What I Did on My Winter Vacation
Aaaaaannnnd.... We're Back!
Did you miss us? Well, we missed you!
But our holiday hiatus did exactly what it was designed to do. We have returned to The Mix’s news desk refreshed and recharged and ready to sail into the second anniversary—it’s on Jan. 19!—and third year of publishing for this newsletter, with new rounds of fresh material, as well as some new features for Paid and Bar Regular subscribers. (More on that to come.) While we’re on the subject of subscribing, there’s no time like the present, so:
The End of the Tour
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk a little about what we got up to in December besides relaxing, sleeping, nesting, cooking and puttering (which is, as we know, a thing). We kept largely local, staying in the great borough of Brooklyn, with a few jaunts to Manhattan and one brief day trip to Westchester County.
One of the Manhattan trips was our attendance at the Swedish Seamen’s Church annual St. Lucia Concert at Church of the Incarnation on Madison Avenue and 35th Street. I’ve written about this tradition on The Mix in the past. It was as magical as ever and the choir—the “candleheads,” as we affectionately call them—was in particularly good voice this year.
The Westchester visit was to the Larchmont Public Library. Though the book tour for The Encyclopedia of Cocktails mainly ended with our Chicago takeover of the Rainbo Club, there was one final item on the 2023 calendar.
Now, I get many curious questions as to why I—a person who does not live in Larchmont and has no Larchmont connections—makes an annual journey to support the local library there. Let me explain.
I’ve been doing book signings in Larchmont for nearly a decade now. It all began with an invitation from Steve Reddicliffe, my Travel editor at The New York Times. He lived in Larchmont and wanted to do the local library some good. So, in 2015, he invited me and writer Rosie Schaap (then also a NYT writer) to speak with him about the newly published volume The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails, to which both I and Rosie were hefty contributors. Drinks were made, snacks were served, excerpts were read and books were sold and signed.
It was just the sort of local, small-scale event I enjoy. So when Steve asked me to join him each subsequent year, in what become an annual library tradition, I gladly signed on. Usually, I would convince a third cocktail writer to join us. Among those who have taken part over the years are Frank Caiafa, Kara Newman, Aaron Goldfarb and Amanda Schuster.
The gathering was paused for two years during the pandemic. During that time, Steve retired from the Times and moved to Michigan. But, in 2022, the library, wanting to continue the tradition, asked me if I would take up the mantle. So, essentially, I get to be Steve Reddicliffe.
This year’s edition may have been the most successful yet. The crowd was large and we sold all the books. Schuster, author of the new Signature Cocktails, joined me again. I chose Boothby cocktails to be served (more on that later this week; stay tuned). And Scattered Books of Chapaqua was there to sell copies.
You didn’t think there wouldn’t be a little hot dog content in the first post of the year, did you?!
The year 2022 marked the beginning of a new Westchester tradition—a post-library run to Walter’s, an iconic, century-old, hot dog stand in Mamaroneck. Mamaroneck is a five minute drive from Larchmont, so, I thought, what the hell!?
We repeated that stop this year. Amanda Schuster and her friend John Hedigan joined in. (They kind of had to, as we were giving them a ride home.) Standing in a steady drizzle under umbrellas in Walter’s otherwise-deserted, outdoor dining area, we feasted on grilled, split-open franks, slathered with Walter’s custom mustard-relish mixture; french fries; potato puffs; and shakes.
Since my first visit back in 2018, Walter’s has quickly become a favorite dog destination for me. It scores on every account from the unusual pagoda-like roadside architecture to the unique hot dog preparation to the prices, service and general ambiance. They also have good merch. I left with a t-shirt, bottle of mustard, a package of frozen pigs-in-a-blanket and a Walter’s Christmas ornament.
