Very recently, New York Times writer Tim Murphy penned an article entitled Mixing Drinks, Adding Class that simply took my breath away. It is genuinely difficult to cram this much casual douchebaggery, from so many sources, into one article. Even the Washington Post, in this age of media lockstep, felt compelled to take a swing at this piece. (They miss for the most part, but I’ll get to that.) What makes this particular collection of pretentiousness worth my time to write about however, is that its central piece of advice is completely sound.
It hurts me to hear advice I agree with, given for reasons that are utter horsecrap. It undermines the chance that people will listen to it and take it to heart when they should.
[UPDATE: I'm not alone in my opinions of this piece. I've embedded a bunch of links at the bottom of the post who share some or all of my position here.]

The article details a party given by a Claudia Argiro, in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, for about two dozen friends. She served a punch and an eggnog. And she hired a bartender for about two hundred beans, plus tip, to stand in a corner of the room and ladle out said punch and eggnog.
This is all simple enough. And as I’ll get to below, more than reasonable.

But then the discussion begins about the reasons why she hired poor Eric Villani to stand in the corner and be a charming, automatic spoon.
Oh. My. God.
Are there often puff pieces in the Times that make people all over the country want to fly to New York, just to shake some sense into the subjects mentioned therein?

The article is wall-to-wall idiocy, and you should read the whole thing yourself to really “appreciate” it, but I’ll pull a few quotes to whet your appetite. Here’s the epicenter quote, from Dustin Terry, who has now replaced The Situation as the biggest douchebag to make his home on Long Island:

“In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.”

“If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”

I find it hard to like Claudia, just because she invited Dustin to her party. She gets what she deserves though, I guess, since “Mr. Terry” raids her private liquor cabinet without permission later in the party because he wants something stronger than what she chose to serve. If the bartender brings class and sophistication, why hasn’t he served any to this clown?
There is a lot going on in Dustin’s attitude. And while it isn’t spoken so uglily by anyone else interviewed for the article, it is shared by every last one of them, including it seems, the author. The purpose behind having the bartender, this (hopefully) professional person, is as a prop or accessory that says something about the host, and the guests.

On the face of it, they all want the bartender there to say they have arrived.

“I’m an adult now, living by myself, and this is my sh-bam, my moment,” said Ms. Argiro, who runs a clothing boutique nearby called Charlie and Sam.

(By the way, see what I did there, NYT? I added a link to her business. Here I am slamming the snot out of this poor woman, who I’m guessing is a heckuva nice person in most ways, and I still take time to add a link to your quote that you should have put there yourselves.)

You see, thirty-something New Yorkers, if you are having to think of ways to say, “I have arrived!” then you haven’t. You are an arriviste. People who have actually Arrived will see you instantly for the poser you are. And the sad thing is, Claudia has clearly really arrived. She has a nice home, and is a solid, middle-class shopkeeper. An American entrepreneur. America was built and is refreshed by people who have achieved as she has.
Live your life the way that makes sense for you, not the way you think people expect you to live your life, and everyone will know you’ve actually arrived. As it is, I’m not sure which is more laughable, the 17 year-old who shouts, “I’m a grown-up!” to his parents, or the 33 year-old who asks, “I’m a grown-up, right?” to her friends. (Not to mention how pathetic a society we have become when any thirty-something is not automatically assumed to have grown up some time ago!)

The thrust of the article, as with all trend pieces like it of course, is not to inform the world that Claudia Argiro has grown up, but that this is how more and more folks like her are announcing their alleged maturity.
I say “alleged” because there is a second layer of immature stupidity discussed in the article. It doesn’t apply to Claudia’s party, but clearly, lots of these bartender-hiring hosts have absolutely not grown up.

Such gigs can also carry minor humiliations that may not be so common at larger, more formal affairs…. David Shiovitz, who … sends out Columbia University undergraduates and graduate students, said that, were his bartenders asked, say, to strip or dance, “They have the right to say, ‘That’s not in my contract,’ ” he said.

“They have the right to say?!?!” The fact that this sort of treatment clearly happens often enough that they talk about it in the article, and that there is such a rote way of responding to it is appalling.
Look, I’ve got no beef with having a stripper at your party, if that’s the way you roll. Just hire an actual stripper. And invite me if you like. But if you ask a professional bartender, or a professional anyone other than a Professional Clothing-Removal Engineer to dance on the table or remove their clothes, then no one will ever believe you have arrived or grown up.

