Don't Murder Your Darlings
Why Cocktail Bars Should Keep Fan Favorites on Their Menus; Introducing the Strident Alto; and Odds and Ends.
Several years back, there was an article in the New York Times about the frustrating phenomenon of restaurant dishes that patrons love, but are nonetheless discontinued by the chefs/owners. The author began the article by describing the author’s unrequited love affair with a particular egg sandwich at the Brooklyn restaurant Seersucker.
The article resonated personally, because I remembered that egg sandwich. It was served on ciabatta bread with country bacon, aged New York Cheddar and, critically, homemade tomato jam. It was unique and it was perfection. I’ve eaten one thousand egg sandwiches in my time. It may have been the most memorable. And then it was gone. Just like that. Poof. The chef/owner Rob Newton just took it off the menu on a whim. It felt cruel at the time. I was bereft, wandering around Brownstone Brooklyn hopelessly looking for an acceptable substitute.
As I read the story, I hoped the Times reporter, Julie Scelfo, had gotten to the bottom of the mystery of why Newton had treated his customers with such disregard. She had. And like any good writer, she saved the big reveal for the kicker.
The chef and co-owner, Robert Newton, declined to respond to my calls and emails asking why the sandwich had been cut. Only when I cornered him in person did he explain that he had changed the menu to suit his evolving interests, the same reason he would later close Seersucker and open a spinoff, Wilma Jean, down the block. (Mr. Newton, who is also an owner of Nightingale 9, said he hoped to eventually reopen Seersucker in a new spot.)
“Chefs that really want to be chefs don’t really want to do the same thing day after day, after day, year after year,” he said.
If I may, I’d like to pose a counter argument. Not for food. I’ll leave that to my full-time food-writer friends. For cocktails.
We lost many great cocktail bars during the pandemic here in New York. But the one I miss the most is Pegu Club. I miss it for many reasons—the staff, the decor, the location, the history, the excellence of the drinks. But the main thing I miss is its reliability. I knew just what to expect at the Pegu Club, whether I visited in March or September, in 2009 or 2019. Each time, even before I opened the menu, I was certain what I would find there—drinks owner Audreys Saunders had invented years before and never taken off the list, like the Old Cuban, Gin-Gin Mule, Little Italy, French Pearl, Jamaican Firefly, Tantris Sidecar, Earl Grey MarTEAni. Modern classics all.
It has occurred to me a few times in recent months that I can no longer easily get those drinks, because there is no bar I know of that keeps them dependably on their menu.
Saunders practiced a menu strategy that was uncommon during Pegu Club’s lifespan, which coincided with the heyday of the cocktail revival (2005-2020). Whereas the menus at most other contemporary cocktail bars were seasonal, always shifting, Pegu’s was fairly static. You couldn’t blame the cocktail bars of that era for their restless nature. They were staffed by bartenders brimming with new ideas and anxious to get them out. A menu that flipped three times a years gave them ample room to show off their creativity and ever-changing passions.
The downside of that approach was that whenever a bar hit upon something great, a cocktail that was truly magical, it was gone after four months when the new menu was printed. Patrons grow attached to certain drinks and they take it to heart when they vanish. Life is hard and you can’t count on anything from one day to the next; we know this. We go to bars to forget it, not to be reminded of it.