EMBURY COCKTAILS

More Bars, More Places: The Tippler, Meatpacking (Adjacent) District.

   
The massive Chelsea Market building has, as it turns out, a massive basement. Newly opened in one corner of the buildings' lower depths is The Tippler (425 W. 15th St), a space and an endeavor on a fairly massive scale for a bar focussed on proper cocktails. But the design team has managed to turn out a rather comfortable room with lots of nooks and crannies, making it the most intimate tennis court-sized room in town. A clever cocktail menu overseen by the Tippling Brothers navigates between 

Wrought iron fixtures, oriental rugs, acres of exposed brick and customized retro-styled fridges forge a pleasingly but not cloyingly turn-of-the-century atmosphere, with an array of classic cocktails to complete the scenario.

The cocktail list overseen by the Tippling Bros. swings between classsics and inventive, even ballsy creations like the "Gin & Chronic": Plymouth, hopps, spcied lime and tonic, garnished with a sprig of hopps that looks nothing so much as a bud of weed. Mad drinkable.

But the simple-but-smashing innovation that stands out may be the "lushies"--(primarily) classic cocktails served in frozen slushy form (or, in Simpson's parlance, "Squishee") . The bar had been slated to open mid summer but of course scheduled opening dates rarely go as planned, and in late September a frozen drink might not seem to make sense. But it does. The "Snow Growni" was a perfect way to hold onto something of summer, and as one who abused his Negroni privileges over the warmer months this seemed to reinvent and extend a halcyon season  by reimaging the drink. And one even forgives the punny titles such as "Spazerac" (also surprisingly succesful). And one must applaud the ribald spirit it took to name a drink the "Pearl Harbor Necklace" (Finlandia, house melon syrup, pineapple & tapioca pearls).

The Tippler is a welcome addtion to an area crowded with flashy and crowded and short on the tucked away and properly adult. After fighting through the midday mob scene that is the Chelsea Market's indoor promenade of meandering tourists, helicopter parents and New Jersey cougars on shopping sprees one wonders how long it can retain its chillness. But as a neighbor I'm crossing my fingers.

Summer Punches, Volume 1: The Desmond

On the eve of the release of the new Beefeater Market Share, we thought we'd revisit Eryn Reece's recipe employing Beefeater 24 and an array of fresh citrus.

THE DESMOND PUNCH

11 oz. fresh lime juice
11 oz. fresh orange juice
11 oz. pineapple syrup
1 oz. Angostura Bitters
750 ml. Beefeater 24 Gin
Stir over ice, serve.

 

Friday Night Cocktail: Pink Gin

This weekend skip the beer at the picnic, the Bloody Mary at brunch or the dreaded cloying Tropicana Mimosa and opt for the ballsy Pink Gin. The Royal Navy first popularized the simple drink, introducing home-base gin Plymouth to Caribean Angostura Bitters. Methods vary, but one clean approach that dates back to an era before refrigeration is quite elegant. Add 3 drops of Angostura to a bowl shaped glass. A wine glass or a curved tumbler, as pictured, are good options. Carefully swirl the bitters around until you've coated the lower half of the glass. Add about 1 1/2 ounces of Plymouth gin, then top with equal parts very, very chilled water. If you can pull the water from a cold stream that's lovely, but chilling it on ice works--just strain it properly so that no ice shards make their way into the drink. Swirl slightly to introduce these 3 simple elements together, and enjoy. Finish before it warms up. Repeat as needed.

Krimko on Wine (And Cheever)

(Editor's Note: This piece from Embury Wine & Food Editor Stuart Krimko has been amongst a backlog of posts I've had piling up to due to chronic modern urban distractedness and terrible sloth on my part. How backlogged? Check the original title: Back to School cocktail reading and listening. A thousand apologies to Krimko, whose other fine pieces can be read here. J.R.)

I've got some good drinking stuff on my to-do list for the upcoming school year.  Several of you have asked me to recommend wines from Trader Joe's, which is a noble task that I have been postponing for too long; I'll get to it soon, but in case you're thirsty this moment and reading this on your smart phone in the booze aisle of your local TJ's, pick up a bottle of VINTJS Sauvignon Blanc.  This is some of the best less-than-eight-dollar-a-bottle white wine I've had in some time, and I've had it several times since realizing this was so.  If you need more convincing, I'll do my best in my next post.