I’ve one last piece of snark, this for the guests of parties like this.

Another guest, Eric Carson, 32, a stock trader who lives in nearby Greenpoint, agreed that the bartender added class. “I feel very sophisticated at this party,” he said. “And I usually feel like a complete dirt bag.”

Dude, if you need a bartender there to keep you from being offensive in the home of one of your friends, and if a bartender is all it takes to keep you from being a dirtbag, you need to stay home. That, or, I dunno, learn to grow up yourself.

Now, as I said, Washington Post writer Jason Wilson (author of Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits) responded with an article entitled Cocktail parties don’t require hired help, but guests deserve more than jug wine. (Note to the Post: You capitalize titles.) Jason joins me in disdain for Mr. Terry, wondering, “Do models have a hard time getting into clubs?” Beyond that, he mostly misses the real mark here. He concentrates on Claudia’s offered libations. He notes that you don’t need a bartender for naught but pouring punch. But his main complaint is that if you are having a cocktail party, you should serve cocktails. And he wants the kind of cocktails that would satisfy Jason Wilson, or Doug Winship for that matter, and not leave us raising our supercilious eyebrows. He further notes that your average Columbia grad student doing temp bartending for less than the price of a single textbook is unlikely to be able to produce Pegus, Sazeracs, or perhaps even a decent Martini.
But most parties will not be populated by Jason or me (this is sad for us, but there you go). Even in today’s cocktail resurgence, most parties, even on the Upper West Side, will have few if any guests who would recognize Pegus, Sazeracs, or perhaps even a decent Martini.

Now, after all that abuse laid on Tim Murphy, his hapless interview subjects, and most of New York City apparently, for believing that you should hire a bartender for your private parties, may I finish with some advice?

Hire a bartender for your party.

Yes, hire a bartender for your party. Don’t do it because you think your guests will be impressed. Don’t invite guests who will think a bartender is the equivalent of big boy pants, for that matter. I’ve had perhaps two parties of my own in the last fifteen years where I didn’t hire at least a bartender, and both were simply too small. I provide entertainment at cocktail parties for a living. I’ve been to many hundreds of them over the years. Good bartenders are always worth the money.
As I see it, you have three options if you intend to offer drinks to your guests at your party. You can hire a bartender, you can set up a self-service drinks station, or you can mix and serve your cocktails yourself.

I hire a bartender because I like parties, and I see no reason why I should not enjoy my own. The Times article touches on a few of the good reasons to hire staff for your event, but misses a few others. I’m going to outline most of the good reasons to hire someone. You’ll note that few relate to benefiting your guests, at least directly. Your bartender works for you, for your benefit.

First, your bartender saves you from serving your guests, unless you want to. You can have conversations that last as long as you want. You can talk to the guests you want to, and avoid those you want to. In short, you can enjoy your job as host.
Jason Wilson’s WaPo article is skeptical that your bartender will be able to produce drinks that are up to the standards of, well, Jason. To be fair, I have pretty high standards about the drinks I want my guests to enjoy too. Your standards are your own, but it doesn’t matter that much for the purposes of this discussion, except to note that if you want your guests have real cocktails, the most elegant of self-serve presentations is out.

If you hire a college student who at most has waiting tables on his resumé, then indeed, you won’t have the option of serving the finest in the cocktailian art. (Again, depending on you or your friends, this may not matter) If you hire a pro from a caterer or professional staff agency like I sometimes do, you will have more to work with.
I maintain good relationships with a variety of professional, full-time bartenders, however. (This will surprise no regular reader.) Depending on your bartender, and the date of your party, you may well be able to hire one of them to work your event. No agency fees means more money for them, which they deserve.
Chances are, you won’t be hiring Dale DeGroff, so even the pro will likely not know all your fancy cocktailista drinks. This is still no problem. I create a nice cocktail menu for each party, with about 8 to 10 cocktails on offer. (Here’s what I had last time.) Any moderately experienced pro can use a cheat sheet you provide to produce these well. You make your joint feel like Clover Club, and you have great control.

