Hello and welcome to Cooking News. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Shoes coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Joined in the studio with John. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
Joined remotely by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, chilling with Jackie Molecules in Los Angeles. How are you guys doing? We're good. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Got uh got uh Quinn over there in Oh, wait well. Got Quinn over there in Vancouver Island, not the city of Vancouver. Don't confuse them. Yep.
Vancouver Island, you have to take off like a float plane too. You can't like just walk from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. There is no bridge. Or a ferry. You could take a float.
A ferry. Yeah, but how much cooler is it to take a float plane? It's cool. I don't know. It's cool.
I have to say, my dad used to fly float planes before my dad got remarried. Well, so like uh, and we got uh rocking the panels behind us, as usual, Joe Hazen. I'm in my uh I'm in an abnormal position. I'm not used to doing this show not being able to see Joe Hazen. Yeah, no, you're back is to me.
It's just very unusual. So maybe I need to set a mirror up or something. Maybe. Like one of those like don't don't kill me pedestrian mirrors. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called the trust fall. Although, like, yeah, right. Well, I have this feeling that I'm gonna do something, and Joe's gonna hit me in the back of the head like a school teacher. You know what I mean?
So the trust fall isn't going well, right? Well, all I'm saying is is that I'm sure most of you didn't grow up with school teachers who get you in the back of the head. But anyway, uh, as uh befits the way that we normally work, before we start our beginning banter, I'm gonna introduce our two guests. Very pleased to have Garrett Richard with me today. Hello, and Ben Schaefer with me today.
Hello. Hello. Hello. You might know Garrett from such things as working at existing conditions where I met him. Uh, you might have known him working.
Where the hell did you work at NPR? Oh, that was a long time ago. But uh, I wasn't, I was in radio when I was in college and grad school. I was I worked at WFUV. So it is weird to be in a much tinier radio station.
Yeah. Well, we have a music question for you later, so so that's good. But you also know him from what I think. What do you think, John? Like best bar going in in New York now?
Like certainly one of the best. I don't believe in best anything, because I think it's really a dumb thing to try to rank one person's achievement over another when everyone's doing different things. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but if you had to, Garrett. Out of all my bar experiences in the last two or three years, well, I guess that's not saying too much because of the pandemic.
All my bar experiences in the last five years, it's was really excellent. Let me put it this way. Here's what I've here's what I'll say. I'll say this. I'll say if someone says, hey, there's a like you want to go somewhere, I'd be like, yeah, let's go to Sunken Harbor.
That sounds fun, right? Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? But you know, Dave, I think one of the points as well is we lost so many amazing places in New York and in other cities during the pandemic that uh Sunken Harbor Club opening during that time was like a beacon of hope.
Right. That's true. So that has that kind of thing. Yeah, the playing field was really wiped for you know a lot of our favorite spots, including the spot that I worked at with you, unfortunately. Existing conditions, formerly the best bar in New York.
Oh, and now we're trying our best with Sunken Harbor. Well, Sunken Harbor is a uh is a fantastic place, and uh well, we'll talk more about it. We'll talk more about it in in uh in a little bit, but um it's above Gage and Tolner, and you guys don't run the bar program at Gage and Tolner, right? No, it's a separate team. Um, I came in with my background of working with you and then having my own set series of pop-ups with Megan Dorman called Exotica.
And I was fun, by the way. If you ever went you know you can't do those anymore, right? Too busy. Too busy. Busy.
It was very busy. It was very crowded. It was a very pre-COVID kind of thing. Yeah. But you know, Sunken Harbor is really the continuation of what I was doing at Exotica, which was kind of on my days off, and existing when I was working.
It's like the it's like the fusion of those two things. Um, but we're here to with my partner writing partner here, Ben, to talk about who you might know. You might know from the blog, The Rum Reader, where you don't just read about it at home. You actually you've tasted rum. I have, yes.
Not just a couple times. Not just read about it. I prefer, by the way, we we call it a magazine, even though it's online. Yeah. Because I think blog implies some dude sitting at home, right?
Right. And and and the rum reader has a lot of different authors with the different points of view. And uh, you know, it's a little bit you know, well, you've been featured there. Yeah. And we used to do a lot of events, which we still do, that have uh brought together luminaries such as yourself and Garrett and many others to talk about classic drinks.
Yeah, Dave did the daiquiri panel at Slowly Shirley, which was a short hop skip and a jump from uh existing. I remember that wherein Shannon Mustafer and I uh got it wasn't heated argument, we just got into discussion. It was a very respectful argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I wanted to do, and I think maybe she did it with somebody else, but I wanted to do a thing with her where we just sit down and do it and we talk about the differences between the drinks.
Maybe that's the thing I can pitch for Tales of the Cocktail. I need a seminar this year for Tales of the Cocktail, and I only have like a day and a half to try to pitch it. Yeah, let's do it. Like literally a day and a half. But it's like just actually test these things out and just talk about it like adults.
You actually do the do the experiments live as you've done. Yeah. Yeah. I and often I'm proven wrong, like the big ice cube experiment, wherein I walked into an experiment I had never run before, thinking I was going to get proved right in front of a hundred people and was proven wrong. And I was like, oh.
And then I walked back to Booker and well, I didn't walk because it was, you know, it's a long walk from uh Orleans. Yeah, yeah. Took an aeroplane. And then uh I guess when you're proven wrong, you need that kind of walk of shame across the country. Yeah, but it made me super happy.
But then when I got back home, I was like, oh, we're changing the way we make all our drinks. And they're like, oh, come on. And I was like, yep, big ice. Big ice. I don't know if you remember this, Dave, but uh at the Slowly Shirley event where Garrett was not present because I think he was working.
I thought he was in the audience. No, he wasn't. No, I was working. Yeah, yeah. But I rem I don't know if you remember what you told me about Garrett and his sort of uh unique status in your mind.
Because, you know, as you're talking about, there's people who disagree with you on things, or people say they gotta do it this way. And do you remember what you told me? Because I think it's it's a it's a great characterization of your relationship, but also a little bit about Garrett and a little bit about you. You said basically that you know, Garrett was always telling you that he wanted to do things differently than you wanted to do them at existing conditions. And you said, if anyone else had said this to me, I'd say take a hike.
But because it's Garrett, I'm like, prove it. Yeah, yeah. And then you'd have him do the side by sides. Yeah. And so he's you said sometimes he convinced you.
Yes. Well, look, like my operational mode is that it, you know, if you no longer are willing to be proven wrong, Jin just step into the box. You know what I mean? Like, that's it. You're not gonna grow anymore.
Life is growth, right? So it's like you're done. But often I would say to people, prove it to me, but I'm not really giving, I'm not really expecting them to prove it. But if Garrett said something, I'd be like, nah, I can't just dismiss what this dude is saying out of hand. Because he doesn't talk out of his rear end very often.
Or ever really. You know what I mean? I try to cut it down as much as I can in these days. But what's weird about it is is that Garrett will uh Garrett will uh he has a lot of things to say, but they're all considered, which is rare. You know what I mean?
He has a lot of considered things to say. Anyway, if you're listening live on the Patreon, call in your questions 2917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if they're uh not on the Patreon, John, how do they get to be on the Patreon? Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
Um yeah, check it out. Joining gets you access to the Discord, uh, priority questions on episodes. Dave will always get to them. Uh awesome discounts on Kitchen Arts and Letters and other cool people that we partner with. Uh yeah, it's worth checking out and signing up.
