

Don’t forget!
Tiki Month starts tomorrow!

Over the Martin Luther King Holiday, I took my family to Chicago for the long weekend.

Wait… What?
You voluntarily went to Chicago… in January…
Why?

Because I have a nine year-old daughter, who absolutely had to have one of these:

She had saved up her money (a lot of money), so we took her to Chicago to the American Girl Doll store to buy the doll, and do the Experience, including brunch in the store’s restaurant.

We’d have done dinner instead, but I hear the cocktail program there is terrible….

This, however, left me with a powerful thirst each evening. Fortune smiled upon me in this in the shape of Sable Kitchen & Bar. I’ve written before of my fondness for the Kimpton chain of boutiquey hotels. We chose one of their Chicago offerings, the Palomar, because it has a pool, only to find from my “legion” of cocktail geek twitter correspondents that adjoining its lobby was one of the most highly recommended bars in the city!

I was surprised to such a nice hotel bar, Bambara, in the Hotel Marlowe in Boston. I was amazed to find not just an above and beyond hotel bar, but an absolute top-shelf craft bar in the Palomar. Really. It rocks.

Sable is a restaurant as well. And a delicious one. Chef Heather Terhune (@HeatherTerhune) runs a smooth and elegant operation. The menu is an eclectic mix of range of dishes from sides such as duck fat french fries and all sorts of game entrees, to things like sweet corn creme brulee and bacon jam with toasted baguette points. They offer fried chicken on waffles for both dinner and weekend breakfast. Most of the larger dishes are offered in half-portions to facilitate a Tapas-like sharing experience.

And it is all really very good, though I’ll admit that while the bacon jam was as tasty as I expected, it had more of a novelty appeal for me. Still, you know if you go, you’ll order it, because, well, bacon jam.

Terhune is a contestant in the current season of Top Chef. I don’t watch the show myself, but I was told by some fellow guests that she is being given the “villain’s cut” by the show’s editors… poor girl. But that probably means she’ll be around til the end. Regardless, I don’t care. I’d eat at Sable often if I lived anywhere near.

But the bar….

The room is on a corner of the hotel, with solid glass walls on two sides of the very large space. The decor is modern, all dark leather and wood with metal accents. The bar itself is huge, about 40 feet long, with a massive liquor wall behind, boasting an impressive selection of all manner of spirits, rather than the 73 identical bottles of Grey Goose you find behind too many bars.
The bar has a design element that I’ve not really seen before and which works very well. Most of the bar is dark wood, and fronted by large, comfortable bar stools. But two segments of the bar, about 6-7 feet long each, are glowing blocks of white marble. There is no seating here and these spaces are for patron standing, rather than server access. For all its high-end nature, Sable is not an intimate environment. It is a hotel property after all, and well situated in downtown Chicago, so I’m imaging it is packed to the gills with power ties after regular workdays. It was plenty full every night we were there on a holiday weekend. (Yes, I had at least one drink there every night. Shut up.)
Crowds suck especially hard for a cocktail geek, as once the seats at the bar fill up, it is ordinarily impossible to interact with the bartenders without looming over or squeezing between other patrons. If they will put up with you trying. These blocks of standing room only at Sable’s bar go a long way to fixing this. Yes, they can fill up too, but people who are standing are more likely to make room happily, and the crowd in these segments naturally turns over much faster. The bottom line is, even on a busy night, you can still get to the bar staff.

And at Sable, getting to the bar staff is well worth the effort. Lead Dog Mike Ryan (@gastronautmike), who is currently sporting a lot more hair than in his picture on Sable’s website, is a star. A former chef, I’m guessing he just liked people too much to stay in the kitchen. Mike has a terrific resume, including Violet Hour; can carry on a cocktail geek conversation with the best of them; mixes drinks with care, craft, and style, while somehow also being swift; and has allegedly read this blog before. So what more can I say? Oh yeah, he also has what I consider the most important quality in any manager, bar or otherwise: He attracts good people.

Mike Ryan, now with 250% more hair.