Second, your bartender will keep the drinks area (at least) clean. Few things are worse than the wreckage of your home the morning after a party. Cups, bottle, napkins, etc are scattered everywhere. Dishes and glassware need to be cleaned. A good bartender will keep this mess to an absolute minimum. If we are having more than 30 guests, I add a server in addition to the bartender. They move around the house, keeping things clean as the party goes on.
If you aren’t at least a little hungover after hosting a cocktail party, you are doing it wrong. I vastly prefer, when experiencing The Morning After, going out for brunch and Bloody Marys over dragging a Hefty bag around the house, collecting napkins, cups, and bottles.
Additionally, if you are employing your full arsenal of glassware, and a wide menu of cocktails, chances are some dishes will have to be done during the party. I find it quite hard to be a charming host when I have dishpan hands, don’t you, darling?

Both of those items were mentioned in passing as benefits, rather then reasons for hiring a bartender in the Times. Alone, they are really enough, but there’s more. A bartender serves as a gatekeeper to your booze. (Unless you invite Dustin Terry. But if you do, that’s you own lack of wisdom.)
The mere fact that you have a bartender, no matter how competent, will regulate the flow of booze at your party. At the start, and during any rush, he’ll slow down how fast drinks go out. When things are slow, guests get their cocktails faster than they would through hunting you down or even serving themselves. Overall, when compared to a self-service bar, your guests will drink a measurably smaller amount of social lubricant, without ever noticing.
This doesn’t mean you get to be cheap! Serve better booze.
A good bartender will help you out as gatekeeper in other ways as well. If you have a guest or two that you know is prone to having more than is good for him, or her, let your bartender be your friend and early warning system. I’m not suggesting that a private event bartender ought to be cutting off guests, that’s your job. But they can give you a heads up if heavy weather is brewing. Contrary to Eric Carson’s belief, Claudia’s bartender probably didn’t keep him from being a “dirtbag”. But he might have helped her ensure Eric got home safely.

Finally, it’s worth having your bartender hang around for a bit after the guests leave. Perhaps offer him a drink before he goes. It’s a nice way to decompress, and you get the benefit of a set of sober recollections from the event. You may get a few good stories of things that happened away from you at your party. Or you may find out about some things that went wrong that you can correct before you do all this again.
A good cocktail party should not be a once in a lifetime thing. It should be a once in a while thing, so do everything you can to do it better next time than you did the last. Hire a bartender, and you’ll be going a long way toward making both this party, and the next, better than it would otherwise have been.

I notice that I am not alone in my visceral reaction to the New York Times piece that sparked this post. Here are some of the more entertaining shots:

Curbed New York: “What is it with the people of Williamsburg and their troubling habit of saying dumb things to New York Times reporters?”

Meg In Brooklyn intends to try to balance out Eric Carson’s new-found clean-baggedness.

The Gloss goes perhaps a tad overboard to follow this hot, emerging trend. If you read only one of these, read this one.

Gothamist: “You are a worthless P.O.S. if you don’t hire a bartender for your house party, say people who own catering companies and two random douchebags.”

BlackBook gives us a (sadly) somewhat approving insight into what the actual business is that Dustin Terry and partner Matt Assante have with Saudi Royals and hot models.

Bar Stool Sports: “Serious question, is Dustin Terry the biggest douchebag we have ever posted?” Probably.

Had I been at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail, one panel I’d have been interested in was the one on intellectual property rights and cocktail creation. It was lead by mixology superstar Eben Freeman, along with a copyright lawyer and an official from the US Trademark Office. The panel discussed the value of innovations in the world of mixology, and how, if possible, to protect and/or monetize that value.
Eben is one of the true innovators behind the mahogany in the world today. He’s a legitimate master of promoting himself and the craft of bartending as well. And he’s one pissed off camper.
Eben’s concerns run from simple pirating of his recipes, to the co-opting of his inventions, such as “fat washing”. (Fat washing is the disgusting-sounding but yummy-making process of infusing fat-based flavors such as bacon into spirits) His complaints run from a simple desire to be compensated for his ideas in some way, to a more parochial desire to prevent other young spirits professionals from using his ideas to advance their own careers.

