Cocktailing Chicago: The Violet Hour

Just a few El stops away from the Whistler is the Violet Hour, known as THE Chicago cocktail bar. The Whistler and the Violet Hour were my two very favorite bars in Chicago, and Sarah and I hit them up in the same night, which, of course, begs a comparison, The Whistler was delightfully chill, probably the most relaxed atmosphere I've ever found at a dedicated cocktail bar. The whole vibe was very laid-back, very under-the-radar. In the very best way, the Violet Hour is the Whistler's exact opposite; they are both hard to find, both have amazing cocktails, and that's where the similarities end. The Violet Hour is dramatic, from the velvet curtains at the entrance to the Alice-in-wonderland decor to the painstaking presentation of the cocktails. Does it feel like a neighborhood bar? Absolutely not. Does it feel like an experience? Oh, hell yes.

A copy of the Violet Hour's 'House Rules'. Don't ask for a Bud Light.

In keeping with other Chicago cocktail bars, the Violet Hour is a bit..obscure. You'll definitely notice it if you walk by, but you might not know it's a bar. The exterior of the bar is covered with a lovely textured wood paneling (architect Nancy approves), and the lower part is painted with a mural which changes with the seasons. Concealed within the mural is the front door; find the handle, give it a tug, and you will be greeted by the hostess, who will usher you into the depths of the bar.

image: Metromix

Entering the Violet Hour is like passing into another world. Push your way past not one, but two sets of velvet curtains, and you will find yourself in a dimly lit, indigo-hued space that's a bit reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, if Alice's wonderland was a craft bar filled with mixologists ready to satisfy your every boozing whim.

Our bartender was not actually headless.

Sarah and I were seated at the bar, where our bartender, Rob (I'm not quite sure his name was Rob, but we'll go with that), was ready to assist us. You know how older folks are always talking about how air travel used to be so wonderful, back when flight attendants were so gracious and flying on an airplane felt special? (Well, I've actually never had this conversation with an old person, but I've imagined one, based on my readings about the golden age of flight. Yes, I'm a huge nerd.) That's how the service at the Violet Hour compares to the service at any old bar; it's very personal. After we had a chance to look over the menu, Rob asked us what sort of alcohol we liked. Sarah wanted something light and refreshing, so for her he recommended the Juliet & Romeo, a combo of gin, mint, cucumber, and rose water that's one of the bar's most popular drinks. It came in a cocktail glass, with mint leaves and drops of bitters artfully scattered across the surface. At the Violet Hour, no detail goes ignored.

Juliet & Romeo.

I scoured the menu and decided to order a Old One, a combination of pisco, lime, Cocchi Americano (an Italian aperitif that's a cousin to Lillet Blanc), and Peychaud's bitters. My drink was a perfect, delicate mountain of crushed ice, surmounted by just a few drops of bitters. So how did these perfectly presented drinks taste? The Juliet & Romeo was delicious, delicate and subtly floral, and the Old One started out sweet, owing to the pisco, and finished with an elegant, lingering bitterness, like a particularly poignant Russian novel.

The Old One.

The drinks were very good. You can't have a cocktail bar without good drinks. But really, I think what sets the Violet Hour apart is more than just the drinks - it's a feeling. Deep in the dark, past the velvet curtains, sipping your perfectly constructed cocktail in the flickering candlelight, you're far away from the noise of the street, far away from mundane, everyday things. You're a part of the drama, too; you're you, but for a little while, you're starring in a more sophisticated, more glamorous version of your life. I didn't want it to end.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Whistler

One of Chicago's best cocktail bars almost wasn't a bar at all.

Most bar owners decide that they want to open a bar, and then search for an appropriate space. The owners of Chicago's Whistler did it the other way around - they found the space, and then figured out what to do with it. They decided they wanted to open a live music venue - one that would sell wine, and beer, and maybe a few mixed drinks. Well, on the night of the very first concert, the cocktails were a smash hit. A star was born.

Like other Chicago cocktail bars, the Whistler is a little hard to spot. Look for the changing art installation in the store window in front.

Sarah and I showed up at the Whistler at 6 PM on a Monday night, right when the place opened. Not exactly prime time for any bar - in fact, we were the only customers there. "Could you print out a few menus?" Billy Helmkamp, one of the co-owners (I later discovered), yelled to the only other employee in the bar. Print the menus?, I asked. You have a different menu every day? Yes, Billy told me - a new menu is printed every day the bar is open, reflecting the availability of the different kinds of local produce they use in their drinks. Right away, I knew this was my kind of place.