I drank there every night, but Friday night Sable was the only place I drank. I spent a couple of hours bellied up to one of those glowing marble sections of the bar, trying to find the limits of former Pittsburgh bartending fixture, Fred Sarkis (@FredSarkis), and failing. This is how the Official Illustrator of the Cocktailosphere™ told me on Twitter to recognize Fred: “Reddish mustache, powerful build, probably wearing a vest. Moving swiftly & smoothly, making shakers beg for mercy.” Accurate but incomplete, as Fred has added a gigantic bartender’s beard since Pittsburgh.
I felt like being a pain in the ass, as usual, so I just kept describing elements I wanted in my drink and letting Fred decide what to make me. Everything he returned to me was not only essentially what I asked for, it was good too. He made me an Old-Fashioned with yellow chartreuse and cinnamon syrup that was particularly good.

I blush to say that I can’t remember the name of the bartender who served me Sunday before an early bedtime, but he too knew his drinks and his drink talk.

The cocktail menu is lovely, as you can see in the picture above, with a thick cover and page after page of about half original cocktails and a listing of spirits. The word “vodka” appears but twice. And while they put a certain cocktail on the menu, they have the puckish balls to refer to it by its proper name, the Kangaroo. The menu is also liberally sprinkled with a variety of excellent quotes of cocktail jokes and aphorisms. Many of these I had not read before, which is saying something. I was able to resist stealing one only because it is available online.

Sable is a wonderful cocktail bar, earning a spot in the overall top echelon of bars I’ve been to around the country. It bests a number I can think of with far wider reputations. It isn’t intimate, but the noise level is reasonable, and the crowd surprisingly manageable due to the innovative bar layout. There are no crazy high-end Ice Programs or Soda Programs, but I could perceive nary a corner cut either. Most importantly, should your fancy extend beyond the menu, the staff has the inventory and tools, and moreover the knowledge and inclination, to take you there. If you live in Chicago, you really need to explore Sable for yourself. And if you travel to the city, Sable alone is enough to put the Palomar on your short list of places to stay.

Three hot, dusty camels trudge across a nighttime desert waste. Their hotter, dustier riders slump tiredly in their seats. Each occasionally looks up at a particularly bright star in the sky ahead of them.

