Dante's Sweet Number

Last night one of my regulars came in---the one who inspired the Basil Devil, but since we didn't have the micro basil anymore, I created this little hot and sweet number. I'm calling it: Dante's Sweet Number after the discussion in yoga class about inviting both g-d and the devil in. It was a depends on how you look at it question, in the way that the glass is either half full or half empty. However, this drink is so good, the glass will most likely be totally empty until you order another round!

Dante's Sweet Number

muddle two strips jalapeno with 2-3 lime wedges

2 1/2 oz. 10 Cane Rum

1 oz. Simple Syrup

1/4 oz. fresh lime juice

Shake and strain over ice.

Make eyes at Beatrice across the bar.

Finding Balance

The classic cocktail was originally comprised of a base spirit, a bitter, and a sweet. Quite a bit like life. After practicing yoga for years, I’ve come to let go of the idea of smoothing out all the wrinkles of living. I had thought that if I practiced enough, I could eliminate all that was unpleasant or uncomfortable. However, after years of standing upside down and placing my limbs in various positions, I’ve come to find that peace is not some external state of bliss to be journeyed to, but rather it’s the small seed within that grows no matter what’s happening externally. Without the difficult times, the joy is muted and the challenging times make happiness that much sweeter. And just like life and yoga, a cocktail is a balance between bitter and sweet, sugar and sour. Life, like a cocktail is all encompassing.

And that these forces or tastes work together---that they actually enhance each other. Something as simple as ¼ of an ounce of fresh lemon or lime can change an entire drink. Or how I tell my yoga students that even practices one posture a day can bring change, that this small action of standing up well and tall, all muscles engaged, is like tossing a stone in a pond, the ripples reach all the way to the other shore. They may not feel it right away, but these subtle forces work their magic in our unconscious minds. Like the way freshly ground pepper and strawberries enhance my twist on the pisco sour, The PS. As a yogi, it’s important for me to fuse my love for health with mixology and so the strawberry adds some vitamin c and the black pepper has some medicinal properties (thanks google). I’m not saying that this is completely healthy, but ps, there’s some goodness here.

PS

2 oz. pisco

¾ oz. fresh lemon juice

½ oz. simple syrup

¼ oz. pasteurized egg whites

Muddle 1-2 strawberries with 3-4 twists of freshly ground pepper

Add the pisco, lemon juice, simple syrup, and egg whites.

Shake in a cocktail shaker with ice.

Strain into a champagne flute and garnish with freshly ground pepper

Basil Devil

"So, I get the orange and the grapefruit," she says, "but the avocado?"

"It's for a margarita," I tell the woman drinking a Jack and Diet. "It's avocado, jalapeno, and honey."

I love that someone has picked up on the subtleties---that just by leaving something interesting out on the bar, a conversation is born, as is a new cocktail!

The jalapeno part catches the attention of one of my regulars sitting next to her. Unfortunately no peppers in house and so I create the following for him (still a work in progress):

Basil Devil

rim a rocks glass with lime and sugar

muddle a healthy pinch of micro basil with 2-3 wedges of lime

2-4 dashes of Chipotle Tabasco and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

shake with:

2 1/2 oz light rum

1 oz. honey syrup (made with equal parts boiling water and honey)

you can serve right from the shaker or strain depending on your preference

top with a splash of soda water

Back in Action

After a long hiatus, Bathtub Gin is back. Re-inspired with new recipes and ideas thanks to Jacques, our fantastic Kimpton master mixologist, I've decided to keep up this blog with cocktail musings at least once a week. This week has been a re-birth in a way. Last night was a typical slow Saturday and two guys came in for a few drinks. After ordering a few G and T's, one of the guys switched to one of my newest spring cocktails on the menu. I was a little bashful asking if he liked it--he was drinking a purplish drink garnished with blackberries and sometimes the fellas shy away from the pretty colored beverages. However, he loved it---not too sweet and refreshing was what he said. I blushed when I told him it was my creation.

"So," he says, "you're not like a bartender, but a mixologist." And after 8 hours of intense measuring and mastering some classic cocktails, I was able to reply, "yeah, just wait until we bring out the new menu."

And so the rest of the night was spent naming the lovely little libations born from this week. I told the cocktail server, "if I'm having this much trouble naming my drinks, imagine when I make babies."

So come on in this week and ask for The Perfect 10, PS, The Whispering Echo, Carly's Sunrise, or some Sweet Redemption...

Off and On

For a while, I thought I was done with this blog---perhaps in the way that you drink something and then all the sudden, you've moved on to the next thing. I think of my progression from Jack Daniels to Woodford Reserve. Or perhaps my more recent switch from a single malt replacing said Bourbon.

Or maybe it's the bars that change. In college, the cheap beer and dance clubs to my now preference to bar with classic cocktails and a place to sit down---and a big cheers to my regulars P & A who introduced A and I to Beekman Bar and Books last night. Best Old Fashioned I ever had!

And so I'm back here (more sporadically) blogging when a thought arises. Last night was one of my favorite nights working (lots of regulars) and interesting new hotel guests. May have even cultivated an audience for my upcoming poetry reading in Detroit. One of my standard questions begins with where are you from and to get people talking about home. How much we all want to connect and how a bar can be that place. To get folks talking, to ease them into conversation with a stranger, how much we all want to be heard. 