The Whistler is really serious about local ingredients. They get a lot of their produce from a Chicago-area nonprofit that teachers inner-city kids how to garden, and like The Drawing Room, they're always looking for locally made spirits. One of their sources, Billy told me, is a Chicago-area attorney who makes cocktail bitters in his spare time. He distributes them to local bars, free of charge, apparently. He's in it for the love of the game.

But the Whistler, at its heart, is a live music venue. That's what the owners intended when they opened it, and they have live music every single night (although Sarah and I had to jet after about an hour and unfortunately did not witness this). This makes it a sort of hipster's paradise - laid-back location, delicious cocktails made with local ingredients, live music. Although I'm unable to confirm or deny the reports from Yelp that the Whistler is always full of painfully trendy, bearded types, I can report that, when Sarah and I were there, 100% of the other clientele (consisting of...1 guy) had beards.

Southern Exposure (l) and the Pago Pago.

While staying true to its roots as a live music venue, the Whistler is also an excellent place to get a drink. I had a Pago Pago, a classic tiki cocktail with...chartreuse?, which was as delicious as it was unexpected, and Sarah had a Southern Exposure (pisco, mezcal, lime, raspberry syrup, and allspice dram), whose pink hue and delicious smoky flavor made me exceedingly jealous. After only a single round of drinks and about 45 minutes of chatting with Billy about beer, booze blogs, and bitters, I was very sad to leave. If you live in Chicago (or are just visiting), do yourself a favor and soak up some live music (and some very good drinks) at one of my new favorite bars, the Whistler.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Matchbox

Chicago's matchbox is the cutest, tiniest little place you will ever get a drink that will knock you on your ass. It has the distinction of being the only bar we visited that actually looks like a bar from the outside, but you might miss it anyway, because it's about eight feet wide. Inside is a long bar with a single row of bar stools - there's about three feet between the first stool and the wall, and it only narrows as you go back.

It's even tinier than it looks.

I know this may sound like somebody's claustrophobic nightmare, but I just loved it. Somehow, squeezing yourself past other patrons to get to the bar, or the bathroom, breeds a bizarre sense of camaraderie. It's a feeling of community born from the shared experience of shoehorning yourself into this itty bitty bar to get a beer on a Sunday night. Maybe it's a trick - my shoulder is touching this person's shoulder, so we must be friends - or maybe I just liked it so much because it reminded me of college, where everyone seems willing to jam themselves into a tiny space with relative strangers as long as there's free food or drink involved. Whatever the reason, I completely fell in love with the feel of this bar - cool and insidery, but in a totally down, unpretentious way. A place can't be fancy if you have to make physical contact with 20 strangers to get to the bathroom.

By some stroke of luck Sarah, Rebekah and I managed to snag three consecutive barstools so we could get down to the business of drinking. The bartender was just the sort of woman you would expect to find behind the bar at a place like this - friendly but no-nonsense, chatting with regulars while slinging cocktails at alarming speed. The drinks were hit or miss. My gin blossom, a combo of gin, lemon, and elderflower liqeuer, was okay, but Sarah's lemon drop just tasted like vodka (okay, I guess, if you want a glass of vodka, but not if you ordered a cocktail), and Rebekah's Manhattan was overly sweet and watered down. My favorite drink I had here was just a plain old margarita, although I should probably qualify that by mentioning that by the time I tried it, I'd already had two other (quite strong) drinks.

The gin blossom.

The great thing, if you can find a drink you like, is that the bartenders don't skimp on quantity - the martini glasses are the same size you'll find at other bars, but with each order they give you the cocktail shaker used to make the drink, which has enough liquid in it to fill your glass over again. So it's really like getting two drinks for the price of one. Of course, they leave the ice in the shaker, so you'll have to drink your original drink first or your leavings will get a little watered down. Beers are bizarrely expensive ($4 for PBR? What?), so if your goal is to get the most buzz for your buck, you're definitely better off with a cocktail.

So: maybe not the greatest place for finely crafted cocktails, but definitely worth checking out. The whole thing just felt so comfortable - like I was always meant to be at this particular bar, with these people, sipping a Fin du Monde and melting into the music, and the atmosphere, and the perfect Sunday night.

Cocktailing Chicago: The Drawing Room

Chicago cocktail bars are hard to find.