I heard nothing of this issue or this presentation until Gaz Regan started a Facebook discussion on it. (Update: Gaz has posted an extended open letter on this subject. It is very zen… and very Gaz.) But the stone that hit the water and started the ripples was an Atlantic article entitled The Era of Copyrighted Cocktails? Those ripples have spread all over the place, and well beyond the Cocktailosphere. I’m going to stick my oar in because I care about the craft, and because as a writer, I care deeply about intellectual property rights.
I’m also sticking in my oar because, while I admire Eben and his work a lot, I apparently can’t help but bash him on this blog (as noted just in my last post, which I swear I’d written before I started in on this). He brings up real concerns and an important issue here, but much of the damage he claims is belied by the evidence, at least as regards him personally. And his complaints reveal a guild-like mindset that is the sort of thing that leaves me spitting nails.
(more…)

The first round of the Chopped Mixology Competition is in the books, and a good time was had by all. The contestants all put together a series of great offerings, leaving a lot of difficulty for the judges. The winner of the first preliminary round, who will move on to the final on July 12th, was Cris from M at Miranova, but not without some drama along the way.

Cris Dehlavi, the first round winner, from M at Mirnova

I had not previously been to Mozaik, and I’ve got a second post about it coming next. For right now, I’ll just say that it is a swank joint, and is laid out pretty well for a contest like this one. With the walls wide open to the street, the atmosphere is wonderful. The sound system took a little while to get dialed in, but ended up working pretty well, which is both damned hard and damned important for an event like this.

Jason Davis of Mynt Ultralounge

Each night works as follows: There are three rounds of drinks created. For each round, the bartenders are presented with a sealed basket of ingredients. They must use all these ingredients to create four identical cocktails in twenty minutes, using the rest of the bar’s resources as they wish. They present their cocktails to the judges, who ask questions. After the judges have tried all the drinks, they score them according to a rubric that I’ll detail later on. The lowest scoring bartender is chopped. The remaining contestants return for the next round.

Lindsay Konkel of Haiku Poetic Food and Art

The first round was scored only to keep the format even, because the fourth contestant was a last-minute substitution. He was actually the guy who chose most of the secret ingredients earlier in the day. Under the circumstances it would have been unfair for him to keep going, a fact that was borne out by his actually being the highest scorer in the first round. The result was that Cris, who would other wise have been chopped first, stayed in the contest.

“McLovin”, Chopped’s good-natured and talented, (and unauthorized) final contestant

The final round came down to Lindsay and Cris, and ingredients included caramel macchiato ice cream and Russell’s Reserve Rye Whiskey. Both contestants put together very good offerings, and the judges required a lot of time and discussion to render their decision.

Judges (L to R): Ben Zenitsky of Columbus Monthly, Madlogic of Local Night Scene, and Amber Fox of Black Olive restaurant

Brandon revealed the judge’s decision after each round by lifting a champagne bucket to reveal the drink of the bartender who was to be chopped. The only hiccup of the night came at the final reveal, when I was not sure whether it was the winner or loser who was being exposed! Regardless, as I said at the beginning, Cris was the narrow winner, and I’m glad I didn’t have to choose this week, as Lindsay’s drink was equally good.
The next round will be Monday, June 21st, at Mozaik at 8:00PM. Come on down, have some inexpensive drinks, some great food, and cheer on next week’s batch of bartenders vying not to be… chopped!

Good advice on how to pay for your drinks. Hint: Making life easier for your bartender will leave you less parched….

My longer term readers know I am a fan of Gary Regan, one of America’s, and thus one of the world’s, preeminent bartenders. He, um, sends me to the Moon at times. Lots of folks claim American has no cuisine, but that is false. We have the Cocktail. If you want the best sauces, you go to France. If you want the best, most innovative drinks, you come to America’s shores. You can find great sauces and cocktails elsewhere of course, but I feel I’m on solid rather than jingoistic ground when I make that generalization.
Anyway, Gaz has just written a column for SFGate entitled, How to be a Superstar Bartender. The wisdom he imparts is wonderful and specific. You should read it, whichever side of the mahogany you frequent. I’ll leave his specific recommendations for you to read there, and steal only this introductory piece of wisdom:

Before we begin, know this: If you believe that you know what you’re doing, and if you can pull it off without apology, you’re 90 percent there.

