EMBURY COCKTAILS

Special Saturday Cocktail, on the occasion of Casita's Final Day: The joshjoshjoshjones, from Oskar at Found, for Josh Jones.

Steven Rhea at Sauvage, Brooklyn

Here's how it went.

At 10:35 London time on June 6th, Josh Jones, a writer/editor I'd met during what would turn out to be my last visit to Casita in Shoreditch, Facebook Messaged me the following:

Oskar just made a drink called the joshjoshjones

If you ask for it at any American bar (or any bar that isn't his) it is

25ml lemon juice


30ml sugar


15ml fernet branca


35ml vodka 
1 egg white

Topped off hundreds and thousands x

 

I did a little sleuthing and deduced that he was at Found, which is basically upstairs from the future former Casita. Josh had done an interview with this Oskar character here. I was on my way to meet pal Nic Richards of Robert at Sauvage to check it out and to say hullo to barman Steven Rhea, who I knew from M. Wells and who had turned out to be a neighbor of mine in Long Island City/Astoria. When we showed up at Sauvage it was a lovely summer evening and the doors were thrown open to let the breeze from McCarren Park blow in. 

I showed Steven the recipe from Josh, and with a little help from Nic, who'd bartended at Hotel Grand Pigalle in Paris and had gotten quite proficient at converting oz to ml and  vice versa, Steven assembled the following version of the drink.

I was working with ounces, so my measurements were a little different-S.R.:

 

joshjoshjones US Version

.5oz Fernet Vittone
.5oz lemon juice
1oz lemon cordial
1oz vodka
Egg White

Our cordial is just comprised of skins rested in sugar to extract oil, and then juice added. We fortify with a little vodka for preservation.

 

Steven rightly commented on the decided low-proofiness of the drink and when I brought it up with Josh the next morning he replied:

 

JJ: I'd spent 5 hours in Casita beforehand and needed something that wasn't too serious...
JR: 5 hours at Casita=danger
JJ: Very much so
Just dropped by to say hello at 5pm
JR: I knew it! It's a good slowdown drink. And that protein really is key.
JJ: Cutting down on carbs? Have a joshjoshjones

 

So this version of the drink really came about because of Casita, the bar in London where I'd met so many cool people over the last decade. It was the kind of spot where you'd talk to strangers and find out you were in fact already connected through several different people. And the cast of characters who came into play here in New York to make this drink was just part of the kind of extended network of people that bar helped foster. More on Casita later.

Dibsing It: "The World's End" Cocktail

Edgar Wright's next film with Messrs. Frost & Pegg (not to mention Freeman, Considine & Marsan) isn't opening in the U.S. until October 28th, 2013, but we're going to call it early on creating a drink inspired by "The World's End". From what little we know so far, it seems a group of old friends do a bit of a pub crawl during which some apocalyptic event takes place, so we're already thinking ale and....something firey and brimstone-y? Zombie dust? We'll just see when we see the thing. We did rather well, if we do say so ourselves, with our Edgar Wright-Tini that made it into Empire Magazine and we're just preemptively letting the world know: "The World's End Cocktail" is ours. J.R. & W.F.

Friday Night Cocktails: Casita Edition

On a recent trip to London I spent quite a bit of time in Will Foster's Casita Bar (all previous Will posts here), and was pleased to find it as convivial and chill as when I first discovered it in 2007.

An extensive collection of minis.

A Mexican wrestling mask atop the Jagermeister machine that keeps the stuff icy cold and makes it hard to say no to, particularly when Will dispenses rounds. The origins of many bad decisions may be traced to this machine. 

"Gazebo'd" is my new favorite term for serious drinking. And speaking of drinks, here are a couple corkers from Will.

INDIAN SUMMER

 

50 ml Santa Teresa Gran Reserva 

15 ml lime juice 

15 ml agave 

40 ml mango juice 

Pinch ground cumin 

Technique: Shaken, served on the rocks with a coriander sprig garnish.