Although none of them are rocking the speakeasy feel quite as hard as PDT, the NY cocktail den with an entrance in the back of a phone booth, all the places we went felt a little bit...tucked away. Secret. Special. Like you were cool and in-the-know just for getting in the door.


Sarah, Rebekah and I started off our very first evening in Chicago at the (relatively conspicuous) Drawing Room, a basement hideaway with an entrance tucked between a club and a little French restaurant. We got there around 7 PM on Saturday night, just in time to stake out some prime spots at the bar. From there, we could watch our cocktails being crafted by some of the world's best bartenders (head bartender Charles Joly won a James Beard award in 2011, which is kind of a big deal), and also check out the scene.

image: esquire.com.

From the photos I found online, I was a little concerned that the decor would be a bit high-dollar Holiday Inn, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The Drawing Room feels loungey, intimate and wonderfully grown-up, like the kind of place you always imagined adults hanging out when you were little and couldn't wait to grow up. The space is a long, low room filled with plush furniture - it's modern but warm, fancy but not fussy. The perfect backdrop for for a night on the town with some good friends, and some very good drinks.

Let's talk about the drinks.

Normally, I feel pretty in my element when perusing a cocktail menu. Strange spirits, like cachaça, Fernet Branca? These do not phase me. I even know what a shrub is. But the menu at the Drawing Room threw even me for a loop, and that's a good thing. Cocktail experimentation with wild and wonderful ingredients? I love. And, it turned out, a lot of the things on the menu I didn't recognize because they were local spirits made in and around Chicago. This, I love even more.

Right off, Sarah asked me - what is Malört? Maybe a kind of whiskey? - I told her, totally flubbing. And then I remembered - Malört is that liqueur. Famous for tasting like tires, and for, well, being absolutely repulsive. People who taste Malört for the first time are usually so disgusted that they make what is called a Malört face, an expression of total disgust that is often captured by their friends and cataloged on this flickr site. Looking at it will give you a pretty good idea of what Malört tastes like to the first-timer.

This strange liqueur tastes like wormwood (also present in the extremely potent and supposedly hallucinogenic Absinthe), is freakishly bitter, and, I was told by Billy Helmkamp, one of the co-owners of the Whistler, is sort of the national spirit of Chicago. Seriously. There's even a Chicago flag on the bottle. Malört is to Chicago what Fernet Branca is to San Francisco. People in Chicago really, really love it. And, sure enough, ever bar I visited after the Drawing Room had a bottle of this stuff hanging around. Having seen all the faces on the internet, I was, of course, anxious to taste it for myself. Our bartender Sergio, whose service was impeccable, offered to pour me a bit so I could try it. I wanted to like it so badly. A taste for Malört is like the ultimate badge of cocktail snobbery; it's loved by hardcore cocktail enthusiasts and hated by everyone else. I...didn't like it. At all. In fact, I thought it was one of the foulest things I've ever tasted. Like rubbing alcohol, with a lingering aftertaste of pure hate.

Sergio plying his craft. Witness the Malört to the left.

Billy also told me that it takes until your thirties for the tastebuds that detect bitterness to fully develop, so you may not like bitter things until then. I am 27, so maybe my love for Malört is just waiting for my 32nd birthday to fully blossom. Rebekah, who is, for the record, younger than I am, thought the Malört "wasn't so bad". Perhaps she has a more advanced palate than I do? I am deeply ashamed. (Sarah can't actually taste anything at all, so to her the Malört just tasted like booze.)

I ended up ordering a Cake or Death, because how could you not order a drink with such a fantastic name? (And kudos to our man Sergio for pointing me to this Lego Version.) I'm afraid I can't do it justice in words - it tasted a a little bit like coffee, a little bit bitter, and mostly unlike any other drink I've had before. This, Sergio said, was exactly what they were going for, and they certainly achieved it. I drink a lot, and I am always looking for the strange. This was certainly strange. I'm not sure I liked it (like as in, I would readily order another one), but it was definitely interesting. Rebekah, of the advanced palate, fell in love with the Cake or Death, and agreed to trade me the last of my drink for the remains of her Nooner. People who have drunk with me might be aware of my love affair with bourbon, and the Nooner was near perfect - a wonderful little bourbon cocktail, with maple syrup for just the right amount of depth.

The Cake or Death. Nooner in background.