All that said, Gaz’s is not the only school of thought out there. Whilst I would never publicly disagree with him, the owners of the Patriot Saloon in Tribeca apparently do…

Found on Eater, via Asylum. It’s a little early in the week for Rule 5 blogging, but I’m just giving you ample time to imagine the applicants for yourself. (Alternatively, you could head over to the Patriot Saloon and take a few pics of the successful applicants, then send the to me for publication here….)

I’ve gotten some details about the the drinks created at the Columbus Iron Bartender competition that I wrote up before. That post was little long to update with all this, so I’m doing a separate post. Here is what I have:

Brandon Bowsher of Martini Park
Jack Ginger Fresh

I used the pecan and apricot infused jack daniels, then made an infused simple syrup with the ginger root and fresh sliced pears. In addition I used whole fresh pineapple and muddled it to a fine pulp and then added fresh mint leaves into the remaining juice. I used a a little Tuaca and amaretto as well.
I also squeezed two fresh limes to help balance the sweetness.
And for the rim I used agave nectar and Grand Marnier, slightly warmed and placed on the rim of the martini glass to hold on fresh toasted, grated almonds, and an orange twist garnish.

Zak Renzetti-Voit of Black Olive
Pineapple Upside-down Ginger

I made a ginger simple syrup and muddled it with mint & cucumber. I added Hendricks Gin (infused w/ cucumber & rose petals) and dashed with Rhubarb bitters and a splash of soda. The kicker was the glass – I chopped the top off of a pineapple, hollowed it out, turned it upside down and stood it on its spiky top. So, it basically looked like an edible martini glass. It was delicious, but very refreshing.

(By the way, I’ve never seen anyone make a pineapple drinking vessel this way. Is it common in the Tiki world, or did Zak do something special here?)

Mike Vehlber of Hyde Park
Ginger Blood Orange Manhattan
I haven’t heard back from Mike yet. Hopefully this is just a placeholder paragraph until he gets me some information. The drink sounded pretty elegantly simple in construction

Cris Dehlavi of M at Miranova (Winner)

There you go, folks! They were all great. Now all you Columbus folks, go visit these guys and tell them I sent you.

Reese, over at Cocktail Hacker, has a post that I’m going to steal more of than I should, including the picture above, just because it is so cool. He does a small experiment about shaking versus stirring, and gives us the split image picture above, with a shaken Martini on the left and stirred on the right. Reese seems to start his experiment concerned mostly with the aesthetics of the result. I want you to read his post too, so I’ll leave that alone except to say that I actually find that I like my Martinis looking as if you could peer closely and see Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio clinging to a piece of flotsam amidst the ice flakes.
I’m more concerned about the bit of science Reese uncovers. His cocktail shaken for 30 seconds came out into the glass at 26 degrees. Stirred a like time, it poured at 46 degrees! When he stirred for 60 seconds, the temp managed to get down to 32. He also noticed, as you can see above, that there was a larger volume in the shaken cocktail, than in the 30 second stir. The 60 second stir almost had the volume of the shaken. Got all that? No? Too bad. I’m not going through that again. Pay attention.
The scientific principal that matters here is that the colder you want your drink, the more diluted it has to be.
Why? Two years ago, Darcy O’Neil wrote a post that pointed out the science behind this. Here is the key fact: Almost all the chill you get from ice in a drink comes from the act of melting itself. A liquid is cooled when you put ice (or even very cold water) in it because the heat energy in the warm ingredients is bled off to raise the temperature of the ice. The cool thing about water is, it takes a fairly small amount of energy to warm up ice or water. But it takes a honking big amount to change ice into water. Here’s a cool graph that shows you it takes almost 80% as much heat to melt ice (which does not raise it’s temp at all) as it does to heat it from 32 degrees to the boiling point!

Why is shaking faster than stirring? Vigorous agitation cracks and slivers the ice, which increases it’s surface area. This makes the heat transfer go faster. It also leaves air bubbles and lots and lots of little needles of ice. These little slivers will go right through the strainer, clouding the drink, along with the bubbles. And these slivers won’t melt very quickly, despite their large surface to mass ratio, because your drink is now below their melting point! Incidentally, if you don’t drink your cocktail quickly (while it is still laughing at you) these little slivers will melt, and retard the warming speed slightly.
But as the ice melts, it dilutes the drink as well. Some water is needed in most cocktails to make them taste right, but too much and you will have a bland or thin-tasting drink. This is ironic, because the colder the drink, the stronger we can take it, and in fact like it.