Pie-Eyed and Other Food News
Pizza is never far from our thoughts at The Mix and I was able to check in on a few pies, both new and old, during December. While driving back from a research trip in The Hamptons (what I was researching I’ll get to in a later post), and after a bit of Cemetery Tourism (Gary Cooper, Southhampton, go figure), I parked my car in front of Eddie’s, a tavern-pizza landmark in New Hyde Park since 1931. This is a joint I was urged to visit by Mix subscriber and fellow booze scribe Tony Sachs after we published last year’s survey of Tri-State-Area tavern pizza. (One thing you should know about our “In Search Of” food features: the searching doesn’t end after the piece is published. The quest is unending.)
Eddie’s is not impressive looking. It is a blocky, anonymous, one-story building of brick and cream, barely lit inside or out. If you squinted, you could make out the words “Home of the Bar Pie” painted above the door. I thought it was closed at first, so little light emanated from the windows. I walked inside and still thought the place was closed. It was just me, a waitress and a barfly reading the newspaper (who may have been the owner).
Eddie’s is a restaurant, but it feels more like a dive bar that happens to serve food. I ordered a large pie with half sausage and half clams, to which the barfly muttered “Nice.” So I felt validated. It took 25 minutes for the pizza to come out, so either Eddie’s kitchen is disorganized or they take their time on the product. Could be either. The result was excellent, paper thin, well-charred on the bottom, with slices of flat sausage on one side and plenty of clams on the other. The clam side won out in terms of flavor. I placed the pie on the passenger seat as I pulled away. None of it made it back to my apartment in Brooklyn.
Lala’s Brooklyn Apizza is a rare outpost of New Haven style pies in New York City. As I’m a great fan of New Haven pizza, I’ve been trying to get to it since it opened on the second floor of the Williamsburg Grimm brewery last summer, but I haven’t had the time. I finally checked in during a designated “media and influencer event.” I’m pretty sure I was the lone member of the mainstream media. The influencers descended upon each hot pie with a canopy of cameras and lights.
Here, too, there was clam pizza to be had, prepared in the classic New Haven, shapeless oval format. It was quite a respectable representation of the style. I liked it best among the several Lala’s pies offered, which get a bit wacky and veer notably away from New Haven tradition. Among them are a Puttanesca Pie and Fig & Fennel Pie. (Please: no figs on pizza.) All paired well with the excellent Grimm brews on tap. (New Haven pizza, you may have noticed, is very much in the news lately, with big articles in both The New Yorker and The New York Times.)
Finally, we paid a pre-Christmas call on our favorite local pizzeria, Sam’s, on Court Street in Cobble Hill, where both the decor and service are pitch perfect, old-school Brooklyn. We ordered two pies: our dinner companions went for half ricotta, half meatball; we opted for half pepperoni, half sausage. One arrived in 20 minutes; the second 30 minutes later. As I said, the service is old school.
We would probably still love Sam’s if the pizzas took two hours to arrive. It’s a time capsule worth preserving. Lately, we’ve been worried that Sam’s, open since 1930, might close. The owner Lou’s laments grow with each passing visit and his summer vacations in Italy lengthen. Once he decides to retire to Italy permanently, it’s game over. So pay a call on Sam’s while you may. Besides the pizza, I recommend the baked clams, escarole, pork chops with peppers and potatoes, all the hero sandwiches and the Chicken French. Just remember when you’re there to be patient. It’s Lou’s world. You just live in it temporarily. And bring cash and leave a big tip.
P.S.—Not a pizza joint, but we also checked into Red Sauce Joint favorite Pietro’s with South Carolina pals Dave and Alex. Still the best veal parmigiana in town! We also revisited Popina with Brooklyn pals Bob and Lara. Still the best Chicken Milanese in town! And we spent our Christmas Eve at the Chinatown icon Wo Hop, where we ordered way too much. Still the best old-school Chinese meal in town!
Martinis and Other Strangers
I used some of my free time last month to check in on a few of the 14,352 new bars that have opened in New York over the past few months. Behind the stick at Jac’s on Bond I found the familiar face and mane of Trevor Easton Langer. I last saw Trevor at Bar Calico when I was researching blue drinks for the Times, and first met him at the late, lamented Slowly Shirley. (He has tended bar at a lot of places). Langer, who looks a bit like Jared Leto, was as Midwestern-laid-back as ever.