Sarah has a condition called anosmia, which means that she cannot smell at all: all of her taste sensations come from her tongue. (Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, if you believe in that kind of thing.) This makes her the perfect barometer for balance in cocktails - Sarah is never swayed by taste associations. She only tastes the most vital things. Sarah bravely ventured off the menu and asked for a cocktail that was "light and refreshing". Sergio delivered, with a drink made from gin, lemon, cherry heering, and creme de violette. For the gin, he chose North Shore distillery's No. 6, a (locally produced!) gin that is very lavender and citrus-forward, to compliment the floral flavors in the drink. Sarah liked it, and so did we.

We decided to linger for another round, drawn in by the drinks and the atmosphere. Sarah's Floradora was definitely the best drink this round, but we all left happy - a wonderful start to our adventures in Chicago.

Accidental Deliciousness: Courtyard Bar at Brennan's

About a month ago, I strode confidently into the Courtyard Bar at Brennan's. I'm here to try the Brugal Anejo Rum drinks, I told them. My people talked to the bar manager. It's all worked out.

The bartender looked at me like I was crazy.

A few minutes later, along came the manager himself. He gently informed me that he knew of no such arrangement. Perhaps I meant to go to Brenner's? Imagine me going from confident to deeply embarrassed in about 3.5 seconds.

But I was already there, at the bar, with my schmancy camera, and the afternoon sunlight was slanting through the windows just so, and the bottles behind the bar looked oh-so-alluring. I had dinner plans a couple blocks away in 45 minutes. What was I supposed to do, wait in the car? And everyone had been so nice. So I did what any reasonable person in my position would have done: I ordered a few drinks.


I spotted a bottle of Fernet Branca behind the bar, which intrigued me because I have my own bottle of Fernet Branca, sitting unopened, waiting for the proper inspiration. So I asked the Bartender, Adam (who, despite the initial mix-up, was courtesy itself) to make me a cocktail with Fernet Branca that was "not too bitter". He presented me with something called the Problem Solver - not too sweet, not too bitter, just the perfect little whiskey cocktail. If you would like your problems solved as well, you're in luck, because Adam was kind enough to give me the recipe. (See, I told you they were nice.)

The Problem Solver
2 oz rye whiskey
1/2 oz cherry heering
1/4 oz Benedictine
Fernet Branca

Stir the rye, cherry heering, and Benedictine together in an ice-filled mixing glass. Strain into a Fernet-rinsed cocktail glass.


For my second drink, Adam made me a yellow plum daiquiri. Believe me, it tasted as light and beautiful as it looks. Unfortunately, I don't have the recipe for this one - you may just have to go to Brennan's and order one yourself.

Chicago, IL: Three nights, six bars.

Chicago! The windy city! The city of the big shoulders! And also, I hear, a damn good place to get a drink. I'm planning a four-day trip - here are the bars that made my shortlist.

Violet Hour
The Violet Hour (so named for a line in a T.S. Eliot poem) is THE Chicago cocktail bar. It is the Anvil of Chicago. When people review other cocktail bars in Chicago, they compare them to the Violet Hour. If you're going to drink cocktails in the windy city you pretty much have to go here.

I'm a teeny bit disappointed that this bar is blue, and not, in fact, violet.

Whistler
The word on the street: cocktails just as good as the Violet Hour, but cheaper! Awesome live music! Also supposedly chock full of hipsters at all times. Seriously, one reviewer said something like: "I've never seen so many beards in my whole life."

Hipster heaven. Booze heaven.

Matchbox
Super tiny and serves super strong classic cocktails. Yes.

The Green Mill
Not really a cocktail bar so much as a jazz club. Super old school - classic Chicago.

Sable Kitchen and Bar
If the Chowhound forums are any indication, this is the most buzzed-about new restaurant in Chicago. Several former employees of the Violet Hour have created cocktails for their menu, and word is they're quite good.

The Drawing Room
Decor looks a bit stuffy. Website is bleh. But they're supposed to have the best cocktails in town. (Head mixologist Charles Jolly won a James Beard award, which is kind of a big deal.) Looking at the menu is like wandering through a delicious boozy wonderland. And they have a drink called "Cake or Death?" - I mean, how could I pass that up?


My mission: to go, to drink, and to report back. I'll let you know what I find.

Images: Metromix, Starchefs, Esquire.