Now, onto slightly more literary topics.  Over the past few months I've enjoyed making my way through the New Yorker's podcasts.  They've set up a nice format: a writer who has published a story in the magazine chooses a story that another writer published in the magazine to read aloud.  The first in the series is John Cheever's "Reunion," read by Richard Ford, in which a boy named Charlie meets his father in Grand Central Station for an afternoon of Beefeater Gibsons.  I love Beefeater martinis, but I prefer mine with olives––I was going to say I prefer mine up with olives, but I've recently been delighted by Beefeater martinis with olives on the rocks.  Will martinis on the rocks come back into fashion soon?  Were they ever in fashion? 

Cheever, not Krimko

"Reunion" is heartbreaking and hilarious.  Richard Ford does a wonderful job of switching back and forth between the voices of the meek, embarrassed, wistful Charlie, who narrates the story, and his drunk blowhard of a father.  The story takes no more than a few minutes for Ford to read, but Cheever has packed much into those few minutes: underage drinking, the proper ratio of gin to vermouth, the echoing splendor of Grand Central Station, the everlasting battle between obnoxious customers and exasperated wait staff, and the distressing vagaries of the father-son relationship.  When Charlie tells us, at the end of the story, that this was "the last time I saw my father," we want to pat him on the back and pour him another drink.S.K.

New Yorker podcasts on iTunes

Wednesday's Cocktail: Red Snapper

Today's cocktail is a vintage number, the robust predecessor of today's Bloody Mary, the gin-based Red
Snapper. Dan Warner's recipe for the alternative to breakfast cocktail benefits greatly from the innate complexity of gin. Upon tasting this perfectly balanced eye-opener I swore off the relative monochromatic vodka-based charms of the Mary.

RED SNAPPER

2 parts Beefeater Gin

3 parts tomato juice

1/2 part Worcestershire sauce

1/2 parts lemon juice

3 dashes Tabasco (to taste)

1 pinch ground black pepper

1 pinch celery salt

1 pinch horseradish (creamed)

Serve in a large Collins or large wine glass. Garnish with a lemon and/or celery stalk.

Happy Birthday Eau de Vie, & Some Experimentations from Philip Gandevia

Here at Embury our affection for Sydney's Eau de Vie is well documented, both here and in The New York Times. (The really smashing Sydney-centric cocktail blog Everyday Drinking confirms our high opinion of the team's  mad skills in a series of posts here.) On the eve of the stellar bar's one-year anniversary soon-to-be lead barman Philip Gandevia sent along "several experimentations" that employ our Brooklyn Hemispherical Bitters. We were inpired to finally bottle the bitters to share with Team Eau de Vie, and their very name alludes to a trans-hempispherical bitters exchange with this bar on the other side of the world. So we're incredly pleased to see them put to such high level use by Gandevia.


SMOKEY 'Ol SEOUL LOVE

50ml Reposado (Ocho works well, DJ just fine)
12.5 Grenadine (the good stuff... Pomegranate juice and all 15 kills it in sweetness, but 10ml is not quite enough)
3 dashes Peychauds (the drink's gotta be pink)
Liberal with Brooklyn Hemispherical Sriracha Bitters
10ml (or so - barspoons a bit shy, but dont let it dominate) smokey single malt goodness (or something illegal...)

Stir with love. Garnish with a lemon twist - but discard and donate to some lacklusture gin drink. Add a cherry if you feel it needs it, but the drinks pretty enough as is.

THE CONTENDER

50ml Tanqueray (or solid London Dry)
3 Fresh strawberries
20ml Lemon
20ml Apple juice (go cloudy if possible)
2 Chunks mandarin
Srig of rosemarry (no stem just leaves)
Dash egg white
15ml honey water (organic)
Tspn corriander seed

Crush then shakey shakey (Can infuse strawberrys in gin ala tequila por mi amante) and Brooklyn Hempispherical Strawberry Bitters to top.

THAI LADY BOY MEETS THE SCOTTISH GENT

45ml Reposado
30ml Aperol
20ml Cinzano Rosso
2 Thai Basil leaves
Brooklyn Hemispherical Rhubarb Bitters (go nuts)
Smokey rinse.

Stir, orange twist

WAITING ON THE WORLD

50ml Finlandia Grapefruit
25ml Lemon juice
20ml Honey
Egg white
Brooklyn Hemispherical Meyer Lemon Bitters on top....