 BASIL GRANDE

4 large strawberries 

6 basil leaves 

40ml vodka 

15 ml creme de fraise 

15ml lemon juice

25ml cranberry juice

Technique: Muddle, shake, strain on the rocks. Garnish with black pepper and a basil leaf. 

There are two speeds at Casita, quiet and lively. There's Will's on the right, casually hosting.

Both speeds are great. Invariably one winds up chatting with a stranger at Casita. It's just got that comfortable feeling that's sort of impossible to create, it just has to happen. A lot of it of course comes from Will and the tone he's set, but there's some Factor X that's hard to put your finger on that gives the place such an intimate feeling. Its tiny size certainly helps. And lots of the crowd are either off-duty bartenders or people in the booze game so that creates its own latticework of connection. On my last night in town I was chatting with someone who turned out to be Dan Priseman of Bitters & Twisted, which was a pleasant surprise. And I got to sample him on the last of my stash of Brooklyn Hemispherical Bitters,

In the English Summer the skylights let light pour in to the bar well past 10.00 p.m, and one drink flows into the next without any sense of time passing, a pleasant sort of twilight zone cocktail hour that just goes on and on.

5 Ravey Street isn't easy to find, but that's part of what makes Casita special--one has to seek it out.

And if you stick it out til it's very late you might get treated to Will and Lee singing along to some Erasure.

Vintage Reserve: The Club, Playboy, March 1976

Almost everything about this advert flies in the face of what we believe in here at Embury: that taking care over making a proper cocktail and the pleasures that the process brings are worth the little extra time spent, and that RTD syrupy canned or bottled cocktails are crimes against good taste and good drinking (see Will Foster's eloquent rant here). However, our lazier neighbor here here has got one thing right--if getting a drink sorted gets in the way of getting some, then it's definitely advantage: 2C.

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.

Letter From Embury U.K.: A Rant From Will Foster On Pre-Made Mojitos

There are many abominations to the wonderful world of drinks. Sambuca Cream Liqueur, Apple Sourz (or anything with the word Sourz for that matter), Cuervo Gold, Cuervo Silver and Smirnoff Red Label vodka, to name but a few.

However, our friends at Bacardi Brown Forman have managed to top the bill. Having been bombarded by the usual Christmas ad campaign for their questionably-named flagship “superior” product for several weeks now, I was relaxing on my sofa, enjoying a particularly risable episode of Frasier, when I saw something that made me jump to my feet in astonishment and disbelief....

It seems our distinguished friends have, in their wisdom, decided to release a Mojito premix (Bacardi Mojito) with the tag-line “for the perfect Bacardi mojito”.... I don’t know quite where to begin. I mean... really?

Premix anything is just a bad idea. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t taste better when made from scratch. Lime juice is better than a sweet n sour mix, fresh mashed potato is better than instant, and packet sauces are not as good as a sauce made from fresh ingredients. So why do Bacardi think that a Mojito-flavoured rum will make the perfect Bacardi mojito? Especially as their tag-line for their Ron Superior very recently claimed that it would make the best mojito.

I presume, that the product is meant for the home bartenders out there, but surely half, or possibly all, the fun in home bartending is making a huge mess in your kitchen trying to recreate the drinks you had last week in your favourite bar?

Depressingly, I have no doubt in my mind that this product will fly off the shelves faster than Santa on his sleigh (had to get a festive note in somewhere) and should you want to find it, it will be on the same shelf as the Mint-Chocolate Baileys and the previously-mentioned flavoured Sambucas and Sourz.
But on a more positive tip for all you bartenders beginning to worry that our days are numbered due to this startling new innovation, I don’t think we need start scouring the Wanteds just yet!

Merry Christmas from old Blighty!

Will Foster is the propretor of Casita Bar in Shoreditch and Embury's U.K. Envoy.