Bartender's Choice @ Blue Bar at Brenner's

One Thursday afternoon I found myself sipping rum cocktails at the bar at Brenner's on the bayou. I can't believe I didn't know about this place before - it's right in the middle of Houston, a stone's throw from Memorial Park, but when you're sitting on the deck, cocktail in hand, surrounded by trees and by the bayou, you can hardly tell you're in the city at all. "It's just like summer camp, but with booze!", I kept telling Kassie, because I am so much of a city girl that my only reference for a place when you can't see any other buildings is summer camp. (Church camp, actually, where there is definitely not any booze.) So when our bartender, Michael Manahan - the creator of the rum old-fashioned you saw in the previous post - asked us if we would stick around and try a few more of his cocktails, well, I was all over that.

First up: something called the Botany Bay. Michael introduced this by announcing that he was about to make "one of the prettiest cocktails you've ever seen". I was skeptical. I drink a lot. Then I was served this:

Ooooh.

The Bottany Bay - so named for a place in Australia where hibiscus flowers grow - is fairly simple: gin (preferrably Blucoat), elderflower liqueur (I'm assuming St. Germain, since it is the only elderflower liqueur), and hibiscus syrup (which sinks to the bottom of the glass to make this cocktail so, so pretty). It tastes almost as good as it looks, which is to say: it tastes quite good. It's hard to go wrong with gin and St. Germain.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of the very, very pretty gin drink, the bartender next served us a very pink combo of malibu rum, lemon juice, grenadine, and whipped cream vodka. His inspiration? A lemon cream pie. It was a little too sweet for my taste, but if you're in the market for drinks that taste like desserts, this could be just the thing - it really does taste just like pie. Then there's the little difficulty of what to call this drink - Michael told me he didn't have a name for it. So how do you order one, in the event you are craving a glass of boozy dessert? Fishing around for names, I came up with this gem - "Sex on the Bayou". Because 1. people always remember suggestive drink names (buttery nipple, anyone?), 2. it's place-appropriate, and 3. this drink certainly fits into the fruity, girly tradition of the sex on the beach. If you're too embarassed to go up to the bar and order sex (I probably would be, even though it was my idea), just ask for the pink drink that tastes like a lemon cream pie. They'll probably know what you mean.

One more thing you should know about the bar at Brenner's: their glasses are huge. (At least compared to the more moderate pours at the fancy cocktail bars I frequent.) Me, holding my giant glass in hand: "Kassie, this is so much booze." You'll get a lot of bang for your buck.

A survey of the damage after an afternoon spent drinking at Brenner's. Thank goodness I brought reinforcements.

Brugal Añejo Rum Old-Fashioned at Brenner's on the Bayou.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the folks who represent Brugal Añejo rum. There are some cocktails on the menu at Brenner's steakhouse featuring their rum, they said - would I like to try them? Why, yes. Yes I would.

So last Thursday, I headed down to Brenner's, accompanied by loyal drinking buddy Kassie. (Before this I accidentally went to Brennan's, because my reading comprehension skills are slipping. More on that later.) I met the bartender, Michael Manahan, who made me one of his own creations, the Brugal Anejo Rum Old Fashioned.

Now, I'm quite familiar with the concept of an old-fashioned. I've sipped plenty at the Anvil, and made quite a few of my own, including this lavender and elderflower version. But this? This was like nothing I've ever had before. All the nuance you would expect from the interplay of flavors in a bourbon old-fashioned, with a wonderful smoothness. I could drink these all day.


What, I asked Michael, while sipping my way to booze nirvana, inspired him to put rum in an old-fashioned? This is really a very unusual product, he told me - more like a whiskey or a scotch. It's a blend of rums aged between 2-5 years in American oak barrels previously used for Jack Daniels. So of course then I wanted to try the rum straight - maybe I should've done this first? - and he obligingly poured me a little glass. Holy crap. I took a sip and was in love. It was sweet like a rum, but oaky like a nice old scotch. And so, so smooth - no rocks, no nothing. Just super smooth, drinkable rum. (And, at about $18 a bottle, it's a little more accessible than that 18-year-old scotch I was similarly enamored with.)

Want to make some old-fashioneds of your own? Here's how it's done. First, muddle a slice of orange, a cocktail cherry, and a couple dashes of bitters together with 1 tsp of sugar.

Add ice and 2 oz rum; shake and strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Top with a splash of soda water. I understand this is a bit different from the usual procedure for an old-fashioned (which doesn't involve shaking) - but it's hard to argue with the results.

