EMBURY COCKTAILS

2012 Key West Literary Seminar Cocktails: The Neurogibson

I've spent the first couple weeks of this year working on cocktails for the many parties of the 30th annual Key West Literary Seminar. Team Embury and I made drinks in honor of several of the attending speakers including Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, China Miéville and William Gibson. The pickled scallions in the above photo were used as an onion sub in the Neurogibson, inspired by both Gibson's book "Neuromancer" and Jonathan DeLeon of Sorella's Flying V, where the idea for this recipe oringinated. We departed quite a bit from his original formulation but the principles remain similar--gin, picked green onions, an herbal liqueur and Sriracha Bitters. Jonathan went lean and mean for his Gibson riff, tapping Death's Door Gin & Cocchi Americano.

THE FLYING V

2.5 oz Death's Door gin
1/4 Cocchi Americano
Splash scallion pickling liquid
3 dashes Sriracha bitters
Pickled scallion (pickled with rice vinegar and aromatics, mostly ginger).

Rinse a large chilled glass with the Cocchi Americano. Over ice,
combine gin and pickling liquid. Stir well and strain into the chilled
glass. Finish with Sriracha bitters, garnish with the pickled
scallion, and serve!

Once I had the William Gibson/Gisbon name connection light bulb moment I instantly wanted to start with Jonathan's elegant creation and take it someplace a little more far flung, unexpected and audacious-- hopefully something like Gibson's bold work. Briney, piney Tanqueray, herby, swampy Yellow Chartreuese, a little lime juice, even less simple, the nub of a pickled scallion stalk and a dash of the pickling juice. The heavy ginger in the pickles is a nod to the Asian element in Gibson works and indeed in cyberpunk as a whole--I was thinking of Beat Takeshi in the Gibson film adaptation "Jonny Mnemonic", as well as the strong Chinese and Korean elements in the not-too-distant-future of other KWLS guest Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story." 

NEUROGIBSON

1 1/4 oz Tanqueray Gin

1/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse

1/2 oz lime juice

1/4 oz demarara simple syrup

1 bar spoon pickled scallion pickling juice

In a pint glass take 2 leaves of lemon balm (I pulled mine from my host and KWLS Board Member Nancy Klingener's garden, check out her blog here) and lightly tap, adding all elements and topping with plenty of ice, shaking vigorously and strain into a rocks glass ( we used stemless wine glasses), topping with a couple drops of Brooklyn Hemispherical Sriracha Bitters to add a little apocalyptic heat.

The resulting cocktail was pretty damn cool, but not one you'd drink all night unlike many that we made for other parties.These considerably more approachable ecipes to come this week. 

Edgar Wright Samples His Eponymous Cocktail.

We're having a good week here at Embury. First, my piece on the Small Bars of Sydney appears online on the NYT T Travel Blog, in which I was able to give some serious props to the fantastic bars and bartenders I got to know there in June, including my new favorite spot in the Southern Hemisphere, Eau de Vie. Then Edgar Wright name checks us in the below interview with Eric Alt for Maxim.com as he sips the cocktail we put together for him. To give credit where credit is due, our London emissary, Master Will Foster of Casita Bar (my favorite bar in the Northern Hempisphere), came up with the reposado, Patron XO and espresso cocktail, as an homage to the director's epic consumption of espresso on set.  And seeing Wright gleefully toss back mulitple Wrightinis at 11 a.m. as he prepares for a day of interviews is pretty terrific. J.R.