Short List: Shoreditch

 
Embury U.K. envoy Will Foster contributes our first "Short List" feature, highly opinionated guides to only the most essential spots for a stranger in a strange town when one has limited time and ample thirst for a proper drink.

Shoreditch. A small “barrio” in East London that is fast becoming London’s most popular nightspot. I first opened my bar, Casita, there in 2006, and the area has since developed into what one only call Soho without the tourists. Whether the other bars were established before or after, the atmosphere of ease and good drinking has, without a doubt, firmly established  itself over the past three years.

Callooh Callay, the latest addition to our area, has been instrumental in attracting the drinkers over – with an incredibly well-experienced team and a phenomenally great ambience, this bar mixes chilled-out enjoyment of well-made drinks, with good banter and, above all, fantastic scenery. The bar is made up of three different areas all furnished with the most eclectic furniture one could possibly imagine. Drinkswise, Rockin’ All Clover the World is a great twist on a twenties classic, whilst, for the hardened drinker, the Old Kev is something not to be missed.

Back up on Great Eastern St, one might (if you’re good at looking) find Lounge Bohemia. [Clever shot above is from the landing page of bar's website.]. Available on booking only, or on the owner/bartender’s whim (no – sorry – I have to call him a Mixologist, and not in a derogatory way), Lounge Bohemia gives a touch of necessary interest to our little village. The man inside (not giving out his name to retain the mystery) is an absolute legend. A teetotaller himself, he manages to make certain bourbon shots taste of smoked ham and puts fizz into grapes with dry ice by getting his friends to try his crazy experiments. I guess molecular mixology is the phrase and the place is unmissable, but is not for the chap who believes in classics. Still, you MUST go. Booking line is 07720 707 000.

Along the road, on Commercial St, you will find what is, quite possibly, London’s finest steak restaurant,  the Hawksmoor. Bar manager, Pete Jeary (at left) is responsible for plying you with his passion – the old classics. His knowledge of drinks from the golden age of cocktails is unsurpassed, and the man is also incredibly skilled at making drinks his own. A must for anyone touring the East End.

After a 20 oz piece of fine British beef at the Hawksmoor, and a few of Mr. Jeary’s fine drinks (try his Corpse Reviver No. 2 by the way), one must pootle down to the Hoxton Hotel. Back on Great Eastern St, towards Old St roundabout, this great bar, recently taken over by the Soho House group, will treat you to some beautifully made cocktails, and, if you’re still hungry, will serve you great food until twelve. For boozing, they’re licensed until two am.

I guess that leaves my own little bar, Casita. Just behind the Hoxton Hotel, we specialise in Latin American Cocktails – Hemingway Daiquiris, Tommy’s Margaritas, and a few of our own little concoctions. [Ed note: verdita, verdita, verdita, see shots at right.]Clientele is mainly bar and booze trade, so it’s a good place to catch up on the gossip about London’s liquor industry. With a capacity of 40 people, we rely on bartenders and brand ambassadors bringing chums in on their nights off and giving us ideas for new drinks.

Please do come see us next time you’re in town.

All the best.

Will.

Previous Will Posts
Casita
Hawksmoor
Bohemia Lounge
Hoxton Hotel
Callooh Callay

Letter From Embury U.K.: The First Drink Of The Evening

The latest from our man in the U.K., Will Foster, proprietor of Casita Bar.

Last week, I was out for the evening in Shoreditch, in the east of London. Slightly hungover from the night before (as is the norm in my profession), when asked what I was drinking I found myself stuck. With still quite a churning stomach, but yet armed with the knowledge that I was due to be out all night, it occurred to me that there must be a perfect starter. That drink that will make it all better without a nasty dash to the restroom being involved. Something to alleviate those shakes and stop that, not painful, but incessant pounding at the back of the head. But what?

This inspired me to ask around – bartenders and drinkers alike – what the best kick-off drink would be and why.