Jac’s had made a bit of a name for itself with its Caprese Martini, which is modeled after the Italian dish. Every new joint boasts a fancy spin on the Dirty Martini these days and this is Jac’s. It is made of olive oil, tomato and basil-infused vodka, blanco vermouth, and balsamic vinegar. I felt honor-bound to try it and it lived up to its reputation.
Every cocktail on the new menu had some sort of assertive fruit in it, be it apricot or fig or banana. My favorite was the Osaka to Me, made with Suntory Toki whiskey, Ume plum, Lillet Blanc and pamplemouse.
The cocktail holding down the top spot on the menu went with pineapple as its informing fruit. That was Bodega Buns, a sour with a base of “honeybun-infused gin.”
“What’s a honeybun,” I asked.
Langer almost dropped his bar spoon. Apparently, after 30 years of living in Gotham, I still haven’t spent enough time in New York’s bodegas to know of this sickly-sweet, cash-register impulse buy. To aid me in my research, Langer handed me a wrapped Mrs. Freshley’s Honeybun free of charge. (“Mrs. Freshley’s honey buns just may be the most award-winning honey buns in America,” reads the website. Who am I to argue? But who is giving awards to honeybuns?).
The drink did, indeed, match the flavor of the pastry. I ate the latter during the subway ride home. Well, some of it anyway. Halfway through, I felt a sugar-induced coma coming on and abandoned ship.
The night before Jac’s, I paid a call on the bar Subject on the Lower East Side. It’s a place I rarely go, but the lure of Charles Jacquin et Cie pouring a new product was too great. Jacquin, an old Philadelphia spirits company, hardly ever brings out anything new. So when they do, you know it’s a deeply considered move. This is the company that, in the past quarter century, gave the world St. Germain elderflower liqueur (from family scion Rob Cooper, since deceased) and Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur (from Rob’s sibling John Cooper). Both brands have since been sold to large conglomerates.
The new brand is Juliette, a peach liqueur made with pêche de vigne, a small, intensely aromatic peach from the Rhone valley in France, with a spirit base made partly of French brandy.
Peach liqueur is as old as the hills. There are several kinds out there, but there is currently no brand leader in the category. Jacquin aims to be that brand leader. The tall, sleek, art deco bottle is remarkably similar to that of St. Germain, and the juice inside has a lot of depth and character. Will it become the next “bartender’s ketchup,” at St. Germain did? Time will tell.
I had long sought to investigate the new Portrait Bar, an easter egg of a boîte tucked well inside the Fifth Avenue Hotel. A stop by the Esquire “Best New Restaurants” party at that hotel gave me the chance.
There was an symbiosis between the two spaces that night, as Esquire had just published its inaugural, years-in-the-making “Best Martinis in America” article. I counted how many of the 50 I’d already drunk. It was 20, including the top-seeded Chandelier Martini at the Four Seasons hotels in New Orleans, which I wrote about here and here in 2022 and 2023.
That left 30 more to try. Luckily, I was able to knock one off the list that very night: the Cartagena, a new invention by Darryl Chan, the bar director at Portrait Bar. An unusual combination of Sonbi gin from Korea, aguardiente, passion fruit liqueur, sherry, and cherry bark vanilla bitters, the drink nevertheless did have a Martini-esque character.
Visiting the Portrait Bar reminded me of the Library Bar at the Nomad Hotel, which closed during Covid and which I have been mourning lately. I always miss it around Christmastime, because the book-lined bar boasted a tall Christmas tree during the season. It was my habit to spend an afternoon before Christmas enjoying a cocktail there while gazing at the fir.
Like the Library Bar, the Portrait bar is hidden well inside a posh hotel in the Nomad district (actually, it’s only one block away from the old Nomad) and has an old-world, hushed atmosphere. It’s a welcome addition to the New York cocktail scene, which has become overly bumptious in the past year. The city could do with a few more places for a quiet drink and conversation.