We got a bunch of different membership levels, so yeah. What are you waiting for? Yeah, and next week on the show, we have he's he is he's he's he's in Connecticut. But still, I mean I mean it's still still we got we got Jacques Papin on uh calling in uh next week, who I used to work with. And uh I'm on the uh what's it called?
Like he has some sort of like series of videos that are coming out where people holiday videos. I think they have come or come up today, maybe. Yeah, I think they come out today. So I did a frozen, like a frozen series of videos. Uh-huh.
One comes out every week. When's when's the one that I'm doing coming out? I believe January 11th. Some holiday. Some holiday.
January 11th. When's epiphany? I don't even make epiphany. I don't even make epiphany. Well, you're people need a whole year to prepare to make your thing, probably.
Yeah, the well, no, I mean it's simple. I made it simple. It just freeze grapefruit juice. It's like a freaking aqua veg granita with grapefruit juice and like and like in an acid. And like, you know, you stir it and then like, you know, you put the pluche in it, because you know.
Did you uh acid that grapefruit? I think so. Come on. I I might I might have just added some lemon. I don't remember.
I tried to make it as bone, not but you're not a bonehead people out there. I'm not calling you boneheads, but I tried to make it as you know a normal mo as possible for people that they could just go make it. All you need to own is a ziploc, people, and aqua vieat. Although I even told them you can make it with gin. It's vastly inferior with gin.
But you know, go buy linny. Which I oh, so okay, we're doing linny. I mean, yeah. Well, what if they don't have access to linny? What if they have the other one?
Whatever, man. Whatever. All right. Uh so before we get into the fact that you guys are here, which is you have a book coming out in May. Give them the title of the book.
Tropical Standard. That's the title of the book. And the slug, give me the slug underneath. So that so the the the full title is Tropical Standard, a cocktail techniques and reinvented recipes. And the whole the concept is kind of merging the streams.
It's third stream cocktail. It's it's bringing together the craft cocktail revival, the tropical drinks canon, and the cutting edge techniques that I associate with people like Dave Arnold. Oh, that jerk. Yeah. Uh we'll get into this in a minute, but we don't want to miss a time to to to shoot the breeze because uh we it was Thanksgiving.
So uh what do you what do you guys do for for cooking? I hear John heard you were sick. Yeah, it's not fun. Um, yeah, I mean, ate well Thursday night, but then sick for the next two or three days and was not able to enjoy all the delicious leftovers, which is my favorite meal of the year. So I was very sad.
I once again anticipated not having leftovers because I am no longer the child. I'm not at my and I'm not going to my mom's house. So I was like, I'm not getting any leftovers out of this. And I didn't get any liftovers out of this. So before I went to Thanksgiving, I put a turkey in my in uh uh 15 pounder in my fridge.
And when I got home, next day, I cut that sucker up and I low temp the breast for sandwiches. I braised the the dark meat for like hash and whatnot. I mean you made two order uh leftovers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah. You don't you you don't need you only need the presentation once a year. So you didn't make the sides and all that. You just made the turkey for sandwiches. I'd already made stuffing so many times this year because of the Chang thing that I didn't, but I did make more cranberry sauce.
Because Dax loves that stuff. The uh I don't know how I felt about the skin thing. Was that would you do that again? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I don't know. I feel like I want the skin around my turkey. But there was no turkey. What do you mean?
What we're 86ing the skin? I had my presentation turkey. Okay. At Thanksgiving. Okay.
And from here on out, I want turkey breast sandwiches. Okay. I want last night. I I I took my uh my toll soats and I made uh I made like a Thanksgiving uh stone bowl. Yum delicious really good.
Oh my god, so good. Dax was like, this is my favorite stone bowl ever. You know what I mean? It's the right, you know, the rice and the uh always with an egg on the top, right? The rice, the uh chopped up uh dark meat that I had braised, and what else did I put on?
Carrots, peas, like you know, pop pie stuff, a lot of the gravy because I had a boatload of gravy because I had the carcass, right? And I think scallions and fried onions. Yum. Sounds really good. And you can't lose with that, right?
It's not a losing proposition. Uh yeah. And so then I had the skin and I was like, I'm gonna cook this so that it gets real thick and crunchy. And I did. And you know what I you know what uh the other side I made?
Mashed potatoes. But I made it the way my mom used to when I was a kid. I put carrots in it. And Dax was like, I don't like this. He didn't even eat it.
So he doesn't know whether he likes the taste of it or not. No. He doesn't eat anything orange because he thinks I'm slipping pumpkin in there, and that's the one thing he's allowed to say he doesn't like. What's the thought process with the carrots and the potatoes? Is it to just give like some of that sweetness?
Or are they mashed up as well? It's just like little bits of carrot. Mashed. Mashed. So you mashed them together.
Yeah. Yeah, my mom used to do that all the time when we were kids. I never heard of that. I always had it with fish. It's good, right?
Yeah. Is it just the sneak vegetables in the case? It tastes good. It's got a nice little sweetness. Yeah.
So the the extra little sugar. Yeah. Yeah, it tastes good. I always thought mashed potatoes were. Nature's sugar carrots.
You always saw what? Mashed potatoes are a little boring. No, no, no. Here's what you got to do. First of all, first of all, you gotta mash them right.
What do you how do you mash your potatoes? I have people for that. Okay. What do they use? You know, I well, I think also I grew up in an era where my mother, as a professional woman, was a fan of uh, you know, labor-saving cooking, even though she was a gourmet cook in the sort of Julia Child Time Life International cookbook kind of stuff.
You know, she made amazing stuff, but she would not waste time mashing a potato. So I feel like there were certain maybe that box of flakes was sometimes involved, you know. That's more of a baking ingredient. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh I just I don't know. But I mean they can be good, but I don't obsess over them the way some people do. I'm thinking the carrots thing sounds better. I like carrots more than I like potatoes. So when I was a kid, so my mom, uh mom, mom's a doctor, so one time she got called away to a conference and she was gone for like, I don't know, a better part of a week.
So I'm there with my my stepfather and I'm trying to make food, right? So this is like junior high or high school, and I'm like, I'm gonna make those carrot mashed potatoes. Only I had never made mashed potatoes before. So I didn't know what's the car. What's the cardinal sin, John, when you're when you're making mashed anything vegetable?
Don't I don't know. Under undercooking. Oh, undercooking. Okay. I thought you were gonna say over mashing, but yeah, no.
Yeah, you turn it to glue, right? But you can cook it almost forever. Yes. And and it's fine. Yes.
As long as you dry it out a little bit before you and you don't, you know, glue it. You know what I mean? So I didn't cook it enough. And I was sitting there and I was like, why don't these things mash? Too hard.
They're too hard. I didn't like I was like, this is first. I think I made the pieces really big. So you know how like long it takes to boil a potato if you don't cut it into small pieces? Yeah.
Yeah. And and I was like, this is not right. I was like, thanks for coming home, mom. You know, when she came home and I made her make it, but then Gerard, my stepfather has never let me forget this. It's like that was your first failed experiment.
Yeah, yeah. Well, the first one that I let them have though, what like much earlier I used to do uh I used to make garlic toast all the time. So I would take, you know, wonder bread was a 70s or whatever, right? I would like put butter on it, and then I would just take garlic powder and ching chunk chung and then put it in the toaster. Because it's like the analog of cinnamon toast.
You used to make cinnamon toast, right? It's like cheap Texas toast, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the 70s. And so one time I dumped almost like a whole bottle of garlic powder on it, and I ate it.