The most popular, by a close margin, was a gin and tonic (Beefeater 24, of course!). The reasoning being something inoffensive, yet refreshing, with quinine to settle the stomach. With a stipulation that it should be served short, to avoid sitting on it for hours, it did seem to be a sensible, if not obvious choice. The Bloody Mary was also put forward, being almost a meal in a glass.

Sean Ware, the bar manager of Callooh Callay (Shoreditch's newest bar, recently named number 1 in the independent newspaper's top 50 bars in the UK) plumped for a Boiler Maker – a bottle of beer served with a shot of bourbon. “Shot to shock, then lager to refresh and revive whilst thinking of the next”. Good choice.

Oskar Klimaszewski, bar manager of my very own Casita was a great advocate of the Negroni. Refreshingly bitter, yet nicely loaded for fortification! A rather continental choice, yet discerning and certainly delicious.

Rather off the wall was Hawksmoor's own Pete Jeary (right) , who swore by a pint of Bucks Fizz (champagne and  fresh orange juice), but stated that this was really one to kick off a night's shift on the bar.

Kat Arnold, First Drinks' purveyor of Russian Standard, Monkey Shoulder, Glenfiddich and Hendricks was to the point with a shot of good ol' tequila (with verdita, naturally). Just like Kat herself, there's certainly no messing about with this one!

Other suggestions included a margarita or daiquiri – short sharp shock to the system and certainly getting down to business, and the bloody mary for its meal-type qualities.

In the end, I went for a bourbon manhattan. Blanton's gold (very smoky, yet smooth, being small batch), served perfect with antigua formula instead of Noilly Rosso. A short sipper, yet strong and medicinal, it has become (this week) my favourite opener. A reviving ingestion of bourbon can certainly make a chap feel restored and usually reminds one of the night before. Plus, with the horse on the bottle, it is a reminder that one must jump straight back on once thrown off!

Indeed, as I finish typing this, I can hear the joyous sound of barspoon against tin as my first one is being mixed... Cheers. W.F.

An English Barman In New York

(Will Foster, proprietor of Casita Bar in Shoreditch, and our new Embury U.K. correspondent, recently payed us a visit in New York where, in addition to checking out a Yankees game (the groundskeepers' choreographed performance to 'YMCA' during the seventh-inning stretch left him extremely amused), he attempted to hit every every serious cocktail bar in Manhattan. This is his account of that brave and foolish endeavour.) Personally, I like a nice cup of coffee, and toast is always better done on both sides. Notwithstanding, there are many who would describe me as quite the epitome of an Englishman – I own a few tweed jackets, have a taste for good claret, port and malt whiskey, and NEVER discuss my feelings. So, it was with quite a sense of trepidation that I boarded Virgin flight 6 from London Heathrow to New York JFK. Don’t get me wrong – I’m very pro-US. I have spent the last eight years holidaying in St. Petersburg, FL, have been skiing in Maine, and very much enjoyed a childhood vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The trick to the US, I have learnt over the years, is getting used to the idea of excess. Which other country, I ask you, would have 300 different types of barbecue sauce on a supermarket shelf, or have cheese dispensed from an aerosol? Love it. With this in mind, I was looking forward, with reverent anticipation, to a week of excess. I was not to be let down. My guide for the week was Embury Cocktail’s man with the plan, Jason Rowan, and it was within two hours of landing, that I found myself in Death & Co’s new venture, Mayahuel, 304 E 6th St. The pair of us sampled three of their cocktails, served by a very charming young lady (they all are in NYC, I noticed), and were, bar one, very impressed (the Smoked Palomino was a bit much for both of us, but the Selena Fizz was a wonderful concoction!). Damning jet lag, we pressed on, via a pizza stop, to what was to become our base of operations for the next few days, Louis 649, on the corner of E 9th and Ave. C.  (For the remainder of Will's bar-by-bar travelogue, continue below. (Advil and some soda water with bitters recommended.)