Thank god for ambitious bartenders, and for the chef/owners who love them.

Rob Feenie is one of the most respected chefs in Canada; his flagship restaurant, Lumiere, is a Relais-Chateaux establishment often mentioned in the same breath as Daniel, Charlie Trotter’s and the French Laundry. A couple of years ago—around the time he was getting famous for winning the competition on Iron Chef America—he opened a more casual bistro-style restaurant next door to Lumiere, and called it Feenie’s. The atmosphere (and price) is much more approachable for most people, but the food is still spectacular. Fortunately, so are the drinks.

There were a lot of options on the drink menu—some the obligatory cosmo knock-offs, but an impressive number of whiskey, rum and brandy-based cocktails that all seemed worth ordering. My choice was a pisco sour, mainly because I’d never had one in a bar before, only at home, and I wanted to see how mine stacked up against the pros.

Point #1 in Feenie’s favor: when I ordered the drink, the waiter said, “You know it lives up to its name—it really is sour.” Actually, it wasn’t any more tart than the basic sour-style drink I typically make, but I think a fair number of customers are surprised by the taste of a drink that isn’t laden with sugar.

Point # 2: when he served the drink, the waiter took care to mention it included raw egg white—just in case I hadn’t gleaned that from the menu. He’s probably had enough of them sent back by customers who had no idea what they were ordering.

Point #3: the drink. We were sitting near the bar, so I could see the bartender giving it a whopping good shake, to best aerate the egg white. He then poured it in a champagne flute, the best to keep the foam, and served it with a faint stain of angostura bitters on top. The taste was a tiny bit rough—the balance of sweet and sour erred slightly on the sour side, but not too bad—but it had a nice pisco kick, and the deep roundness of a drink made with just enough spirit to keep the flavor lively.

I think next year Vancouver Magazine needs to pull its geriatric ass out of the Bacchus and haul it down to Kitsilano for a lesson at the bar of Feenie’s.

Tags: Establishments by Paul
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This is why I rarely drink in bars (well, one reason, anyway), preferring instead to mix my own at home: the curse of the poorly made cocktail.

Scene: Bacchus Lounge in the Wedgewood Hotel in Vancouver, BC. For the past two years running, Vancouver Magazine named Bacchus the best lounge in the city, so it seemed promising at first.

The first sign of trouble was immediately apparent: Bacchus, and the Wedgewood, have a wonderful beauty to them, but they’re the kind of places that have a particular appeal among the over-60 set. You know—the hunting scenes hanging on the wall, the dark wood and Venetian lamps, the deep burgundy plush of the chairs—the kind of place your grandmother likes to stay. Pleasant? Sure. A temple to fine drinking? Not looking good.

A look at the cocktail list was the second warning: Of the approximately 20 house specialty cocktails, about 95 percent were based on vodka, and most were variations on the cosmo. But, they also had a small list of classic cocktails, and I figured that with a reputation like theirs, and choosing a cocktail on the list, I’d probably be okay. With that in mind, I ordered a Between the Sheets (brandy & white rum, with fresh lemon juice and Coinreau)—not my favorite drink, but one worth sipping on occasion; plus, this being Canada, all of the whiskey drinks were made with Canadian “rye,” (blended, as opposed to American straight rye), so that 86ed my usual top choices.

Stupid. The drink arrived with a thick layer of ice chips on top; once I crunched through those, I found a watery puddle of lemon juice, with neither enough Cointreau to balance the lemon’s tartness, nor enough rum or brandy to have any noticeable taste whatsoever. If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that the bartender didn’t immediately turn it into a candy drink with too much Cointreau, as is so often the case. Still, it was a lousy drink, particularly shocking given Bacchus’ reputation.

Tags: Establishments by Paul
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A new addition to my list of favorites. The recipe’s from William Grimes’ unspeakably excellent Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail, the reading of which is the best and quickest way I know of to gain a well-rounded education about the fine points of drinking over the past 200 or so years.

Police Gazette Cocktail

• 3 ounces whiskey [ed. note: Woohoo!]
• 2 dashes French vermouth
• 3 dashes simple syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters (Fee Bros. Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters lend a nice, spicy touch to this drink)
• 2 dashes curacao
• 2 dashes maraschino liqueur

Stir with ice & strain into cocktail glass; garnish with a cherry.

Grimes credits the drink to the New Police Gazette Bartender’s Guide from 1901 (in the book, he says the magazine ran stories about lurid crimes, along with bits on boxing and, of course, the finer points of saloons). This recipe was apparently submitted as part of a regular contest the gazette held for cocktail recipes.