I was fine with it, but my dad would not let me sit even in the back seat of the Gran Torino station wagon. I had to sit in like the very also the 70s, like no one cared if I had a seatbelt. He basically like duct taped me to the rear window of that Gran Torino. You know what I mean? To like to go around.
Anyway, that was also failed in their eyes. I was fine with it, you know. Just before we go into full tangents, we forgot to plug MoFad, Giving Tuesday. Today's giving Tuesday, and later on, we're gonna uh plug uh later on on the Instagram, right? Uh Quinn, we're gonna plug uh Jacques Papin's foundation because we told him he would.
But right now, I wanna plug Mofad. And even though most likely you're listening to this on some Tuesday other than Giving Tuesday, you can still give, even if it's not Giving Tuesday. Did you know that, John? I I I did. Yeah.
Yeah. But that's still an excellent point to bring up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mofad.org. Can we somehow, by the way, speaking of Jacques Papin next week, can we like mail him a chicken? I want to see how fat 'cause Jacques Papin used to do this demo, right? First of all, Jacques Papin just had a book come out called like Chicken Live. The Art of the Chicken or something.
The Art of the Chair Chicken Lives, or like, you know, the life of a chicken or like, you know, chicken around the clock or something like this. Something with chicken in it. And it's watercolors that Jacques Papin has done of chicken with like anecdotes about chicken. First of all, Jacques Papin from say say Bourgon Bresse with it with the with the with the good accent. Bourgon Bress.
Yeah. Which is anyone who knows chickens knows, like, you want a fancy French chicken, that's where you go. So he comes from the land of chicken, right? In like Kentucky. What?
Well, in America, you'd be surprised to know if you're not fully dipped in chicken history, where do you think Chicken Central in the United States is? Not right now, but where is the where is the genesis of the American Rhode Island Reds? Yeah, uh that that that's the thing, but where is it where is it? Where is it? It's it it's it's it's uh I'll give you a hint, it's a peninsula.
Oh, it's peninsula. No one's gonna guess it. Be very surprised. Florida. No, but that is a peninsula.
No offense, Florida, but if we cut you off, no one would notice. I'm just kidding, I'm just messing with you. I love you, Florida. Especially South Data. Easy target.
Especially Fa Hey, listen, we're gonna be talking tropical drinks later, and like, you know, can't have tropical drinks without Florida and parts of California. Anyway, anyone? Anyone? The upper peninsula of Michigan. No, although that's an interesting choice, because there is good uh very good agriculture there.
Uh no, it's Delmore. Uh Delmarva. Del Marva. Yeah, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia. That's where all those three states share border.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's that's where that's where chickens were invented. That's where the modern chicken was invented.
Without without them. Is that reflected in Jacques Papon's uh watercolors? I don't know. I have been always. I've never had a quote unquote Maryland fried chicken, but apparently that's a thing.
But it has to do with the fact that you're getting the chicken from one of the like a better farms in that area. I think so, yeah. But I've never had Maryland fried chicken. What's that other weird fried chicken that uh we've never had? The one from like Oh, Cleveland, right?
I don't know. It's some we it's some weird, it's some small town. It's a small town, and I'm gonna I don't know Ohio though, right? Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Ohio, Stas, how is Ohio Thanksgiving?
Um good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How is it? Any mishaps?
Well, yeah. Pat family bought um pre-cooked sides and pre-cut chicken from the um I mean turkey from the uh Kroger, and then they just heated it all up in the microwave. And yeah. Wow. Yeah, okay.
Uh wait, what was the first pre-cooked? Pre-cooked what? Eyes. Sides. Sides and jerkings.
Oh, sides. Well, you know what? It's more about the company. It's a big box Thanksgiving. Honestly, like at this point in my life, like, as long as I have the comfort foods, I don't care whether Kroger cooks it or not.
You know what I mean? Like, I like sitting around with the people and having the food, but I must have the requisite proper foods, or I go home and make them myself. Or we go to Boston Market. Do they still have Boston Market? I don't know.
They have it all the size. I've seen I've seen one. Yeah? Yeah. Do you know what's a delicious one of those things that if you never honey baked ham, actually, I like a honey baked ham.
Oh, yeah, very good. Yeah. That's a rare find if you're driving around and you see a honey baked ham store. Well, you know what the thing about honey baked ham is? I'm always driving around on a Sunday.
They're all closed on Sundays. You cannot buy a honey baked ham on a Sunday. Well, you gotta plan in advance. You gotta go Saturday. Yeah, but I I'm not a I'm not a ham planner.
I mean, I am with with aged you know hams. That that is gonna haunt you, Dave. You are a ham planner. I am a ham planner for eight for for aged hands, but I'm not a ham planner for for a hunt, uh, you know. I if I say honey baked ham, I want that thing to expose.
You want it like immediately, that's uh that's a whim purchase. Yeah, you know what the easiest freaking honey baked ham from New York City? We had eight, we got eight, over eight million people in this freaking place, right? No honey baked ham stores. I want everyone to think about that.
You have to go to Milford, Connecticut. Milford. Milford. Not on a Sunday. Not on a freaking Sunday.
Does Milford even get the Metro North? Yes. Is that a rent a car situation? No. You can get there to Metro North.
You have to walk across I 95, which actually is not hard because the traffic is stopped. It's way too hard. One way to do the other way, you're slipping a honey ham. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Anyways, so yeah. I went to the honey baked ham store. I used to only ever pass that say something already. I used to only pass the honey-baked ham on a Sunday, right? And so I was like, oh, closed.
It's right off the highway, right by this nasty mall. And uh it's in San Zooom's store, though. So I walked in there once. I finally made it on a non Sunday. I think I was taking Dax on a on a tour of a college, something like that.
I was like, I've been waiting 20 years to come to this freaking honey baked ham, but you're closed on Sundays. He's like, every Sunday, closed. And then I said to the lady behind the thing, I'm like, I've never been to the honey baked ham, but I've always wanted to have a honey baked ham. Should I get the what's the difference between the one with the bone and without the bone? She's like, well, they're the same.
And the other lady was like, oh no, no, no. No. No. Get the one with the bone. I was like, okay.
All right. And if you should go to Honey Baked Ham and buy a honey baked ham, also buy their bean soup mix because you have to, and then you can reverse engineer their bean soup mix, which you make with the bone when it's done. That's all I'm just gonna say about that. Of course, he didn't get one, so it doesn't matter. Well, not not Thanksgiving.
Although, you know, like uh my mom used to have to make ham on Thanksgiving because my grandpa would never eat turkey. He would he would say, Grandpa, you don't eat turkey? Foul. Chicken, foul. Anything, any bird, he would just say that those words over to you again and again.
Yeah, they're they are foul. Yeah. Anytime you handed him a mushroom, toadstool. And he would just say the same crap all the time. So, like, you know, my mom eventually got sick of it and would always make him some crap that he would eat.
Anyway. What would he say when he got something he did like? Nothing. Right. So you know you're doing well.
Silence is approval. I mean, you know, he's he's one of those kind of, you know, that kind of generation of butt head. You know what I mean? Uh what about you, Jack? How was your Thanksgiving?
Fine. I was in Connecticut at my brother's. Um, he's, you know, first first time at his house. He's got two young kids. So there was uh it was good.
Like you said, tough company. Oh, so you're saying that they ruined the turkey. That's what that we're trying to read between the lines here. Turkey was runned. Uh it was actually rotisserie chicken.
Rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chicken. Did you at least have turkey flavored gravy? Yep. Yes.
Okay. Okay. Who cares about you know who cares about what? Who cares about what? I do.
I can speak for one person. I care about it. That's I know. Yeah. Well, you said who, as though you didn't know anyone that cared about it.
You know at least one person who cares about it. You know? It was more scary about it. Yeah, yeah. Rhetorical.
Oh. Oh, oh, you're telling me I shouldn't care about it. Well, you're wrong. I had to care about it. The turkey, like, it's one of those things.
I love it so much. And it's so American. Wacalote. Like, you know, Ben Franklin was right. Crap on the eagle.
Who needs an eagle? Although they are impressive birds. Eagles are impressive birds. What about you, Joe? Yeah, it was a tough one.
Uh little boy was there eating dinner. I got a truffle. I got a white truffle. Oh. Oh, yeah, you told me.
Yeah, I spent a fortune on a white truffle from Pied Monte. It was del freaking delicious. What'd you do with it? Did you egg it up? Was it did you have a little bit of a little bit of a little bit?
But we didn't egg we had eggs the next day. Okay. Eggs definitely the next day. Uh we did over our we did with with our over our mashed potatoes and a mac and cheese. I had to do both.
I was gonna just do one, but the whole place was so fragrant. It was delicious. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was really good. Uh we didn't do turkey.
We did, but we always we've been doing bird uh birds. Uh we've been doing chickens for like probably 10, 12 years. Yeah. My wife does an amazing bird. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I uh do you do you have a truffle slicer? Of course I do. Nice.
I I I I I uh Yeah, it became truffles became a uh kind of a uh tradition in the last five years. So I went ahead and bought a very nice one. Oh nice. Yeah. I was given two of them.
I have very little opportunity to shave a truffle. Oh that's it's um that cut they're they're worth it. There does make a really nice even cut. So when you're at the table, do you like look at the other person as you're shaving and then like have them like put money in a basket for each that's my favorite thing at a restaurant? I don't know.
I'm uh yeah, I was I wasn't wearing steel gloves, but I'm definitely not gonna cut my palm open. Those things are very sharp. Yeah, I like my favorite, my favorite thing to watch when when I, you know, you go to like a place like Del Posto back in the day, right? Is to watch a couple on a date and then like see the server come out with the truffle, right? And then you're like, he's going to price shame this date into a billion dollars worth of truffle, right?
And like someone like me, I can't be shamed. So they're like, one slice, I'm like, done pour, get out. You know what I mean? But then they go choot choot choop, and then they look over at the person, and the person has to give them the nod, but they don't want to be like, no more, no more. Oh my God.
Don't you love that? I feel like there's potential to rewrite the pepper boy sketch that Dana Carvey was in in SNL, but based on truffles, right? Is that the freshly ground peppered? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like I feel like there's an updated version of it, but it's involved. And maybe maybe the price shaming thing. Yeah. Yeah. Stoz, you like to see someone get price-shamed into a billion dollars worth of truffles, don't you?
It's hilarious. Uh I've I haven't seen it, I've never seen it happen. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing.
Because it's one of those things where loving the idea of it. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, it's a great thing. First of all, like, don't be don't be ashamed that you don't have the money to spend on all of those shades of truffles. Like, just say no, wave them off.
Be proud that you can wave them off. Don't get shamed into something you can't afford. Or you reverse it and you say, I have self-control. I I understand that there's only so much truffle for the restaurant. Oh, you're so nice.
Yeah, you become a martyr. Yeah, yeah, yeah. More like Joe, you bring your own. Can you imagine? Can you imagine?
You wave off the dude and then you're like, and you're like, it's like that person who carries the salt shaker with them and like, you maybe put your own salt on. John, what would you do if someone came into Temperance, ordered something, and then like whipped out a truffle and started shaving it? Impressed, I think. I mean, fair. Is there such a thing as a shavage fee?
Yeah, that was nice. It just has a gorkage for truffles. Just like there's a cake cutting fee, yeah. Why not? Oh, there's you guys have a cake cutting fee?
We don't, but we should. I hate cutting cakes. What is the why are you allowed to do that at all? Like, why am I allowed to bring a cake in? Because you're gonna bring in the rest of the party.
We did that at Roberta's, remember? Yeah, yeah. We did a lot of things at Robertus. Like, we wouldn't give us they wouldn't give us arugula, and so we brought our own arugula. This is not a joke.
This is right. We didn't. Yeah, they I remember there's an Instagram video guys doing that. Well, you see, it's on our Instagram. We truffled a pizza.
They would never give us anything we wanted. Yeah. They would never give us anything we wanted. Like, we were like. Now you're just defending.
No, no, no. I'm not sure. So you were truffle shaming the restaurant. No, we we knew, we knew that we were doing something wrong, and we did it anyway. That I'm not saying we knew we were doing something wrong, but it was kind of a protest.
It all started when we used to see the arugula salads come out, and they wouldn't put arugula on the pizza. That's where it all started. Okay? And we're like, Nastasi was like, how about you just we'll order the freaking salad, hold the freaking salad, a la Jack Nicholson and five easy pieces. Hold the salad, and then between your knees, that's the line from Jack Nicholson, five easy pieces.
Go watch it if you me whatever. One of the best films. Yeah, go watch it. Anyway, I want you to hold the chicken. Anyway, uh and put the arugula on the pizza.
They wouldn't do it. We're like, charge us extra, charge us infinity. Because it was, you know, the it's Voldemort Network was paying for it anyway. So we're like, you know, charge infinity. And they wouldn't do it, right, Stas.
And that's where our that's where we're like, well, the hell with it. These guys don't follow any rules anyway. This whole place is put together with spackle and bubblegum and gonna fall apart, someone's gonna die. I love the place, by the way, but like that's just the that's just the fact of the thing. You know what I mean?
Stas, am I wrong about this? Yeah. And as we previously established, Dave has a lot of Ziploc bags, so don't test him. Yeah, yeah. He will use the full full collection.
Um I'm uh well, my house is zippy central, zippy zippy zippy. Uh speaking of zippies as opposed to vacuums, we ever hear back from uh A Nova uh Quinn or no uh no so we had we had the ANOVA vacuum machine, and I want to talk about it, you know, because they have an awesome Black Friday deal going on, but I want to wait for them to respond to some of the questions I had. So sorry, I'm not gonna tell you anything about it. You know what I mean? Right, Quinn?
Okay. Anyway. So wow. So uh, John. Yeah.
Legally, I know that we used to we did it. Many people done it. We did it at XCON cakes. Legally, though, outside food's always a problem. If you charge money, it's okay.
I have no idea. I think that's just more to like discourage people from doing in a way because it is such a pain in the neck. Because it really requires your full attention. You know, you have to get the bane filled with hot water to cut through the cake and then lay it. Like it's it's a time consuming endeavor.
Just come out with a glove and cut it, cut it like chop cut it. That would make things a lot easier, yeah. But I mean, if the DOH came in, could they hose you? I don't know. That's a really good question.
We've got some elves walking by. No, no, it's not Santa Con time, is it? Is it the elves or here? The white elves? Yeah.
Oh my god. Oh my god. I don't have a sound effect for that. Oh, geez, Louise. Yeah, I got that next week.
Oh my god, I'll pay $50 to anyone who goes out and leg swipes one. What? You know, like uh, what was that game where you like get to get like in Tekken where you get down and you like swipe their legs out? Oh yeah. Swipe sweep the legs.