While we’re on the subject of Martinis, I came up against an odd phenomenon during my recent bar-hopping. At two separate midtown Manhattan cocktail bars—bars of established reputation—Mary Kate found herself unable to order a 3-to-1 gin Martini. On both occasions, the bartender or server said such a ratio was impossible, because the house Martini measured 3 ounces, so the drink could be 2-to-1 (that is, 2 ounces gin, one ounce dry vermouth), but not 3-to-1. The idea that the Martini could be measured out as 2 1/4 ounces gin and 3/4 ounce vermouth seemed beyond their ken. (We finally went to one of our locals, Grand Army, where we successfully scored a 3-1 Gin Martini with no muss, no fuss.)
This dumbfounded me. We are living in a great Martini era in which the cocktail is more popular than ever. Personal gin-vermouth ratios have always been something every bartender has had to deal with and master. I’ve never encountered a situation where I was told I couldn’t have the ratio I wanted. After thinking it over a while, it occurred to me that one or more of the following things is going on:
Modern bars want you to order their house Martini variations, not the Martini recipe you want.
Because many new bars have house Martini variations on the menu which they promote, bartenders are taught to make those, and are less skilled in making other standard Martinis.
Many Martinis at modern bars are pre-batached and simply poured out a refrigerated bottle. They are thus impossible to customize to a patron’s specific preferences.
Younger customers don’t think as much about “their” Martini as older patrons used to in the past. They simply order the Martini variation that is on the menu.
People aren’t as adept at math as they used to be.
It could be all of these things are happening at once. What are your thoughts? Have any of you readers ever encountered this? If so, please leave a comment below.
Yet more Martini news! I managed to get to Dante West Village during the one week when they were serving the official cocktail of the new Yorgos Lanthimos movie Poor Things, starring Emma Stone. As it was explained to me, Stone’s character, Bella Baxter, can be seen enjoying a Martini in the film. Searchlight Pictures approached Ford’s Gin and Dante about creating a signature cocktail for the movie.
(I am wholly in favor of this trend, by the way. Every movie should have a signature cocktail.)
The result, the Bella Martini, is made with Fords Gin, French vermouth, White Port, Peruvian Pisco, and rosewater, as well as a drop of olive oil and blue curaçao on the surface. For me, the Pisco rang the loudest note. It was served to me on a Bella Baxter coaster, which I promptly pocketed, figuring I’d never see its like again.
I’ve yet to see Poor Things; Brooklyn screenings have tended to sell out. But I did go on a bit of a moviegoing jag on the days leading up to Christmas. I have been a big Alexander Payne fan ever since Election, so we saw his latest, The Holdovers, a reunion with actor Paul Giamatti, who was made a star in Payne’s film Sideways. The movie may be the most whiskey-drinking-est film I’ve ever seen. Two of the three characters knock back the brown stuff in nearly every scene.
We also saw American Fiction, Maestro and the The Boy and the Heron, all of which are recommended to one degree or another, none moreso than American Fiction, the funny and searingly satirical feature debut of director-writer Cord Jefferson. It may be a perfect film.
We also saw the preview of the animated feature Migration about five times. One thing came out of that. Mary Kate made Duck a l’Orange for Christmas dinner. The classic French dish amounts to the chief villain in the movie. Mary Kate made it for the first time. It was fabulous!
Liquid Memories and Farewells
It was an excellent season for holiday parties and, given the circles I travel in, the alcoholic libations on offer were top tier. Perhaps the most epicurean offerings were served by a pair of Brooklyn friends, John and Jeannie, who used to be habitués of the late, great Pegu Club back in the day. In attendance was another friend of theirs, Sam, who also frequently held down a bar stool at Pegu. Sam brought with him all the makings of a Jimmie Roosevelt, once of the most elite and decadent of all cocktail creations and a staple for many years on the Pegu Club menu.