Melchior: <Straightens and begins to sing>We three kings of Orient are, bearing….
Gaspar: Oh cripes! He’s in the mead again, Balthazar!
Balthazar: Melchior, will you please quit it with the kings bit? No one believes you.
Gaspar: Seriously. If we are supposed to be kings, where are our entourages?
Melchior: Like I told that barmaid back in Jerusalem, Gaspar: “With the economic downturn, we’ve had to make cutbacks in the sycophant budget.”
Gaspar: And how’d that line work out for you, your majesty?
Melchior: Shut up.
Balthazar: And why do you need to pump yourself up, anyway? We’re astrologers—the best astrologers in the world. We can look into the sky and divine the purposes of God.
Melchior: <Yodels>We are the Kings of Astrology!
<Balthazar and Gaspar shake their heads>
Balthazar: Speaking of kings, I woke up this morning with the unmistakable impression that once we find this kid, we should go home some way other than back through Jerusalem.
Gaspar: Gee, you think? That Herod character seemed a bit too eager to hand over the keys to the palace to a replacement he never heard of.
Melchior: I’m happy to go home another route. Herod smells worse than ol’ Camile here. <Slaps his camel’s flank affectionately>
Gaspar: That, and the fact that that barmaid’s father will have had all this intervening time to sharpen his scimitar….
Balthazar: <Coughs on some sand>Well, whatever Melchior’s thinking about kingship and whatnot, he’s got the right idea about a drink. <Starts to rummage through his camel’s pack. Finds a present and pulls it out> Hey! My gift for the kid! Did you guys remember to bring yours?
Gaspar: Don’t you think you might have asked that question earlier, when we were still able to turn around?
Balthazar: I got him a batch of Frankincense.
Melchior: Still on with the incense? It’s a baby. You’ll give it colic.
Balthazar: Look, my reading still says the kid’s gonna be a god. He better get used to people waving incense around his face. What’d you get him, Gaspar?
Gaspar: Gold.
Melchior: Cash? You got him cash? You might as well have gotten him a Target gift card!
Gaspar: My reading is that it’s going to be a king, not a god…
Balthazar: Something you might have kept to yourself around Herod…
Gaspar: <Overrides Balthazar’s interjection>… and gold says, you’re the king.
Melchior: Gold says, Here’s some cash, I couldn’t be bothered to think of anything appropriate to get you.
Gaspar: <Makes a rude gesture a Melchior>OK, Miss Manners, what did you get the child?
Melchior: <Mumbles something>
Gaspar: What’s that? You didn’t really forget your gift, did you? You’re not adding your name onto my tag, like you did for Balthazar’s last birthday.
Balthazar: I remember that. You still owe me a gift.
Melchior: I didn’t forget my gift. It’s secure in my pack.
Balthazar: Then what is it?
Melchior: Look, my reading just doesn’t end well for this poor kid. Doom, Gathering Gloom, Death, and all that.
Gaspar: Melchior, you cannot give a shroud for a baby shower gift.
Melchior: No! No. I just got to thinking and Myrrh popped into my head.
Gaspar: Perfume? You bought a baby perfume?
Balthazar: Maybe the mom will like it.
Melchior: I didn’t actually get pure Myrrh…. That’s kind of expensive, and I’m a little short this month.
Balthazar: Then what are you… Wait! You didn’t, Melchior.
Melchior: <Defiantly>Yes I did. What of it?
Balthazar: You brought a bottle of Fernet Branca?!?
Gaspar: I’d have gone with the perfume.
Melchior: Come on, it’s got Myrrh in it! And we love it.
Gaspar: We are bartenders.
Balthazar: We are astrologers.
Gaspar: We are astrologers who tend bar to make ends meet. Together, that makes us the wisest men on Earth.
But after a long shift kissing the backsides of arrogant camel brokers in their red power keffiyehs, we need something exotic to cleanse the pallet. Fernet Branca gets rid of every bad taste you got in one shot.
Balthazar: Leaves it’s own rather… imposing set of aftertastes. Like the Myrrh, for instance.
Melchior: I brought a case of Canada Dry Ginger Ale too.
Gaspar: Oh… well… that’s fine then. <Pauses> Except have you forgotten it’s a gift for a freaking baby?
Melchior: Look guys, like I said: My reading says this kids got a rough road ahead. I figure he’s going to need to fight off a lot of bad tastes in his mouth. I’m just trying to equip him properly.
<Tired, companionable silence>
Gaspar: <Spits>Ugh, all this sand… Look, Melchior, I’ve got a lot of gold here. It was a good month for tips for me. Let’s stop off at the next town, and we’ll buy some real Myrrh for your gift.
Balthazar: Perfume would be more appropriate for a god than booze….
Melchior: <Suspiciously>And why, pray tell, are you suddenly feeling so much like sharing, Gaspar?
Gaspar: Well…. <rubs his throat> If you are going to give real Myrrh when we find the kid, then we can crack open your bottle of Fernet Branca right now….
<Fade to black>
Balthazar: Um, Melchior, I don’t suppose you brought any Moxie, did you?

And that, children, is the real story of Epiphany!

Open tryouts for the 2012 Columbus Iron Bartender. Dec. 13th, 2011 at Park Street Cantina.

David Wondrich decodes your personality from your drink of choice. And he’s damn spot on, almost as if he knows drinkers or something.
“The sort of person who, when presented with the dazzling array of elegant potables offered by a state-of-the-craft cocktail bar, confines himself or herself to a dry Martini is the sort of person who dresses in Brooks Brothers, does not use profanity in public, and has never done anything crazy in his or her life except that one time in college.”

Yes, really. My first post written after Tales of the Cocktail 2011 is a road review of an airport bar. Bear with me, it’s worth the journey.

I had the superior sense and forethought to book my flight home from New Orleans in the afternoon, but the result was that I had three hours in Atlanta Hartsfield at dinner time. I idly tweeted, “Hmmm. 3 hour layover in ATL. Anyone know where the best Sazerac is made in Concourse C?” I fully intended to sup on lukewarm Budweiser and chicken fingers, so the tweet was really just an idle musing on how cocktail-spoiled I’d become in The Big Easy. Thus, I was surprised to receive this reply moments later from follower @Vespajet, moments later: “Nowhere on that concourse. Your best bet in terms of cocktails is One Flew South on Concourse E.”

With a shrug, I set off. Concourse E is the main international rib in ATL, so I figured that if there was decent food and the chance of an un-shaken Manhattan to be had in this or any airport, it would be found there.