Sweep the legs. But uh they had the candy canes in their hands. They essentially have a third leg, so I don't think that would work. Yeah, they they saw you coming on that one, Dave. Those things are weapons.
I I was assuming they were gonna try to hit you with that, that they're doing some sort of like Yoshimitsu situation with that thing, and they're gonna like hit you with it. Anyround anyone who's in a costume in New York City, I think it's an aggressive move. I think that something is like something's amiss. Although I guess it is Rock Center. It's kind of the territory.
I don't know. Santa Con's the worst thing that's ever happened. You guys, you've never done SantaCon, have you? Please say no. No.
Please, anyone who can hear us, don't do SantaCon. Dave very quickly, Dave, uh, as an aside, I was responsible for shaming SantaCon out of coming to Bushwick. They were trying to move to Bushwick, and at the time I used the platform of uh nighttime heritage radio to kind of get all the local bar owners to shaming them away. And that's a good move. That's a good move.
No, no small child needs to see a 21 year old puking Santa on the side of the street. No one, no child needs to see that. You know? The worst. Anyway.
Uh unless it was like that scene in Twelve Monkeys. I don't remember. Is that that Brad Pitt movie? Uh was it Brad Pitt? Yeah.
Twelve Monkeys was he's an amazing looking man. Can I say that? Brad Pitt. All the Santa Clauses that keep coming out and scaring the kids is awesome. Yeah.
Styles, how old was Brad Pitt in that in that in that movie with uh that that Tarantino movie with the Manson stuff? How how old was he in that when he did that? Like 50, right? I don't know. I don't know.
Look fantastic. Once upon a time in Hollywood? Yeah. Looks fantastic, that guy. Yeah, it was only a few years ago.
Yeah. All right. So let's get to this book. Now that we've uh appropriately shot the breeze for half of the show. Uh let's get to let's get to the book.
So first of all, I think uh you know, as you said, Ben, like it's kind of weird that in the and and let's get this do this question before we get to the book because it's uh it it goes to the uh someone asked it where who asked the question about the word tiki? Someone asked the question about the word tiki. Where is it? Do you guys know? Can you find it for me, Quinn?
Hmm. Uh I don't have the document open right now. One second. Anyway, somebody asked it, and so we'll get to it eventually, but yeah, it's a very specific thing. People have been moving away from tiki.
It's an interesting time. So when you s we say tropical, like tropical is kind of the more modern term that encompasses what's it it's a it's a let's just get it out of the way now. Yeah. Well, you know, I think some people erroneously say that that uh tropical is like the euphemism for tiki that it's replacing the term. I don't I don't see it that way.
For me, tropical drinks are a big tent, and tiki is one slice of that. Whereas when we're talking about tropical drinks, we're talking about drinks that have a Caribbean heritage that you know isn't only through the lens of Trader Vic and Don Beach. Uh, you know, these are drinks that come from Cuba, that come from Jamaica, and a lot of the things that Garrett had worked with, is more with those direct sources, as well as obviously the the guys from California and and Florida and other places. So the idea is that lots of things can be really tropical drinks, are about celebrating tropical produce, which is you know, amazing to taste, and also the you know, the traditions of the people who lived in the tropical regions and the things that they're doing. So I don't see it as a replacement for tiki.
I think it's just a bigger it's a bigger thing to talk about. Right. So but then before we get into the the the book, so then how did like is there a disentangling between, for instance, love of the 50s and 60s, love of kitsch culture, and like this style of drink, because those those cultures have been merged for so long, but I don't I don't even know kind of what the current thinking is of like that style. Like, are people still listening to like surf music and where does that fit in with modern like culture and with this culture where like individuals? Yeah, Garrett can talk about that because I know Garrett is very knowledgeable about those things, but the book itself, tropical Standard, it's not it's not a kitsch culture book.
Oh, I yeah, that we should get that out of the way for the case. We talk about we're talking about the classic drink, you know, experiences, which are nothing to do with how you dress or what music you listen to. Um, but obviously, yeah, there's a certain I mean, there's a certain kind of people that I call them like Cold War reenactors. You know, they really want to go back to the 50s and they want the drinks of the 50s, they want the close of the 50s. Right.
Sometimes they want, you know, the politics of the 50s, right? And that's the problem. That's not really what we're coming from. We're trying to celebrate these things that are actually some of them are a lot older than that. Um, you know, things that were from the 1890s and 1910s and 1930s.
And um, you know, I think the the cultural part of it, we want to focus on the Caribbean cultural aspects of it, not just the kind of reenacting, you know. I also think the point of the book is to con like the issues that we have now when dealing with cocktail culture is that there's so much information out there. So it's contextualizing cocktails and having the ability to like say that this drink echoes so many other things. So there are there are drinks in this book that talk about, you know, something that occurred in Jerry Thomas' time, but also something that Audrey Saunders was doing at the same time at Pega Club that was, you know, contemporaneous to, you know, another tropical drink at the same time. So like all these drinks, I think speak to the volume of information that's out there and how like, you know, nothing is in a bubble, really.
Like, you can't just say that, you know, a pre-prohibition drink, you know, didn't have an impact on, you know, what Don the Beachcomber was doing, and it doesn't have an impact on, you know, what a nomad bartender is doing in 2012. And I think we're really good about, you know, laying out the whole timeline and giving people a lot of context as to like why these decisions are and then what the changes are that we made to this these cocktails and like what the thinking is behind them. Right. Well, I mean, what's interesting is is that and this is what you don't see is that the book is very, and you know, you personally, uh, very steeped in the history of spirits, the history of the places, the history of the drinks, right? The history of flavor combinations, but also in kind of the modern application of them and kind of how they've evolved and where they might go.
And so, like, that's the piece of the puzzle that I think, you know, Ben, to your point, like, as opposed to doing like a reenactment, right? Where, you know, you're just trolling eBay for stuff so that you can be a better, you know, reenactor, right? Is that this topic seems incredibly ripe for uh using new techniques because the ingredients like need a lot, you need there's a lot of work that needs to be done to beat these ingredients into perfect cocktail shape, right? And there's a lot of things that can be done with these ingredients that hasn't been done by the community that's interested in either the historical tropical drinks or the modern ones. And so it's kind of this niche that's like, hello, and this book kind of fills that, but also doesn't shun the history, which I think is obviously doesn't shun the history.
Very, very kind of interesting line to the case. Well, I think I think obviously, you know, I think the point is these drinks were lost for so long in terms of we didn't really know what the recipes were until people, mostly Jeff Barry w did the research and through many fortuitous events, found out a lot of these recipes and published them. Uh when I want to, you know, recipes from Don Beach and and Trader Vic, mostly Don Beach whose recipes were never published, uh, you know, professionally, unlike Trader Vic, who did a bunch of books. But I so I think the idea was because we didn't know how to do them the way they were done then, when we had an idea of how to do them, we we wanted to replicate them. We wanted to do them the way they were done in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s.
And I think that's great because people needed to know what it was like. But of course, it's also impossible to really replicate things from then because the ingredients were all, you know, the the rums were different, citrus is different, everything's different. So if you even use that original recipe, and of course there's also some interpretation of to what that original recipe was, but even if you use that original recipe, you're not doing it the same. So I think what Garrett was able to do is try to think, you know, what's the intention and how can we get closer to the intention even if we do things a little differently in the in the technique? Spirit of the law versus letter of the law, you know.