And so find me here every now and again---with insights and tips and random musings about tending.

Coincidences or Not

A few summers ago I was vacationing in the Pacific Northwest. While rummaging through a vintage store in a small coastal town, I found some old decanter bottles with ornate medallions that said what they were. I think there was vodka and gin. No bourbon. The proprietor said he could make one into a bracelet for me. I picked gin even though it wasn't my drink at the time. It had sharp edges, so it doesn't really make that great of a bracelet and certainly not for tending, but lately I'm wondering if that object was perhaps a sign from my future self, a small glimpse of who I would become. After all, most of my favorite classic cocktails involve gin---something with raspberries from The Campbell Apartment, and the bittered gin sling and the amazing cucumber limeade with Hendricks gin from Tom and Jerry's. And this blog and my dream bar...

And here's the newest creation with gin---

all equal parts:

 gin

pomegranate juice

fresh lime juice

simple syrup

and a splash of soda water. 

On the rocks. 

I'm still thinking up the name for this little number so for now, cheers, from Ms. Gin.

Magazine Lady (the reprise)

I'm back to working on more bar essay/fiction after focusing my energy on yoga poems...and this comes after my craziest night tending since I started. It's not even close to done, but it's a start to a longer piece about the interactions between men and women and if there's any difference between it being an exchange that happens over the bar or only on the other side.

~

It was one of those slower nights when Magazine Lady came in. She's always got a stack of beauty and real estate magazines and orders a diet coke or a coffee. She tips well enough and her mystery intrigues me. I've always wanted to ask her why so many magazines, why decide to read them in a bar and not order anything alcoholic? Though I've been that person quite a few times having coffee or tea at a bar or even just water, so I get it, on some level. 

 

The last time she was in, the tipsy suits cornered her. She didn't answer. "You a magazine editor or something?"

"No," she had said cooly flipping a page. He tried again. "You're badgering me," she said, "I'm just trying to read."

Luckily his less rude or drunken colleague stepped in, paid the check and said it was nice meeting her and they had a dinner reservation.

 

There's a fine line between the spoken and unspoken. As a bartender, I try to respect people and let them talk when they want. "I try not to judge or peg people," which is what I told the South American tourist when he wanted me to tell him what I thought of his relationship with the woman standing next to him. He pushed, "is she my friend, my girlfriend, or my friend?"

I let the bait fall loose, knowing that the small fish are small. 

"You're supposed to read people," he said.

I set his drink in front of him. "This is what I do, if you want analysis, you'll have to tip me more than 20%."

His girl smiled. "Good answer," she said rolling her eyes at him.

 

So I let Magazine Lady be. I know she had told me her name, but I had forgotten. It's easier to remember what people drink and what their stories are and so they keep coming back and it gets too late to ask their names again. I was trying to think of a way to find out politely when fate in the form of business traveler stepped in. He was from the midwest but used to live in the city he said. It was late and there were only four guests spaced out across the bar, the Swiss tourist drinking Sam Adams, another regular, Oren, Magazine Lady, and Jim who was introducing himself to Magazine Lady. 

 

The last time she was in she was telling me about a date, how she had met someone at the bar when I wasn't working and how they went to french restaurant in the neighborhood, but it was terrible. She said they had bought a bottle of wine and then the waiter shooed them out before they finished their meal and their wine. I tried to guess where she had been. It sounded like the place I went to once for a bourbon after work. I met the owner. He invited me back to eat and said he'd take care of everything. I never took him up on it though. "The owner must not have been there that night," she said.

 

I didn't want to say but I sensed that somehow these things happen to her. Once she had given me a bracelet. A friend had given it to her but she said it seemed more my style. She said she noticed the paint was chipped on some of the plastic beads. "The bar is dark I said, no one will notice." I put it in my tip bucket.

 

Outside the sky had darkened. Cars flashed by in the windows. I poured the chardonnay Jim buys for her, which she had initially refused, but since he was pushy about it, I figured let him pay for it. “You don’t have to drink it,” I had said.  

 

~

 

A few weeks after the incident, my manager calls me in to the office, says a woman came in and said that I was the reason she doesn’t stay at the hotel anymore. She said that I treat women as if they’re objects. I haven’t seen Magazine Lady since that night. I ask if the woman had long thinning auburn hair and lipstick that’s a little off, too bright and running into the cracks around her mouth. My boss said “yeah, hair up in a ponytail.”

I shrug. I recount the story and my boss taps a pencil on the bar. “These things happen,” she says.

“She lives in town, she doesn’t stay in the hotel,” I say, wondering why this white lie, but I know, somehow I let her down.

 

~

It’s summer now, months since Magazine Lady or the last time we even spoke of her. I keep thinking maybe one day she’ll be back but something in me says I’ll never see her again.

It’s her I think of when Kristie gestures at the end of the bar, at the tall man, shaved head, and asks “job hazard?”

“It comes with the territory, doesn’t happen much here. Like anything else, pros and cons. He’s been at it since we opened.”

She squeezes the lime into her drink, “I don’t know how you deal with it.”

I smile, “it’s busy enough that I can walk away when he gets a little more detailed.”

“The things I could do to you,” he had said as I skated away to the couple a few seats over.

“I practice yoga,” I say to Kristie, “it helps.”