5 Classic Cocktails to Order "Off the Menu" at the Anvil.

Since this is a blog about drinking in Houston, after all, and I've already reviewed bars in New York and Los Angeles, I figured it's high time I tackled the Bayou City's burgeoning cocktail scene. And where better to start than at that flagship of Houston cocktail dens, the Anvil? So, if you're from out of town, or you're one of the 5 Houstonians who haven't yet discovered the Anvil, here's what to expect.


The Ambiance: Dark but not too dark, noisy but not too loud, and not too many decorations besides the jaw-droppingly huge selection of booze lining the wall behind the bar. Just how a bar should be. I think my favorite thing, though, about the atmosphere at the Anvil is the smells. I try not to admit this too often, but...I love the way bars smell. And the Anvil has the best smell of any bar I've ever been to - like spices and bourbon and campari and maybe a hint of tobacco. (And maybe cheese? Kassie said it smelled like cheese.) Whatever it is, it's interesting and manly and delicious and I love it.

holy crap, look at all those bitters.

The Crowd: When people first told me about the Anvil, I envisioned it as a sort of exalted cocktail mecca, the kind of tucked-away place where serious booze enthusiasts would calmly but earnestly debate the relative merits of say, shaking vs. stirring, while sipping a sazerac. It was, indeed, a cocktail mecca, but I was little off base with "calm". Shortly after it opened, the Anvil was such a scene that even earlier in the week, it was a fight to get to the bar. It was also a little bit of a pick-up bar - the sort of place where a random dude and his friends would approach you and your friends, offer to buy you a drink, and ask you if you were going to Pub Fiction after this. No, I am not going to Pub Fiction. I am going home, because it is 11 PM. On a Tuesday.

Things have calmed down a little since then, but you still never know quite what you're going to get. There's still the occasional bunch of toolios who only want to drink absinthe and miller lite, but you're just as likely to run into 40-something businesspeople. (Not that I'm hating on miller lite. It's just that there's a time and a place for miller lite, and this is not the place. Now, absinthe and miller lite together...that could be interesting.)

Weekends are still pretty packed, so if you want to ensure yourself a spot at the bar so you can watch the magic, go early. Like, 7 on a Monday or Tuesday night.

The Drinks: Ohh, the drinks. When I first started plotting to do a post about the Anvil, long, long ago, they had a section of their menu with a list of "100 Classic Cocktails to Try Before You Die". Well, the 100 cocktails are no longer a part of the menu, although you can still see the list, posted in a rather inauspicious location on the far wall of the bar. (It's the wall opposite the door as you come in. Or you can view the list here.) They've been replaced with a rotating seasonal menu of original drinks developed by the Anvil staff, which are all very delicious. The good news is, you can still order all the old cocktails, as long as you know what to ask for. So if you're yearning for a classic, or you just want to feel like an insider for ordering off the menu - here's a list of my Top 5 Classic Cocktails to Order "Off the Menu" at the Anvil.

1. The Bramble
This is the first drink I ever ordered at the Anvil. I finished it in about 45 seconds, and then bad things happened. But I don't blame the drink, I blame me. Okay, I blame the drink a little. This combo of gin, lemon, and creme de muir (blackberry liqueur) is so delicious and smooth that it's easy to forget you're drinking something very powerful.

2. The Seelbach
Kassie gets credit for discovering this delicious and very unusual cocktail. The first time she ordered one it actually came with a warning from the bartender - there's a lot of bitters in this one. Are you sure that's what you want? Of course, Kassie is never one to back down from a challenge. The Seelbach tastes like no champagne cocktail I've ever had - it's a deep, rich, complicated taste that reminds me of a nice complex Napa cabernet. Thanks to the Ted Haigh book, I now know that this is because the recipe for a Seelbach involves: champagne, bourbon, cointreau, and seven dashes each of both peychaud's and angostura bitters. For those playing along at home: that is a whole, whole lot of bitters. Yet somehow it works.

3. The Mint Julep
On the seventh day, God rested, and on the 8th day he invented the mint julep. People sometimes ask me what my favorite cocktail is, and this is always my answer. The combination of bourbon, sugar, and mint is stupidly simple and stupidly good. And the mint juleps at the Anvil are a real feat of artistry - piled high with crushed ice like a bourbon sno-cone. I mean - I just said "bourbon sno-cone". What more could you want?