Right, right. Well, uh right. You're not not an originalist. Yeah, exactly. But I mean you know, the fun thing is is that you would always try to go as far out of your way as possible to see what the target was they were aiming at.
And I think the thing that most people don't ever do is like um, did I tell you about this the other day? I had to make these uh historic quote unquote Manhattans uh from uh yeah, I had to make these Manhattans. I the the first published Manhattan recipes, bizarre recipes, right? And you know, a modern bartender looks at these recipes and I'm like, this is filth. You know what I mean?
Yeah, this sucks. And so you don't make them. I made them. They were delicious. They weren't in Manhattan.
They were delicious. You know what I mean? So uh what was different about it? Oh, well, first of all, one of them had uh one of them had driver mooth. And probably a lot of vermouth.
And simple. A crap ton. Yeah. It was it was basically it was one was more driver mouth than whiskey with a little bit of simple. And the other one was uh one one sweet, sweet and um and whiskey.
Both good. Both real good. You know, not a Manhattan. Good. Anyway, uh I digress.
But my point is is that you you always are like, what is it that they were actually making and doing? And you taste it and you're like, oh. And then you can decide what you want to do, but you can't, you never dismiss out of hand something that somebody did back. No, I don't make edits until I've made the original. And, you know, try to figure out what they were going for.
I mean, a good example in the book is we try to recreate the navy grog that was served at the Trader Vicks locations, which that is a recipe that is still under lock and key. Um there's a lot of interpretation as to what the syrup is in it. Some people say it has coal nut, allspice, whatever. That's a whole separate issue. But the whole point I'm bringing this drink up for is that that drink is about the grapefruit.
It's about the grapefruit popping, it's about it being a like nice, sour, refreshing grapefruit drink. And the only way really to achieve that is to use acid adjusting and make the grapefruit the star of the drink. And people that have that cocktail, we serve a version of it at Sunken Harbor Club called the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. It's basically the navy grog that's in tropical standard. And people don't know that I've made those changes to it and that there is that technique.
And I think that's when I think we're on the same page with this. You know, it was very much the same way at existing, where like the work should sort of be invisible to the average person. And someone should just pick this up and be like, this is an amazing navy grog. They shouldn't be like, so what'd you do with this? It seems like there's something different about this, you know.
You know, maybe a little bit, but I I like I don't want the work showing when somebody's experiencing the drink. Yeah. What's that pounder you served me? Oh, yeah. No, Dave was really into the Pim's Tropical.
Amazing. God. Which is we have a different version of it in the book. Um that's a little bit like easier for the home bartender. But um the Pim's Tropical is a great, I mean, that's again, that kind of speaks to the larger uh tent of tropical drinks versus like faux, you know, Polynesian or tiki is is um, you know, that definitely falls into like things that people are actually drinking in hot weather, you know.
Um and it's yeah, it's just so refreshing that cocktail. Do you have that one, John? Uh yeah, I think so. Yeah, because after you pounded the first one, I think I had to order my own. I couldn't not put the drink down.
It's ridiculous. I like that Dave was upset that not every table had one. Well, it's like if someone makes this product, right? Everyone should have the product. Yeah.
It's like, you know, if you, you know, imagine if you know you had invented the bicycle and everyone was walking around with something with square wheels on it. And you're like, bike, get a bike, a bike, you know? Not that your other products are square wheels. Right. And that's what I'm not saying.
They should try it. Um, no, let's get to some questions and then we'll get back to the the general. But are we are we giving the general p correct picture of the book? Well, I think so. I think you know, I think the point is uh you wrote an amazing book, Liquid Intelligence, right?
And you implemented a lot of ideas in your bars through that. I've I first learned about acid adjusting at existing conditions. I think acid adjusting served post-dates, liquid intelligence. It's uh you talk about some things that are related, but you don't really lay it out. That really happened at existing conditions.
But I mean those techniques like acid adjusting is such a simple thing to do and makes such an amazing impact, especially in tropical drinks, which you know, every time you add another juice, you're adding mostly dilution, right? Right. So it solves that pretty much the main problem of tropical drinks, which is you don't have to have flavor and dilution going, you know, in parallel. Uh so those kind of techniques and court cordializing juices. No cordials are so.
And so the uh the idea behind the book is really to explain these techniques through recipes. It isn't a traditional recipe book, which is just an encyclopedia of recipes. It's you're learning recipes, but they're really there to show you how to use these techniques and then how to use those techniques in in drinks of your own. I'll say this now because I'll probably forget later. When does it go on pre-order?
It's coming out in May, May 15th. You can pre-order it right now. If you go on Instagram, you can find our our page at Tropical Standard Book. If you go on Facebook, you can find us at Tropical Standard, and there's a link there where you can pre-order it. It does come out in May.
But pre-orders are really helpful, you know, they really get get the fires going. Yeah. Can you pre-order through Kitchen Arts, John? I don't I think so. Well, I don't know.
I think we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll have to work on that. But here's the thing about uh pre-ordering people. If if there's a good amount of pre-orders, it means that the publisher will do a bigger print run.
And then what happens is when a book comes out, if there's a like a decent print run, it'll get a it'll get better placement in the in the in on the shelves because people be like, oh, there's a lot of pre-orders for this book. They'll put the book up in better places, and that will cause it to sell more. So you pre-orders are good. Yeah, exactly. And appreciate it.
Jump on what Ben was saying. I think a a bit like the quick pitch that I give to everybody for the book is that it's technique oriented. And there's a lot of books that deal with these types of recipes that don't go into like how do you flash blend properly? How do you shake properly? How do you, you know, how do you do frozen properly?
Like, and every single section builds on itself. So the first section is really the nuts and bolts of making a cocktail. Then the next section is talking about well, what are the things that tropical drinks don't do well, like stirred and savory? So we get to build on that. Then later we get into the cordializing and acid adjusting.
And then the final chapter is tributes to all of these older bars using everything that you learned in the previous chapters. So you put it all together. It's kind of like in a video game, the last section is the reward for all the things you've collected is you get to finally use all those things. And you know, we don't necessarily need to explain a lot in that last chapter. It's more about being like kind of romantic and you know fun.
So yeah, it's uh it's it's exciting, it's an exciting way to do a book. And I think, you know, probably scared some of the people that we were pitching. Yeah, well, and well, that's the thing. So, like, well, we'll have you guys guys guys on again when it's like at pub dates so that people can you know get the books and stuff like that. But it's like um the other thing about it that uh is interesting is I I think it's hilarious that you say that you made the recipe like a little easier for the for the the home folks.
When you get this book, you're getting the unfiltered like way to do things, right? And so what I mean by that is is that there is stuff in there that the average you who is hearing this will not do. There are ingredients in it that you might not be able to get, but that's the the joy of it is you don't have to use the all those exact techniques or those exact ingredients, but you're being given the actual thought process so you can see what it means to think this way about drinks, even if you can't find this specific spirit or that spirit. Yeah, we try to give people options, you know, as well. And that's even true with some of the techniques.
Like we talk about using a centrifuge, like this the spinzole, for example, but not everybody has that, so we have an alternative if you don't want to do that way. But I would say nothing in the book is incredibly complicated to do, but almost everything involves preparation. Right. It's not the kind of thing you can just crack the book and make a drink for your friends that minute. You have to to some extent have made some of this there's ingredients to make in advance.