One Flew South is located right at the top of the escalators accessing the councourse. It is an elegant modern sushi bar, restaurant and cocktail lounge. It is decorated in spare, Japanese style, all in white enamel and blonde woods, with modern white leather and chrome seating that is more comfortable than it looks. (This is more important than it might sound at first, since this place is designed for travelers who may have just spent up to 12 hours scrunched into those pretzel molds they call coach seating.) There are 11 seats at the bar, a few less in front of the sushi chefs, and a bunch of two person tables surrounding these.

I slipped into a seat in the middle of the bar, not expecting much, and that’s when all the fun began….

Bartender Norm Johnson presented me with both sushi and cocktail menus as I sat (an important detail I highlighted in my last post on menus), and I almost laughed out loud. No Sazerac, but this menu offered me such non-obvious but essential craft cocktails as Bellinis, French 75s (gin, sorry NOLA), Vieux Carrés, Negronis, and Aviations. They offer Pisco Sours and ‘Treuse or Dares… These are raw egg white drinks… In an airport bar.

As I sipped my Aviation (what else to go with first in an airport bar?), I started paying real attention. Just how crafty is this bar, I wondered. The next drink someone ordered was a simple gin and tonic…
“Really?” I asked Norm. “You have a Kold-Draft machine here?”
Yep. No soda gun, either, only premium bottled mixers. They have a small but useful selection of fresh juices and herbs. I counted at least nine bitters. (Unaccountably, no Angostura.) And they boast a pretty interesting selection of premium liquors and liqueurs.

The sushi offerings were limited but very well executed, with excellent quality tuna. While the drinks are priced very much in line with a regular craft bar, the food prices are up there where you’d expect for the captive airport clientele. They offer non-sushi dishes as well that looked pretty good, but I saw none served whilst I was there.

Of course, you can build a nice facility, stock it with great stuff, and still have a crappy result if you don’t have the most critical element of any bar, craft or otherwise: good staff. Rather than the usual parade of temporary journeymen who toil behind the mahogany-print vinyl in most ‘tween runway establishments, One Flew South boasts a small, long-term professional staff. Norm has been there the whole three years the bar has been open. He’s enough of a drink geek to have fun with the resources he has before him, but isn’t self-indulgent about it. He also has that great judgement about character that let him treat every customer at the bar with me in a subtly different way from the one next to them. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that he has a private bartending firm, as well.

So, is One Flew South another Pegu Club? No, of course not. But it is a damn well-executed classic cocktail bar with some nice touches that would be worth a spot in a local’s rotation if it were located in Buckhead. And it wildly exceeds any reasonable expectations a traveler should have for a refuge between flights. If you fly through Atlanta and have the time, I highly recommend a ride on the train to Concourse E. It’s the best bar I’ve ever seen in an airport. Say, “hi,” to Norm for me.

Our first stop in Boston on the Great Cross-Country Barcrawl was at Drink in the Fort Point neighborhood of Boston. Drink fills a huge basement, and it is worth taking a few minutes to look through the leg-level windows out on the street in front before going inside. The view is impressive as you look down on the room from above and behind the bar.

The plain wooden bartop runs the whole length of the basement. And rather than being simply straight, it bends outward in three rectangular humps, greatly increasing the length and available seating at the bar. The center segment is larger than either end. There is very little other seating at Drink, almost all the action is at the bar. This place is entirely about the mixology. There are no menus here. You ask your bartender for what you want, and they deliver. It’s like a giant, full-time game of Stump the Bartender. Amazingly, even if you are a serious cocktail geek, you are going to lose.

The obsession here is with classic mixology, and the bartenders are part and parcel of their obsession. An icon of said obsession is the daily special board (The black felt board with white plastic letters type) that hasn’t apparently been changed since “May 13, 1806″ when some drink consisting of “Spirit, water, sugar, and bitters” was first offered….

If you don’t get the joke of that message board, you’ll still enjoy Drink, but you won’t be able to really appreciate it. If you do get the joke, you have to go here.

We were fortunate enough to be able to share our Drink experience with Fred and Andrea of Cocktail Virgin Slut. We met outside and made our way downstairs. Pay attention to the address (348 Congress St.), as there is no exterior signage to direct you. We went on a Friday night, which was a bit problematic as Drink is very popular on weekends. As I said, there is no real seating other than what is at the bar, and the place was packed.
But as was demonstrated numerous times on this trip, it is good to have old friends whom you have never previously met. Fred knew the hostess Rebekah Powers pretty well. (Apparently they kick box together or something. My advice is: don’t act up at Drink) Despite the crowd, she found us four seats around the corner of one of the smaller end bars before we had much of a wait. I think we were lucky with this. There was a hockey game of some importance to Bostonians going on and the crowd was “thin”. (June is of course the only logical month for championship ice hockey.)