Eau de Vie

Everyday Drinking

Brooklyn Hemipsherical Bitters

 

Friday Night Cocktails: Baby Basil Queenette

This cocktail comes from Embury Director of Photography Chad Mumm (all his videos here). Chad and his fiance Ashley live in the East Village and their kitchen has a narrow window that looks out at the opposite building about 4 feet away. But sunllight does come through the window for a couple hours every day, and Ashley has a a fine little herb garden working. The star of the garden is the robust baby basil queenette (l) with small leaves of delicate flavor, far less pronounced than the larger varietal. On a recent night Chad threw some of the baby basil into a mixing glass with Plymouth and Campari. Just a few rosemary leaves muddled in added an interesting earthy element, and Fee Bros' glycerin-based grapefruit bitters supplied just the touch of something sugary that anchored the whole thing, and the grapefruit nose completes the story. A tea strainer (a must for the home bar!) separates the floating bits of ice and leaves and leaves you with a chilled pink drink, ascerbic and herby but with an overlay of welcome sweetness. This all reminded me of how key it is to have fresh herbs in your home--even in small pots, soaking up sun on cold winter days safely behind glass. A beautiful secret weapon for impromoptu cocktailing and experimentation. J.R.

BABY BASIL QUEENETTE

2 oz. Plymouth gin
1 oz. Campari
1/2 oz lemon

In a mixing glass muddle a few sprigs of rosemary, top with ice and add liquid elements, tearing up some baby basil to the top. Shake well, and strain with a tea strainer into a coupe. Add a dass or two of Fee Bros. Grapefruit Bitters and serve.

Photos: Chad Mumm

Eau de Vie Offerings: The Dry (and Meticulous) Martini

In a selection from Eau de Vie's video series, Philip Gandevia demonstrates the bar's exacting and complex approach to the Dry Martini empying Tanqueray 10. I had one myself directly from the good doctor's hands and it was sublime, perfectly chilled and bone-dry without being ascetic or dull (thanks in part to the use of a vintage vermouth dropper dispensing a "Montogomery") . The D.I.Y. garnishes are engaging, while the presentation is elegant and  unexpected.

Bitter Sweet Symphony

Photo: Jonathan Kamouris

My piece on cocktail bitters for Out magazine is up at Out.com here with lots of killer recipes from some of my favorite ace bartenders, most of whom we've featured here on Embury before. My original intro for the piece was a bit too long and the bits about the history of bitters were cut for space. Below is the original draft of the piece, but do head over to Out.com for lots of bitters extras, including 9 recipes in which bitters play an integral part.

Along with the global rebirth and reinvention of the craft cocktail over the past twenty years, revivals of classic cocktail bitters and a host of new bitters are amplifying layer to this drinking revolution, one that fuses historical arts with cuisine sophistication. Bitters can add a crucial additional layer, or layers, to a flavor profile of a drink without significantly altering it’s basic make-up, transforming it from flat to dynamic, from plain to bewitchingly complex and lively with just a few dashes; they are a highly effective flavor delivery system. They're often called the salt and pepper of cocktailing, but they can be even more: an incredibly well-stocked spice rack for the bar.

Bitters, essentially, are complex blends of roots and herbs mascerated in high proof spirits and then filtered, leaving a sediment-free (generally) dark distillate, rich with vegetal and herbal flavors and aromas.Their origins date back as the 1600s, when hundreds of varieties of bitters were made and used across Europe as very old school DIY homeopathic remedies, employing the epoch’s profound understanding of roots’ and herbs’ medicinal qualities. They first crossed over from the medicinal to the recreational around 1806, when some clever fellow, in a brilliant bit of re-purposing, realized that the intense flavors of bitters could not only mask the flavor of dubious-tasting spirits, but could make something quite new and delicious, with the addition of just a few dashes of the flavor-rich potions. The earliest definition of a cocktail from 1806 actually describes a combination of spirits, water, sugar and bitters. Over the centuries bitters have ebbed and flowed in cocktailing, falling to the wayside after Prohibition. For decades the old reliable Angostura Bitters were about the only kind you could find, but a new wave of inventive and surprising artisanal bitters are afoot, both commercially and privately, as a wave of mad scientist-style creativity taking place in bartenders’ kitchens and garages across the world. J.R.

And here are a couple videos featuring 2 of the 9 recipes in the article.

Drinking Right Now: Hendrick's & Tonics, East 69th Street, Manhattan