But once you do that, you have them for lots of for lots of purposes. Right. But to me, the joy of that kind of book is actually seeing somebody's thought process, seeing how something is put together, right? It's like, you know, if you read the original French laundry book, for instance, I mean, different styles of book, but if you if you read the original one, and you know, the recipe in there is okay, take the anchovies, take take the salted anchovies, fillet them, soak the soak the fillets in milk for X amount of time, take them out, dry them, and you're like, what? And you're like, but that's the way they do it.
If you want to know how Keller does it, that's how. You know what I mean? And so like. But we actually go a little further than that. I mean, the recipes in this book are actually pretty brief.
But in front of each of those, we have a little essay from one to three pages where we really explain why it's done this way, what's the history of it, what's Garrett's thought process, why these certain ingredients are chosen. Well, that's the fun thing about a bar as opposed to a restaurant, or the working bar recipes is that in a bar, the touches at go time have to be intensely minimal because you got to get a bunch of drinks out, but all the prep can be, you know, so like all the stuff beforehand, knowing why the recipe works a certain way, knowing the ingredients and all that, like that's where most of the work in a bar, at least in my experience, is. You know what I mean? And I did workshop most of these recipes during COVID, either in an apartment in New York or in South Carolina. So I do think I'm like, it's it's semi reasonable to ask people to make these things.
But again, but my point is I did it in very hard conditions, you know. Anyone who does this will wow their friends and family. And it's not that much harder than than doing it the normal way. And you can try look also like here's another thing I say. Uh again, my my views of things are whatever, they're what they are.
But like, if you if the recipe is in there, believe me, it works. You know what I mean? Like, believe me, it's gonna taste good if you make it as written. Um The Beach Governor Negroni is in there. Well, we have a quote.
We have a question on that. You want to talk about it? Because uh someone said uh, oh, I can't find anything in the right. Yeah, I saw one of your listeners has a question about it. Yeah, Patrick McGabe wrote in and says, Hey, can you share the specific technique for the beach comer to grow?
You've been craving one for quite some time. Uh, love the show and sunken harbor. Yeah, thanks. Awesome. All right, so uh you want to go into it there?
Yeah, pre-order the book. Yeah, it's in the book. Um, but I think we can talk about on the air, we can talk about sort of the genesis of it, which was uh at existing conditions. We had when we first opened, we had the lemon cordial, which was used in the portfolio cocktail that uh Jack uh Shram came up with. And I loved the idea of cordialized citrus, it's something that I was already playing with at Slowly Shirley when I was working there, and I was doing a very different version of uh it where I used Oleo and in the book in Tropical Standard, that cordial is now called punch syrup, and um, but the lemon cordial that we used at existing, it was great because it was clarified citrus that you then use like water and make a you know syrup with that and uh citrus peel, and we started doing that with lime core with lime, and I realized it was like I think we could do this with grapefruit and cinnamon and make like a cinnamon syrup with clarified grapefruit.
And I was like, This is gonna solve the problem of Don's mix because the problem, the main issue with Don's mix, which is like the secret ingredient in the zombie, is it's a ton of ton of water in a cocktail. It's like two parts of grapefruit juice to one part of cinnamon. It's not that concentrated, and it's a wonky thing to use. It's not used in a lot of uh classic, you know, cocktails, it's only used in the zombie. And I just took the template of the lemon cordial that was used in the portfolio and made a cinnamon syrup out of clarified grapefruit juice and a little bit of grapefruit peel.
And that's what the Don's Don's mix came out. And then Dave and I just started playing around with it. We didn't, I didn't I didn't intend on creating a Negroni with it. I remember originally we were going to do a rusty nail with it, which then we added another Scotch drink to the menu. So that that area was filled.
And I just thought about, you know, okay, what things like grapefruit and the the big thing in my head was well, yeah, one Negroni's, but two uh the Ray and Ting, which there's a lot of different cocktails in Tropical Standard that uh reference the Ray and Tang, which is a super uh common highball in Jamaica and is very refreshing. It's just you know, Ray and Nephew and Grapefruit Soda. Um but yeah, uh get the book. Uh Sunken Harbor Club uses the Don's mix. It uses it in a sazorak, which we call Don's Dram.
Um it's a pretty badass cocktail. So what uh oh, so yeah, get the book for the exact spec. I'm not gonna give it if you know Garrett's not gonna give it here we make you buy the book, but you can DM you can DM me. Maybe we can get give a little bit out. Um, but the it's also that um the Don's mix is a versatile ingredient uh to do split-based citrus with with other cordials, like you know, a mixture of that and lime cordial in mezcal is great.
Yeah, the mezcal drink you did with it was really good. Yeah. Uh with if there's enough salt involved. We use the Saratoga water with that. It was a mixture of the Hathorn 3 Saratoga water, the Dons mix, and uh lemon quine cord uh lime quine on cordial was uh good.
That's the other thing about the book. There are very few syrups and things, you know, projects that we ask you to make in the book that don't have other applications. And we even make suggestions outside of the book. Like there's uh at the in the first chapter, there's like a mango puree that we give you because mango puree is very expensive to buy. And, you know, we're like, we don't have a recipe for it, but use it in Bellini's, use it in this, you know.
And there's a lot of suggestions to be like this is a starting point for you to make more cocktails with and to then put your own creativity into, you know, which I think is important because I think sometimes people will just follow the book and be like, well, I guess that's all I can do with you know, syrup X. And yeah, the book has eighty-four of Garrett's recipes, a lot of which are historically based, some of which are more his own creations. But yeah, it's not just about that. It's about using these ideas to to do your own stuff. Right.
Well, that's why that's why I'm saying that it's like it's like if you read it carefully, it's a way to think. You know what I mean? Yeah. A way to think, a way to proceed uh on working with uh with flavor. Uh Jack Rieger writes Super fans of the Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale have told me about uh the grandfather barrel, a barrel of rum left over from catering that is aged in the restaurant's fridge.
My aged in quotes probably right. Anyway, oh, is it in a real barrel? Yeah, keep going. Yeah, no, I have to. Have you had uh a grandfather barrel and do you ever do you experiment with aging tropical drinks?
Is the grandfather barrel all hype or is there a benefit to aging citrus forward cocktails? Wait, they do it with leftover cocktail, or they do it with leftover rum. I think the idea is it's the whole thing. Right. So so Ben and I, we we interviewed the GM of the Mai Kai for the day.
Who's really helped? So the as it was Garrett's talking about the last chapter of the book, it talks about you know the classic uh bars and the classic bartender. So Mariano Liquidini at the Mai Kai, is somebody that we profile heavily. And uh Have you had the Grand Grandfather? So originally the the rumor was that they have their own rums that they age for this and it's great and what have you.
The the curtain has kind of fallen down a little bit on the mystery of the grandfather barrel. He is correct. It is from what I gathered talking to him and talking to other regulars that are there, is that I think what happens is they batch a lot of the barrels, like for you know, private events. So it's not bar, it's not bar mat bingo. No, it's not barmat bingo, but I'm pretty sure it's an old batch that then they give to people.
And who knows why somebody originally wanted it? Maybe there was somebody that had acid reflux that was like, I like the older one because it's less citrusy, like who knows. But the one thing that is interesting and it and it I that I took away from the grandfather barrel, and I've seen it at other, you know, older tiki bars like the Tiki T and whatnot. And I use this at Sunken Harbor Club, and it's in Tropical Standard, is if you want to freshen up something that doesn't like it's sort of balanced but needs like a little extra zhuz. Uh when I was served the grandfather barrel, it had a couple of like spent lime shells on the top.