Drink was awesome, but I really want to get back there on a night early in the week when the crowd is much less intense. The biggest problem I had was with the noise level, which was more in line with a dance club than what I’d expect from a craft bar of this magnificence. Fred assured me that it is much quieter during the week. At least I think that’s what he said….

But enough bitching about the din of all those people having fun, let’s get back to the awesome. Our bartender was Brynn Tattan, an elfin yet very intense young woman who may have paused a moment to catch her breath about twice all night. Between the noise and the pace of orders, we didn’t get much of a chance to talk, but she was a ball to watch. In the course of our visit I saw several fascinating new techniques and presentations. She also shook cocktails so long and intently, I occasionally worried about her health.

Drink is dedicated to the whole ouvre of craft bartending. As such, they posses a bewildering assortment of ingredients, spirits, tools, and barware. Brynn was particularly skilled with manipulating the block ice they employed for a variety of uses. I love cutting chunks of clear ice in my own home bar for Old Fashioneds, but they use that same block of ice for shaved ice in juleps, Tiki drinks, and other concoctions. I’d never before seen the Mexican Ice Shaver Brynn used, but I want one now so much it hurts.

The ice manipulation was not the only spectacular technique I saw that night. Most bartenders have no idea what a Blue Blazer is. Most of those that do, won’t make one. Most of those that will, will only do it for special events. Brynn made one for some random dude who came up to the bar after us, in the middle of a crowded Friday night. Fortunately, I sussed out what she was up to before she lit it up, so I was able yo get my iPhone camera set to video. The clip below is worth a watch. I know it is dark, but I didn’t punch it up for a reason. It gets really spectacular starting about a third of the way in….

I often say (especially when I want to piss off a craft bartender) that full-on craft bartending is another form of “flair“. While most of the drinks I saw being dispensed were fairly straight-forward, there was a steady stream of occasional crazy stuff to prove that point. Of course, the construction of most craft cocktails is a subtle skill, a tiny performance. But a serious skill nonetheless. It’s clear that there is a pretty rare collection of such skills staffing the bar at Drink.

I wouldn’t be much of a critic if I couldn’t find at least one quibble with how Drink works. No one should expect a craft bar to serve drinks quickly. The care and deliberation with which craft cocktails are made makes a reasonable wait for a drink expected. Throw in the occasional Blue Blazer, and no one should complain about the pace of service at Drink. (I’ll bet there still are guys who don’t recognize what they are seeing who do complain though. Screw them.) That said, I could not understand how inefficiently laid out the tools and ingredient storage behind the bar seemed to be. I think each bartender at Drink must walk a half-marathon over the course of a shift, in search of this or that.
Admittedly, a bar that seems to have the knowledge and, more to the point, the inventory to produce whatever drink you ask for can’t have all that inventory within arm’s reach. Brynn seemed to flit around from this cooler to that, and between a cabinet here and a rack there for just about every order. It made me a little tired just watching her.

I also am a bit mystified about how they maintain profitability. Drinks aren’t cheap here, but not terribly out of line either. With no cocktail menu to direct customers toward certain fresh ingredients (or even liquors for that matter), I wonder how the management controls inventory in a cost-effective manner. So far, they seem to be managing it, so Bravo say I.

Beyond the business implications, I’m of two minds about the lack of a menu. For a geek like me, it’s no limitation, and is kind of liberating in fact. Whatever I wanted, I could indulge in and not worry overmuch about whether I could get it, or seeming a jerk for asking for it. But for someone with less accumulated knowledge of such otherwise dubious utility than I have, they might actually feel a bit limited. And a customer who knows nothing of classic drinks might find themselves simply drinking G&Ts without realizing the delights available to them here. On a less crowded night, I’m sure the bartenders can more than compensate for the lack of a menu, if you ask.

Drink is a bar I can recommend to both the jaded coaktailian and the relative newbie. Don’t go on a crowded weekend if you are an old fart like me whose tolerance for shouting over music you didn’t choose has long ago run out. Similarly, if your aim is to try new cocktails, go during the week when you will have the time (and hearing) to discuss where you’d like to go. But whatever you do, if in Boston, you need to go.