4. The Blood and Sand
This cocktail, named for a 1922 Rudolph Valentino film, is a relative rarity: a mixed drink made with scotch. The combination of scotch, sweet vermouth, oj and cherry brandy might seem a little unusual, but you will only think that until you take your first sip. It's perfectly balanced, not too fruity, not too scotch-y. (Although it's difficult to imagine how something could taste too much like scotch.)

the Blood & Sand.

5. The Zombie
Probably the most famous cocktail invented by Don the Beachcomber during the post World-War II tiki explosion. (I especially enjoy the phrase "tiki explosion".) There are a lot of bad zombie variations out there, but the Anvil has got it right. (And if the original version is a little too sweet for you, I've heard you can get one made with Fernet Branca. Iiiinteresting.) At least half the fun of ordering any drink at the Anvil is watching all the artistry that goes into making it, and this one is especially enjoyable, since this delicious, rummy bit of cocktail history contains about 52 different ingredients. Of course, since so much work goes into making this drink, if you order one on a busy night your bartender will probably hate you. Save this one for a weeknight. And don't forget to leave a nice big tip.

Backyard Bartender Coast-to-Coast: The Copa d'Oro

Remember the pretty green drink I made? With the pear brandy? The one where I juiced a cucumber? Well, the creator of this particular drink, Vincenzo Marianella, has a bar in Los Angeles (well, Santa Monica) called the Copa d'Oro, and pretty much as soon as I saw the menu I knew I had to go there. In fact, in my post about the Mr. Stair, I'm pretty sure I said that I might have to plan a trip to LA just to visit this bar.

Well, I did.

Figure 1: Santa Monica Beach. If you get on 1-10 in Houston and drive west for 24 hours, this is where you will end up.

Okay, so the Copa d'Oro was not my only reason for going to California. (I am not that hardcore about cocktails. Yet.) My reasons were fivefold:

1. I am currently unemployed (unfortunately, being a cocktail connoisseur does not count as employment), and as such have a surfeit of free time.
2. My good friend Jason and his lovely fiancee Rebecca (who writes this great wedding blog) live in Los Angeles and had graciously offered to let me stay with them. (This is important, when you're unemployed.)
3. I've always been intrigued by the fact that 1-10, which runs right through the middle of downtown Houston, goes all the way to California. This freeway I've known my whole life, that goes right past the Budweiser brewery and my parents' house, goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Just one road. So every time I drove to church, or to mom and dad's, there was this tantalizing thought of California, far, far, away.
4. The deserts of the Southwest (which 1-10 spends a lot of time in before it gets to California) were calling my name.
5. Did I mention there's this really great cocktail bar in Santa Monica?

So...did it live up to my expectations?

Figure 2: The Copa D'Oro.

Ambiance: Loved the beach. Loved downtown Santa Monica. (Except that it was a total bear to park, but that's everywhere in LA.) This place...eh. I hate to say this, since the drinks were so good, but the decor was a little bit like what I would expect to see if the Cheesecake Factory were a bar. Very traditional. Lots of overstuffed leather.
Scene: Lots of young professionals. Already pretty hoppin at 7:30 on a Thursday night, and it got even busier as the night wore on.
Drinks: Wow.

For starters, until 8:30 the Copa D'Oro has a happy hour menu of classic cocktails for only $5, which is a pretty sweet deal for a snooty cocktail bar. I ordered a Clover Club, which was a lovely balance of fruity-ness and gin, but Jason won because he ordered a Gold Rush, which is: bourbon, lemon, and honey. That's all. And holy crap, was it good. It seems like, when it comes to Bourbon cocktails, the simpler the better, and this was one of those winning combinations.

Post happy hour we switched over to the main cocktail menu, which was a wonder to behold. Seriously, the waitress probably came about three different times to take our order, only to find me still staring raptly at the menu, unable to make a decision. I really, really wanted one of everything. Even now, as I peruse the menu on the Copa D'Oro's website, I feel a lingering sadness that I was unable to try them all.

After much deliberation, I finally settled on the ominous-sounding Judgement Day, a combo of pisco, elderflower liqueur, absinthe, pimento dram, and egg white. (Yeah, I went for the weird stuff.) Jason ordered a King De Bahia, which the waitress assured him was incredibly popular and had won several awards. (I told him he should add "drinker of award-winning cocktails" to his business cards.) Our drinks came, and...Jason won again. And how. The Judgement Day was good, but not mind-blowing. I mean, if you're going to call a drink the Judgement Day, it sure as heck better deliver. The King De Bahia, though - dang. The combo of cachaça, elderflower liqueur, passion fruit, and jalapeño - unusual, to be sure. And also freakishly, freakishly delicious.