And here is where we move from the physics of ice to the sometimes amazing nexus of art and industrial engineering that is modern cocktail bartending.
First, the art. Do you shake or stir? How long? How hard? There aren’t really objective, scientific rules for any of this. You may have a preference so dogmatic and iron-clad that for you it is akin to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, but Pete down the bar there may have an equally strong preference the other way. Chances are, unless you are Gary Regan and want to spend a half-hour instructing an airport bartender how to make a Manhattan, your bartender will decide to shake or stir, and for how long. In this, he or she is an artist. There are many ways to arrive at a great drink with the same ingredients, and many more ways to end up with a crude paint by numbers sketch.
If the bartender is you, in your Basement Bar, you can take the time to be as loving and careful as you like, limited only by your thirst, and that of your guests. But in a crowded commercial establishment, the industrial engineering aspect comes into play. If you ask for a Plymouth Martini, stirred, how likely are you to get Reese’s 32 degree job in any bar, anywhere?
Really?
No, not even there.
A bartender who takes sixty seconds to lovingly, gently stir each Martini will be in the weeds so quickly, that his boss will need a DR Trimmer/Mower and/or a price hike to get him out.
So, if you find yourself served a cocktail that looks great, tastes great, is very cold, served quickly, and for an at least somewhat reasonable price, look hard at your bartender. He or she deserves a good reward for their skill and labor. And you need to remember them so you can come back again.

If you happen to hit this post as your first visit to the Pegu Blog, Meandering Through Mitchell’s is a series of posts exploring the cocktail offerings of the Cameron Mitchell restaurants in and around Columbus, Ohio. For more on my reasons for profiling the Mitchell’s chain in particular, read the intro to my review of his restaurant, M at Miranova.
The Ocean Club has been my favorite of Cameron’s restaurants for as long as it has been open. This is remarkable, since it has been tinkered with relentlessly, leaving it in many ways unrecognizable from its original form. We’ve been going here long before I shifted my drinking focus from wine to cocktails. When the Ocean Club first opened ten years ago, it was our place to go drink champagne with dinner.
At its nativity, The Ocean Club was a fish house that served good steaks as well, and was decorated in an avant garde style of blue hues, bubbly glass, and wavy lines. Today, Mitchell’s Ocean Club is a steakhouse, with better and more varied seafood than is the norm. (Better seafood, usually, than that which I’ve eaten at Mitchell’s vaunted Fish Market restaurants, a chain he recently sold off for 3.84 potloads of money.) The decor now is the wood paneled look that seems the norm for steakhouses, but with a lighter, friendlier, more open look than many. The most recent change here is the huge wrap-around balcony. This area provides hands down the nicest, most elegant, outdoor dining seating in Columbus. On nice evenings, it can be a long wait to get a seat out there for dinner. This is actually not so bad, as you can wait in the bar, which is among the nicest in town as well, and the subject of this post.
The bar itself is a huge, black granite-topped rectangle. One of the narrow ends is for service staff, but there is abundant seating on the other three sides. There is lots of overflow area around the bar with places to sit or lean when the bar is full. There is a huge grand piano near the entrance, and live music, mostly of the piano man style. They always manage the pretty difficult trick of having the music be loud enough to hear all through the restaurant and out on the balcony, while not being so loud as to be annoying or make conversation difficult in the bar. The bar is always generously staffed, making for very short waits for service, no matter how packed it sometimes gets.
There is not a cozy nor particularly romantic atmosphere in the bar. Instead it is a great place to wait for a table, or meet up with friends, or wait while a spouse is shopping in the surrounding Easton Shopping Center.
And a darned fine place to have a drink.
The wine list here is excellent. I won’t link to the cocktail menu since the online version is out of date as of this writing. The current set of offerings ranges from a classic like the Bombay Sapphire Martini to a blueberry and blackberry smash of some kind. They even garnish a drink or two with a chunk of dry ice. They used to do this more than now. Back in the chrome and wavy glass days, the dry ice was in everything. You’d look down the bar at a horde of different colored drinks, all pouring mist out the top, and it would look a bit like Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine. It was fun, and frankly I miss it a little.
As with all Mitchell’s restaurants, fresh citrus rules the roost. I got the whole we don’t have Rose’s here, just fresh lime and simple syrup lecture. While I don’t know if it is true or not, I get the impression that the bar’s spirits inventory is slightly broader at Mitchell’s Ocean Club than at M. But regardless, the selection still shies away from the seriously exotic. The staff knows the classics, and how to make them correctly (Our bartender Pat easily passed my Sidecar test, for instance). But I doubt a drink like a Corpse Reviver #2 has ever been placed on the granite here. The Angustora only comes out for Old Fashioneds and Champagne Cocktails, not even in Manhattans unless specified, and you won’t get vermouth in your vodka Martini unless you beg.
I decided to try a drink off of the cocktail menu called the Cucumber Gimlet. Essentially, it is nothing but a basic Gimlet with muddled cucumbers. Here’s how Cameron’s corporate bar master decrees the drink should be made:

Cameron’s corporate bar master is wrong. Made this way, you have a sweet mess that utterly destroys any character from the gin, and thus in the drink. You might as well make it with vodka.
Now, here is where you see the value of the well-trained staff at the Ocean Club. I never said a thing about what I thought of the drink. Indeed, I was deep in an interesting conversation, and not looking to fuss. But Pat was paying attention, despite being busy, and knew I was not digging it. He did not have to ask did I like it, he just asked if he could get me something else. I asked him for the recipe, and I blanched at the full ounce of simple in the drink. I asked him to make it again, but with just a quarter as much.
The result is a really damn good cocktail. If you visit the Ocean Club, I recommend the drink, just make sure they back the sugar way off.
Incidentally, they offer the same drink at M (I didn’t try it there), only they make it with Hendrick’s, which would seem to make more sense. I should have, in the interests of journalism, had a second Cucumber Gimlet, specifying the Hendrick’s. But I wanted a Pegu, which Pat absolutely nailed on his first try. At any rate, I’ll get a cucumber the next time I hit the store and try both myself.
As I said, the Ocean Club has been a work in progress for a decade. Apparently Cameron feels that he has finally gotten it right, as he has opened five more, under the slightly different name of Ocean Prime in Detroit, Phoenix, and Florida. The one in Tampa is supposedly especially gorgeous. All seem to be holding up very well, despite being premium restaurants, with premium pricing, in a slowish economy. I suggest you drop in, if you have the Ocean Club or an Ocean Prime near you, and find out why.

Here’s a complete list of the posts so far in my Meandering Through Mitchell’s series:

• The Blood Orange Margarita: A "Meandering Through Mitchell's" Find
• "Meandering Through Mitchell's": Mitchell's Ocean Club
• The Vanilla Bean Old Fashioned: A Meandering Through Mitchell's Find
• The Plasma Mary

For the ones of you who find this post without knowing what day it is, it’s Mixology Monday! This month’s theme is Guilty Pleasures, and the rest of the Cocktailosphere’s dark secrets may be found via Stevi Deter’s new all-potables effort: Two at the Most.
For myself, I want to write about Maggi’s and my very own Guilty Pleasure, the Kamikaze. Actually, it is my guilty pleasure, Maggi drinks whatever the hell she likes without regard for what anyone else thinks. But that is because I am a tender-egoed aspirant to the ranks of the cocktailscienti, while Maggi is a Great Broad. To forestall a long story from becoming longer, the Kamikaze is the second most frequently constructed cocktail in my Basement Bar.
I’ve alluded to the Kamikaze several times here, but why have I refrained from blogging up a storm about one of my favorite cocktails? Well, because it is a Guilty Pleasure!
The Kamikaze is important to me not just because it’s a good drink (at least mine is, see below), but because in learning about my version, I also learned something about bartenders. Something important. I discovered that bartenders are not just a glorified soda fountain on two legs. Prior to 1999(?) I had no understanding of bartenders or the concept that intelligence and individuality had anything to do with the profession. As far as I was concerned, they were waiters who poured measured amounts of beer and wine, and mixed drinks according to the recipes found in some book. And I thought there was only one book.
But mein frau and I were at the late Desert Inn in Las Vegas, waiting for the Dennis Miller show and in need of refreshment. We found a small quiet bar of the sort that no longer exist in strip casinos, and sat down. I ordered a VeryDryVodkaMartiniShakenNotStirred, because that is just the sort of poser that I was. Maggi asked for a suggestion. The guy asked her several questions, then offered her a Kamikaze. She replied that she didn’t want a shot, and he said this was his cocktail version. She tried it and really liked it. So did I. Enough that I hurriedly emptied my Martini to have “one of those”. I even asked how it was made, and he explained his recipe, and how and why it differed from most of the ways people made Kamikazes. It was a wonderful on-off conversation that lasted a half-an-hour, and it changed the way I looked at bartenders forever. Yes, most really are waiters who pour measured amounts and think a Jack and Coke is a signature cocktail, but many are much more, and I’m richer for that. And those bartenders are richer for me….
Now, on with the drink. A Guilty Pleasure must be both guilty and a pleasure, so I’ll address both.
My last post previewed the main reasons I see for the Guilty portion of a Kamikaze:

• It has one of those names. Kamikaze. Really. It just sounds stupid, ignorant, and silly. You could even find a way to make it racist, if professional outrage is your life’s calling.
• I’m pretty sure it started out as a shooter. At least, that is the reaction most people have when first offered one.
• The third item is largely limited to dealing with mixological mavens: The Kamikaze is a Vodka drink. Horrors! If you call Vodka poser fluid, well then this is not the cocktail for you! Of course, I’m betting a lot of guilty pleasures we see today from Vodka snobs will be based on the stuff….

Another reason, and a quite legitimate one, that the Kamikaze gets no love is that no two mixers on Earth seem to make it the same way. Is it a shooter, or a cocktail? And why, oh why, does it bring out the worst in hot-button awful cocktail miscues?

Seriously?
I hate few cocktail-related things more than someone pouring Rose’s and calling it lime juice. And while I admit Cointreau is Triple Sec, in the sense that a Ferrari is a car, don’t use the good stuff and pretend that generic will produce anything similar. Oh, and I’ve tried this variant. Ugh.

At least the next contestant gets the Rose’s right…

I’m not sure about her Triple Sec, but the bottle is square like Cointreau. And more importantly, who serves a shot on the rocks? Finally, I am not even going to try that recipe.
My point is, Kamikaze has become a generic name for white hooch and limeyness. No one orders them because they have no idea what they are going to get, but odds are, they won’t like it.

So why do I love Kamikazes? I iterate (never use the non-word reiterate around here, or Maggi will break out the Ban Hammer!) that I love my Kamikaze. If the world came to its senses and standardized the drink to my specifications, then it would not be a guilty pleasure anymore. Let’s look at the recipe:

What, not the good stuff?

No. Any cheap stuff that doesn’t taste nasty will do. This drink is not subtle enough in flavor for any alleged subtleties of premium Vodka to show through.

You just said no premium stuff! Then you call for Cointreau. I think I’ll use my generic Triple Sec.

Put down that bottle and walk away. The difference in flavors with this ingredient would be more than readily apparent.

But you just slammed that guy in the first video for using Rose’s!

No, I slammed him for calling Rose’s lime juice. you actually need Rose’s for this. It is the only legitimate use for the gnarly stuff, except for in a Gimlet.

Whoa! Hold on! What happened to your shortcut? You’ll use crappy bottled lime juice in your precious Pegus, but demand “fresh” for your Guilty Pleasure?

Get over it. When I say “Fresh Lime Juice”, I mean “Fresh Lime Juice If Available-If Not, Use Good Bottled Juice And Move On with Life”.

I will never, ever
give up this fight!

I’m sure you won’t, Gabe.

What results is a lightly sweet, very tart, and subtly funky cocktail. It does not seem very strong, but it very much is. And interestingly, it will still taste pretty good as it starts to warm up, which is good, ’cause this ain’t a petite recipe. The Kamikaze is not terribly challenging to make or savor. It is refreshing in Summer or Winter. And it goes better with food, at least hearty fare, than most cocktails.
In short, it is the ultimate McTini, even better than the Cosmopolitan. Most anyone will find it drinkable, and you can serve it to the most timid of drinkers. Of course, the world is not going to standardize on this recipe, so you will have to enjoy it in the confidential safety of your Basement Bar, a Guilty Pleasure forever.