Scott Pilgrim vs. Will Foster

Back when Edgar Wright was still deep into production on the uncommonly charming and wildly entertaining "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" we commissioned a drink in the director's honor from Will Foster, Embury's man in Shoreditch. The resulting Edgar Wrightini payed homage to the man's intensive, almost Balzacian consumption of caffeine on set, using Patron XO, reposado and espresso (see recipe here), and it can be ordered at Foster's Casita Bar. A couple months back Nick De Semlyen from the U..K.'s go-to mag for smart fanboys and girls Empire got in touch with us, wanting to use the drink in their feature on the film and we were only to happy to facilitate. They asked Will to create additional cocktails in honor of auteurs as well, and he  came through with some killers--homages to Mssrs. Scorsese, Lynch, Mann & Nolan. Empire's graciously given us permission to post the entire feature, including cocktails, here on Embury, and my hope is that in reading through it folks will get a sense of how ambitious and epically cool the film is--or, as their US tagline reads: "an epic epic of epicness". For some reason the film hasn't had much success at the US box office; a little Michael Cera backlash could be to blame. But the film dusts off Cera's hapless, hoody wearing persona and re-invogorates it, reinvents it, even. And Wright's defined a new kind of screwball humor--he's a hipster Preston Sturgess here, although his kinetic directing style is anything but hipster-slacker-mumblecore laconic. I'll say it again: he's this generation's Sturgess. Even without all the awesome manga and gaming inspired effects and action sequences there's an incredibly witty film here.  Also: checking showtimes on Fandango in NYC turned up no local listings, but upon walking past the Union Square Regal Cinema yesterday afternoon the sign told the story, so it's still out there  And for Key Westers, my continual harrasment of the Tropic Cinema seems to have paid off--the film opens there this Friday, October 8th.

A file of the entire article is here: Download Empire Mag Wright Foster; we've also got it laid out page by page in the second part of this post (here). This should whet your appetite for the embarrasment of riches that the film offers. Below you'll see the final page of the piece where Will's recipes reside--fun to see him next to Cera, both wielding their weapons of choice. Cheers! J.R.

Charles Tanqueray's 200th and The Moore & Tonic

In honor of Charles Tanqueray's 200th birthday today, we thought we'd mention one of the better brand name checks in recent cinema, delivered by Julianne Moore as Charley in "A Single Man". When the quietly distraught (but impeccably attired) Colin Firth's George calls the elegant, boozy mess Charley  to ask what he should bring over for dinner, she asks him to pick up some gin. "Get Tanqueray--I love the green bottle." If this reference didn't come from a deal with Tanqueray it should have, and either way it's just great. Moore's melancholy single woman rightly pines for a pretty bottle, and Tanqueray's piney, classic gin-yness is exactly what you drink when you stay up all night and can barely wait to call your friends when they wake up, desperate for human contact.  True glamour! In honor of Moore we're renaming Tanqueray's own very precise G & T recipe, just for the day, and tailoring it ever so slightly to suit her character.

MOORE & TONIC

1.25 oz Tanqueray
4 oz tonic water
Fresh lime wedges
Highball glass
Stirrer
Ice

Squeeze the juice of a lime wedge into the bottom of a tapered high-ball glass.
Fill the glass two-thirds with ice, then add the 1.25 oz of Tanqueray. Stir well.
Run a wedge of lime around the rim of the glass so that the fresh smell and taste of citrus greets you as you sip.
Drop a fresh lime wedge into the glass.
Drink all night, wait until 7 a.m., start calling friends.

Both drunk and dishevelled as well as beautifully put together, Moore looks smashing in the film, and the dreamy, lost vulnerability she invests the character with puts this performance into the pantheon of great drunks of cinema.

Below, the scene everyone comments on, where Moore is applying her war paint, one eye at a time. And ordering up a fresh bottle of Tanqueray.

And making calls after a long night, martini shaker by the bed.

Moore's hairstyles for the film were designed by Alan D'Angerio, as accomplished a key hairstylist as there is--and someone whose body of work makes you question why the Academy doesn't have a Best Hair award. Seriously. The man did "Goodfellas", "Casino" (yes, he created Ginger's hairstyles),  "Shutter Island", "Rachel Getting Married", "Silence of the Lambs" and "Revolutionary Road" to name just a few. He's also designed Moore's hair for other films like "The Hours" and "Far From Heaven". If there were a category for Best Hair D'Angerio would be getting a Lifetime Achievement at this point, and should have received a Special Oscar for Moore's elaborate, many-tiered 'do in "A Single Man".

 

In honor of the great moment of much-needed release in the film where Moore puts Booker T & The M.G.s "Green Onions" on the hi-fi and she and Firth dance around in her living room, give the song a listen below. And make yourself a T & T in Moore's and Mr. Tanqueray's honor.

Green Onions - Booker T & the ...