Fig. 3: The King De Bahia. So full of win.

One of the most unique things about the Copa D'Oro is they have something called a Market Menu, where you can pick from a list of spirits and then add herbs, fruits, vegetables and different kinds of juice to your drink. So entranced was I by the main cocktail menu that I never got to try this. I was also a little worried. If you picked out a combo that was truly awful - say, Applejack, rosemary, grapefruit and jalapeño - would the bartender tell you that you were way off the mark and make another suggestion? Or would they just serve up your awful cocktail and charge you ten bucks for it? Or...and this possibility is truly mind-boggling - are they just such bartending badasses that it is impossible to go wrong? Someone needs to go to this bar and report back to me, because I am now incredibly curious.

So...the Copa D'Oro gets an enthusiastic (if slightly tipsy) thumbs-up from me. It's really too bad that 24 hours is a little too far to drive to grab a drink at the end of the workday. But hey, within only a few months, I've managed to drink wild and wonderful cocktails at bars on both coasts. All told, not a bad year.

Backyard Bartender in the Big City

I have long had a fascination with New York, based mostly on repeated viewings of Sex and the City. That and the fact that one of my co-workers told me he had a totally normal, sane friend who moved to New York City and, a few months later, broke down crying on the sidewalk. There is something fascinating about a place so intense it eats people alive. I knew I had to experience it for myself.

Also at work, I stumbled across this video one day when I googled "bacon cocktail". I thought to myself - surely no one has tried something so insane as putting bacon in a cocktail. Ohh, I was wrong. Pretty much as soon as I saw the video of the bacon cocktail...I knew I had to experience it for myself.

Remember this for later.

I showed the video to Luke, who at the time was living in New York, and he was like, hey, this place is right around the corner from my apartment in the East Village. Sex and the City...bourbon-infused bacon...it was like a magnet, drawing me in.

So the bacon cocktail bar is called PDT, and it was pretty much at the top of my list of places to visit when I went to New York (for the very first time!) this past May. Getting in, it turns out, is no easy feat. New Yorkers are apparently obsessed with faux-speakeasy type bars, and PDT (stands for Please Don't Tell) has made an art form out of it. Their phone lines open at 3 PM every day, at which point you have to call the secret number and make a reservation. (The number is actually not so secret, since a quick google search will turn it up, but I'll make you do a little work.) Once your reservation is made - and here's where it gets really trippy - you have to go to a hot dog joint called Crif Dogs in the East Village. Once inside the hot dog joint you'll see a phone booth - go in, pick up the phone, tell the hostess your name and when your reservation is, and the back wall of the phone booth will open. Suddenly you're in this low-ceilinged, wood-paneled cocktail den with animal heads on the wall and a bar with the best liquor selection of anywhere, ever. You've fallen down a rabbit hole of awesome.

Look at all those bottles. I died of jealousy.

Sarah and I got there at 7 pm, just when things were starting to pick up, so we had the distinct pleasure of sitting at the bar and chatting with the bartender as he made our drinks. Sarah ordered a Paddington, made with, among other things - muddled...bell pepper? I wasn't so sure how I felt about bell pepper in a cocktail, but Sarah gulped it down.

I got the much-anticipated bacon cocktail (called a Benton's old fashioned), and it did not disappoint. In a traditional old-fashioned, you taste orange, and then bourbon. In this one, I tasted citrus, and then bourbon, and then...bacon. Some reviewers said the bacon infusion just brought out the smoky flavors in the bourbon, but they were dead wrong. It tasted like real, honest-to-goodness, fresh off the griddle, bacon. As a flavor pairing, this was really not so terrible as you would think - it was actually pretty intriguing in a "holy cow I never would've thought of this but it kinda works" sort of way. Would I order it again? Probably not, especially considering all the other enticing offerings on the menu, but I feel like it was worth the 14 bucks just to have had the experience.

The rules of the house posted on the bathroom wall. Basically: this is not a pick-up bar.

Speaking of experiences...did I mention you can order food from the hot dog place next door? It's delivered through a little door in the back of the bar. So you can nosh on tater tots while you drink your fancy drinks. Only in New York.

Bourbon + tater tots = happy Nancy.