And I think the idea was that they were trying to restore some of like the broken down lime oils that had gone away. And it it was interesting. It's like what you think of the cordial based stuff too. You peel peel on cordial, peel on cordial all day. Yeah, like if you're running a bar and not using lime peel or lime oil in some way, you're wasting so much of your lime dollar.
Like that is that is just stuff you were throwing in the garbage. Like you're throwing money in the garbage if you're not using that. But yeah, the Grandfather barrel um did yeah, I it was fine. I wouldn't recommend it over the regular one. And um when when did they do when did they start doing it?
So they're it's above 20% ABV. So it's not diluted. It's like it's it's batch pre it's pre-diluted it's apparently old barrel batch, I don't know how long. Uh is this something they started doing like 30 years ago or like 15 years ago? They probably regularly would s have it for events because they have a private event space that I think they're demolishing now.
But um if you like rum barrels, the Sunken Harbor Club has one on the menu and uh it is definitely the staff's one of the staff's favorite drinks. So you should go on the book as well. Yeah. It's the same recipe and it's delicious. Yeah.
Well you should always go to Sunken Harbor anyway. Really, really, really should. Uh okay. Daener writes and says what music goes best with Garrett style drinks. Yeah.
Uh um I've been sounds like the surf. Yeah no I've been putting together like a pretty long playlist of what I play. All shellac all albini music. Exactly. Yeah nothing all tiny Tim.
Um well that's so weird tiny Tim and and shellac. Oh my God. But uh if you actually want to listen to what I play at the bar, it's this the playlist is on Spotify. It's about 11 hours at this point. It's called Exotica at Rain's Law Room was the original playlist and I can't rename it.
So um but I think the cool thing for me is like I've tried to you know I have so much love for like those original Exotica albums and stuff. But like I've tried to go like sort of outside of those boundaries like looking at you know not just like Basanova but like Mexican garage rock from the 60s and pr you know Peruvian psychedelia and like I think there's a lot of stuff that like has that same kind of feel. It's almost like when you have like a movie soundtrack sometimes the best thing you can do is like play the you know Rolling Stone Street Fighting Man and then sometimes it's better to play you know the thing that was like contemporaneous to Street Fighting Man but is like you know completely obscure and like I think there's a good balance of that with bar playlists is like I mean that was the same case at existing like sometimes it was the the jam was like the weird obscure thing that Damon put on the playlist and then sometimes it was like the song that everyone knows the lyrics to I mean I think the main problem at XCOM because like we gave total control to like who like whoever was doing it right is that um you do need and we didn't always have like the the hook into like everyone right so if you're gonna play you know Nigerian disco which is amazing you know what I mean which I I I I do have on that playlist yeah you need to you know a little bit yeah but you then you need you need to put in something that everybody knows you need to put in something that like someone who's in their 20s will like and something that somebody in their 40s and 50s will like every once in a while you have to keep you have to the the trick with it is to keep bringing everyone back in to the to being at that wanting to drink quickly. Yeah you know what I mean like my favorite thing is to play covers of things that people know but in different styles like um oh god uh on the playlist right now, we have a cover of an I I think it's an Aladdin song, but it's done as surf. So it's like it just sounds like a surf song.
And then like people are like, is this from Aladdin? Yeah. It's like, yeah, or uh little mer it's actually Little Mermaid, that which makes thematically more sense. Yeah. I did manage to fit into Tropical Standard.
We have a reference to Vicente Fernandez and uh pretty lengthy discussion of George Clinton. Oh, in the both in cocktail context. So there is some musical uh content to the book as well. I mean, any almost anything that I can think of, uh, with the exception of the you know, eight-minute intro song of Maggot Brain that George Clinton has ever done makes for good drinking music. You know what I mean?
Well, you know, the point is obviously uh you can't think about funk without thinking about him now. And funk is also a term from uh from rum. Yeah. And uh there's of course the Dr. Funk cocktail.
So there's a lot, yeah. There's a lot of funk in the in that. Yeah, George Clinton. Yeah, he closes out the book. So nice.
Yeah. Essentially, we're opening for George Clinton. You ever met him? No. Uh at one point the rum reader was gonna do a rum tasting with George Clinton.
This is slightly before the pandemic, and it hasn't happened yet, but I'm really excited to to pursue that again. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah. I bet you know, I read his autobiography. Interesting dude.
Very interesting dude. Yeah. Yeah. Very influential. I mean, yeah.
I mean, one of the most, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, right up there with everybody. I mean, like, in other words, like, who would you say is more? Stas, who would you say is more?
Maybe Dave Arnold. Yeah. Who like Stas and Stas's friends are gonna all are all Prince Heads? They're gonna say Prince. But there's no there's no prince without George Clinton.
Right. James Brown. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait. Oh, wait, wait, yeah.
All right. Uh Paul Gersman writes, I've been uh looking trying looking to try out the stirred bird based on Jack Tram's spec on punch, but I recall Jack has uh reported cruising black strap rum change formulation and now sucks. Any advice on substitutes? Yes, worthy park 109. It's awesome.
It's very molasses forward, it's higher in proof and it's less sweet. It's really good. All right. And uh for those of you that care that uh it's uh one part of the black strap, three quarter cleary lime, half clarity pineapple juice, half clarity, half pineapple syrup unclarified, half compare, quarter ounce Jamaican overproof, like Smith and Cross, quarter ounce uh aged Nicaraguan, three drops of saline. Don't ignore the picture that's on punch because uh it's clear, it's a clear drink.
What the hell? It doesn't have comparian, it makes it makes no sense. Um what else we what else? Oh, here you go. Well, we we got one more question from Patreon.
What do you got? What do you got, Quinn? Okay, when training or tender if you have solid experience, or maybe aren't 100% in line with your program, uh different uh skills or techniques. Uh, how do you incorporate them without poo-pooing things they've learned before? Uh I mean, I I try to hire people that have an open mind, but I think the best way is to actually you know do a side by side.
Like if they don't, you know, if they haven't seen the benefit of salting cocktails, like have an unsalted cocktail, have one right next to it. Taste the difference, you know. Yeah. Pepsi challenge that. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh at least, at least it began. I'll give you you on this favorite hand juicer. I like the Corona aluminum with no coating on it, even though they're not dishwasher safe. Just scrub it out.
What do you like? Orange, orange hand juicer because you get more room and you can make ice molds with it, which is another technique. And tropical standard, buy it. Wait, but that orange hand juicer, though, is not good on tiny limes, right? Do you do your yield isn't as high.
Is it you're talking about the standard big orange one? Yeah. Yeah, that's the one I use at home. Really? Yeah.
Yeah. I'll I'll I'll run some tests. But it really gets all the way down, squeezes every last freaking drop of juice out of that freaking lime. You get more versatility. It handles basically every single piece of citrus.
Why are you buying five different citrus sprays? Because I like lime. There's lime and there's others. That's well, that I I agree with that a hundred percent. Alright, so we're gonna have you guys back on.
Ben and Garrett, thanks for coming on. And when you're when your book comes back closer to pub date and people can actually uh pre-order it now, though. People can pre-order it now if as I said, if they look for a tropical standard book on Instagram or Tropical Standard on Facebook, there'll be links to places you couldn't pre-order it, or you can pre-order it, whatever bookstore you you care to do. So and please do that. Uh support the book.
It's the first book of its kind. Go get it. Cooking issues. Thank you.
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