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.