The Spanish Coffee Comes Back
Can There Be a Future for This Old-Fashioned Fire Show? PLUS, a New "On a Toot!"
As a cocktail historian, there are certain drinks that I don’t feel I have to worry about much. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the current state of the Pousse Cafe (a kind of a stunt drink made up of layers of different colored liqueurs that was popular in the 19th century), because nobody makes Pousse Cafes anymore. The same goes, to varying extents, to Sangarees, Flips and Frappés.
Until recently, I had placed the Spanish Coffee in this category. Only one place seemed to care about this early-20th-century hot cocktail—Huber’s Cafe, a 144-year-old institution in Portland, Oregon—and they only care out it because it is a signature drink for the restaurant, a tourist magnet that has kept them in the news from time to time for decades. But no new bar or restaurant was following Huber’s’ lead.
But then, in the space of six months, I encountered two new places, on opposite coasts, that were toying with the Spanish Coffee and appeared to be taking the drink seriously. The first was The Doctor’s Office, a snug speakeasy in Seattle. The second was Koloman, an Austrian restaurant in New York, which I wrote about this week in New York magazine.
In addition, I found out that Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a longtime champion of the drink, has been making Spanish Coffees every night at his new Portland place Pacific Standard.