This review is part of my larger Great Cross-Country Bar Crawl series. Here is the main post for our Boston stop, with links to all reviews for the city.

To kick off our second night of the Great Cross-Country Barcrawl (still in Washington, DC) Maggi and I met up with SeanMike Whipkey for dinner and drinks at what might be my favorite of all the places we visited in our nation’s capitol, PS7. It’s just a couple of blocks north of Pennsylvania Avenue, between Capitol Hill and the White House. The neighborhood practically throbs with the dark majesty of the Federal Government. With the Convention Center to the North, this is a heavy-hitter business, government, and tourist area.

Source: StarChefs

The Head Bartender at PS7 is Gina Chersevani. SeanMike, who apparently knows every bartender who works near the Potomac River, told me she is the best “original modern drink” mixologist in town. Who am I to argue? The drinks were very good, though we didn’t have that many rounds, for two reasons. One was that we had a long night ahead of us. In addition to being skilled, Gina is also immensely charming… an attribute that I’m led to believe doesn’t hurt in the bar game. We sat at a table, so I didn’t get to see her work, but the sunlight was still flowing into the beautiful modern lounge and I could see all her products being delivered to tables around us. The drinks were gorgeous and the faces of the customers appreciative.

SeanMike had apparently told her in advance of our coming. When he introduced us, she told me she had something in mind for me. A few minutes after we sat down, she came over to our table with that monster you see below. (The drink, not SeanMike!) If you had told me that I was going to really enjoy a Strawberry Sage Frozen Pegu, in a snifter the size of a basketball, I might have scoffed…. But nay, nay! That was delicious. It wasn’t terribly Pegu-like, but it was good. The other reason we each only had one other round was the size of this thing!

PS7 is a fine dining restaurant first, with a fine drinking lounge attached. But that lounge is not what you’d expect from a restaurant bar. The prices are not inflated over bar prices as is the inexcusable case with most fine dining restaurant bars. The cocktails on the menu are all originals, but aren’t the typical homogenous group of offerings that limit so many such menus. A few are riffs on classics, updated with a new or oddball ingredient. Others are completely novel creations. Gina employs some combination of fresh fruits, herbs, spices and/or peppers in most drinks. She even uses beets in two on the current menu. I have a policy against beets, but that’s just me. The names are also clever, which I really appreciate. Some are evocative of classic cocktail predecessors, while others are meant to appeal to the clientele of Washington, DC, like the press and military.

I’d like to eat in the main dining room at PS7 next time we visit DC. The food in the lounge, where the offerings are mainly small plates, was simply delicious. Again, the offerings start as bar food, with burgers, sandwiches and flatbread pizzas. And like lots of great places, they tweak it for more modern tastes. But Chef Peter Smith takes that transformation further than most, with great results. The most outstanding and unique dish we had was a plate of thick slices of pork belly, rolled up in small hot dog buns and covered in a gently spicy relish. I think they are called Banh Mini, and I could eat them about every day. The rest of the world needs pork belly hot dogs, stat.

As I noted before, the decor in the PS7 lounge is very modern and airy. It isn’t much like what you see in most “craft” cocktail bars, with their dark woods and cozy environs. There is nothing of the speakeasy here. The walls are white, the windows, huge, and the light, bright. The bar itself is smaller than in most watering holes of this quality, but there is a plethora of low, plush seating spread throughout the rest of the large room. The music was there, but ambient. This is a bar for conversation, where they assume you are interesting enough to hold the attention of your fellows when you can actually hear each other….

The reason I said that PS7 may well be my favorite from our Washington stop is that it does so many things well. The service and hospitality are wonderful. The food is top notch, especially those pork belly things. The location is convenient and safe-feeling. And the drinks are top-notch and not over-priced. As an overall package, the lounge at PS7 would be great for a lot more occasions than just a night of cocktailan adventure. It wold be a great pre-show stop, happy hour haunt, or business entertainment venue as well. Here’s hoping I can get back and review the restaurant itself soon.

This review is part of my larger Great Cross-Country Bar Crawl series. Here is the main post for our Washington stop, with links to all reviews for DC.