I’ve had the book for years (Grimes’, that is), but didn’t sample this number until just this week. I’ve tried the drink a few ways–twice with Wild Turkey 101 proof bourbon, and once with Weller 12 year old bourbon. I love the Weller in general, but I think for this drink’s characteristics–the very slight touches of a lot of different ingredients, added to a large dose of one primary ingredient–a muscular whiskey like the higher proof Wild Turkey makes more sense. (Though, when you have three ounces of Wild Turkey in front of you, just barely touched with seasoning, you can almost hear it cracking its knuckles in the glass as it sizes you up.)

I’d like to try it with a rye whiskey next–given the 1901 birthdate, that’s probably how this drink was originally concocted–but the only high-proof rye available in Seattle is Wild Turkey, and I’m not a huge fan of that bottling (though their bourbon I love)–guess I have to hold out for a bottle of the bonded Rittenhouse, which apparently is showing up in various places around NYC. [ed. note: since the initial posting, I’ve made this several times with old, reliable Old Overholt–only 80 proof, but a nice friend to have in the liquor cabinet, nonetheless. Verdict: mmmmmmm. Lightly spicy; you can see this drink’s handlebar mustache quivering with pleasure.]

The last two times I’ve made this drink (once each with Weller and Wild Turkey), I’ve sized back the whiskey to two or so ounces, both to let the other flavors have more of a say in the drink, and also to keep myself from being knocked over backwards by just one cocktail. Even with this reduction, the flavor of the whiskey is still very up-front, so I think this is a good cocktail to break out your decent stuff for. The other ingredients all kind of meld together in the flavor profile–there’s no strong funk of maraschino, for example–and work like accessories to the whiskey, like a flower in the bourbon’s buttonhole and a diamond ring on its pinky.

Tags: Bourbon, Drinks, Rye by Paul
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From Seattle Weekly, 6/1/05

“Last week wrapped up a new three-week, 23-restaurant cocktail promotion called the Great Seattle Shake. Sponsored in part by the Seattle Weekly, the event aimed to entice cocktail drinkers to sample two signature drinks paired with an appetizer for $15. Whether it was the 7 to 10 p.m. time frame (threatening to keep drinkers up beyond their bedtimes), a cocktail’s perceived incompatibility with food, or possibly that Seattle residents are just really die-hard local-merlot drinkers, it’s safe to say that very little shaking went on during May.”

Or, it could be that most of the drinks sucked.

I mean, really–look at the list of “drinks” these places were serving, and tell me how many people would willingly toss down more than a couple, and those out of ignorance / curiosity / need to get drunkeness sake. Overreacting? Look:

Ancient Mexican Finnish (from Beach Cafe)
Finlandia lime vodka, sauza gold tequila, 100 year grand marnier syrup, fresh limes and sage, sour, on the rocks

Apple Spice Martini (from Hi-Life)
House apple infused vodka mixed with captain morgan spiced rum and a splash ginger simple syrup

MoMo’s Rum (from Jasmine)
Fresh squeezed orange, light rum with triple sec and peach schnapps, served over ice

And, in the name of all that is holy, this monstrosity:
Tom Waits Was Here (from the Pink Door)
Jack daniels, cynar & triple sec . . .”shake it shake it shake it baby!”

Etcetera, etcetera.

For the love of god, people, a drink should be a drink. Sure, have the token fruity candy syrup for those who like to take slugs of honey straight from the jar, but how about a little variety? Some bitter, some savory, some…difficult drinks. Instead, a tromp through the list of nearly 100 special cocktails reveals only a handful of interesting or innovative creations that are actually worth the effort of pouring down your throat. How many different variations of infused vodka / triple sec / cranberry juice / something-else-to-make-it-different-from-all-the-other-cosmos-out-there do we need? True, there were some classics in there–a mint julep, a few classic margaritas, and various Manhattans (none, however, with rye whiskey). But for every well thought-out drink, that focuses on flavor, balance and complexity (such as Ibiza’s Experience–three Hendricks gin and one part Pimms #1 with a splash of fresh lime juice & simple syrup and muddled cucumbers, shaken and served on the rocks or up and garnished with a cucumber slice), there are a dozen sickly little things that rely on the twin crutches of sugary sweetness and alcoholic wallop. Instead of a careful balance and depth of flavors, so many drinks–as exemplified by a mondo chunk of this list–throw as many flavors at the drinker as possible (in the form of flavored vodkas, spiced rums, etc), without bothering to pay attention to how it all works out in the end.

No imagination, and no clue to what happened when the big promotion failed. How Seattle Weekly.

Tags: Events, Folderol & Blather by Paul
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