The recipe, providing by none other than Pegu Club owner (and longtime Mix subscriber), Audrey Saunders, is below if you want to give it a whirl. Prepare to feel luxurious.
Finally, the year ended on a melancholy note, with a visit to Amor y Amargo on Dec. 30, its final night of service. The tiny, but influential bitters bar spent its last two months hosting bartending alumni from its 12-year run. Getting behind the stick for one night only were such notables and Nick Bennett (Porchlight), Max Green (The Press Club Grill), Sarah Morrissey (bar director of the soon to reopen Le Veau d’Or), Lindsay Matteson (Barnacle), Ari Form (The Jake Walk), Tom Richter (Dear Irving), Blake Walker and many others.
For the final night, it was guiding force Sother Teague and his right hand man Bruce Shultz manning the bar and serving a menu of old favorites to a full room of regulars and industry pros. Mary Kate and I checked in during the first hour, found a place in front of the old, tiled bartop and had an Old-Fashioned and a Negroni, both served in the same small, simple glasses that have held most every drink here.
That left only New Year’s Eve. We actually went out for a change and had punch made made from a recipe sent in by Punch historian David Wondrich, Martinis made by the owners of Sugar Monk and Champagne. We even stayed out long enough to exclaim “Happy New Year!” (Very against character.) Now we are solidly and happily in 2024 and couldn’t be more excited. We’ve got some great content coming up on the next three weeks leading up to The Mix’s anniversary. You’ll hear all about it in the coming days. Til then, Happy New Year!
Odds and Ends…
I have written for the magazine Imbibe for more than a decade and have contributed to their annual “Imbibe 75” for half of that time. The Imbibe 75 is the magazine’s roundup of what it considers to be the people and places that are going to shape the drinking landscape in the coming year. This year, I contributed five items to the tally, writing up the bars Superbueno and Paradise Lost, the bar icon Dale DeGroff, the beverage innovator Joe Heron and Angel’s Share bar owner Erina Yoshida. But the 2024 issue came with a nice surprise. Yours truly was one of the Imbibe 75, with text written by Imbibe editor Paul Clarke himself and a photo taken at McSorley’s Old Ale House by photographer Eric Medsker… I sat down with fellow Substack author Ari Benderksy and answered a bunch of questions about cocktails and my career. If you haven’t already subscribed to Ari’s newsletter, I recommend you do!… I wrote a story for Vinepair about how department stores like Macy’s and restaurants like The Berghoff once had their own private lines of booze… I also wrote a story for The New York Times about Ajabu, the first cocktail convention to be staged in Africa. It will take place in March in Cape Town and Johannesburg… Also, look out for some news about a coming appearance at the Sunken Harbor Club in Brooklyn.
Recipe:
Jimmie Roosevelt
Charles H. Baker Jr., The Gentleman’s Companion, 1939; version by Audrey Saunders from opening 2005 menu at Pegu Club.
1 1/2 ounces Cognac
1 lump of sugar
Angostura bitters
2 ounces Champagne
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse
2-1 Demerara Syrup (two parts sugar, one part water)
Rinse a large Champagne glass with the demerara syrup. Place Angostura-soaked sugar cube into glass. Add 3 cracked Kold-draft ice cubes (or equivalent) on top. Pour Cognac over that, and top with champagne. Drizzle a barspoon of Green chartreuse on top. No garnish.
Welcome back, Simonson. Now, when am I going to get some of that Eddie’s pizza! 🤣
A very welcome return of The Mix! As for the martini - here at the Midwest's ground zero, we've discovered many customers entirely unfamiliar with the Martini. Whatever knowledge they have of the drink comes from the 1990's when every drink served was dubbed a "martini" (apple, chocolate, blah, blah). So it is a joy to encounter a veteran martini consumer with a preference! Anytime Mary Kate! On another random note, I was summonsed to the bar last evening to meet a couple who are self-proclaimed "Simonson fans" from Texas by way of North Carolina and were visiting friends in Canton, Ohio who had t make the trek up to Lorain because of your writings! Cheers my friend!