Bartenders, for the love of all that is holy, please listen to what I have to say:
Quit shaking your goddamn Manhattans!
The Gospel of Whiskey is a simple drink, guys. Really, it is. It has only three ingredients. You can even speed-pour and get the ratios right. The garnish is cheap, easy, and beautiful. All you have to do is chill and dilute these ingredients, and put them in whatever glass your establishment has for cocktails. Voila! When you are done, you have created a monster classic cocktail which will have likely been requested by the more discerning and sophisticated of your customers….

…

So quit f*cking them up by shaking the damn things until they are a frothy goddamn mess!

I am sick and goddamn tired of having to spend more time describing to you how I want my Manhattan made than it then takes for you to assemble said drink, if I want it to look right in the glass and feel right in my mouth.
You. Stir. A. Manhattan.
It’s a clear drink. It should look like a glass of liquid topaz with a ruby nestled in the bottom when you hand it to me. It should not look like stupid, polluted beach water with a brown, foamy crust.
I have asked you for a cocktail that takes very little time to assemble. I think I’m f*cking entitled to you spending an extra few seconds with a spoon in your hand to ensure it is sufficiently and properly chilled. Yes, it takes longer to stir a drink into the twenties than it does to shake it that cold. But I’ve done the damn experiments, electronic thermometers and all, and it really is just a few extra seconds. 10-15 at the absolute outside, depending on the quality and type of your ice.

Stir. The. Drink.

See this guy?

He’s pissing me off. I want to jump over the bar and beat him down with the spoon he’s supposed to be using here. (Actually the bartender here is shaking a Grey Goose “Martini”, which is fine. But admitting this is mellowing my rant, so forget I mentioned it.)

My wife is always after me to make up cards with recipes she likes so she can give them to bartenders when I’m not around and she can get the drink she wants, made the way she wants it. Well, I’ve also decided to make up my own damn card to give to bartenders when I’m in the mood for a Manahattan. Here it is:

Actually, I haven’t made these physically because I am lazy, and because I have no room in my wallet. My wallet has no room because it is full of money for tips. Tips I give generously of when my Manhattan is not f*cking ruined by being shaken. The money stays in my wallet, leaving no room for said cards, because I keep getting shaken Manhattans.

So I wrote this post instead, so it will be read by all the world’s bartenders.
All bartenders read this blog, right? No? Well, if you know of such a non-Pegu Blog-reading bartender, give him this link at the very least.
Your next Manhattan will thank you.

Whew! That feels better. That’s really all it takes, guys and gals.

Stir. The. Drink.

Thanks.

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Oh, and don’t forget the goddamn bitters either!

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And enough vermouth, too!

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And another thing….

The magic here isn’t the result of distilling grain or grape, but of distilling the last three years or so of cocktail trends. This little video, produced using Xtranormal, was written by Phillip Duff for a seminar at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, featuring himself and Angus Winchester.
Oh, in this particular distilling method, all they kept was the most heinous of the heads and tails of the run….

This video is really a piece of genius. Most readers of the Cocktailosphere will need no annotation, but I can’t resist a little highlighting. (You probably ought to watch the vid first, as I try not to give away the jokes with my comments.)

• While in the video the customer is an off-duty bartender, not a blogger, I blush to admit I see a good bit of my own behavior in him. At least in the whole sitting at the end of the bar, watching the bartender work like I’m trying to break down the Zapruder film.
• I haven’t personally had any of the whiskey brand mentioned, you hear it specified all the time during Thursday Drink Night….
• I officially offer a prize to the cocktail historian blogger who unearths the recipe for the Gloogelflocken Swizzle. Offer void if I post it here first….
• I suspect the technique for drink making that they discuss may be the Hard Shake. If it isn’t… it should be.
• The customer is obviously not Rick Stutz, as he doesn’t want enough bitters.
• Love the name checks of Baker and Embury. Oh, and I am utterly guilty as charged.
• Two phrases: “A Kardashian” and “black hole”. The they aren’t connected but appear in the same riff. It’s epic.
• I don’t know how Duff or Winchester make their Old Fashioneds, but mine take less time to make than my Cosmopolitan, so it’s the only punchline to fail, at least for me.
• Since I have studiously avoided any mention of the barrel-aging frenzy gripping Cocktailia, I will simply sit back and feel superior to those who have succumbed and are summarily thrashed herein.

Thanks to That’s the Spirit! for the head’s up on the video.