Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City, and New Stand Studios. Joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks.
Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Good.
Windy out there. Uh yeah, I guess. I didn't really notice it too much on my walk, but yeah. I saw anything. I saw an angry looking guy on the sidewalk, and then one of those like newspaper McGillas just started like rolling down the street, and I thought he kicked it, but I think it was the wind.
Yeah, probably the wind. Yeah. Rocking the panels, Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing very well, man.
Full house. Love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh over there in uh California, we got uh, I believe Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas?
Do we have Nestasia? Yeah, she's there somewhere. Yeah, she's coming on. How you doing? Everything good?
Yes, everything's good. Yeah. Anything interesting in the uh land of uh Los Angeles. Uh no. Jack and I will talk about it next week.
Jack's not on today. Oh, he's not on. Is he in transit from uh the upper part of the coast to the lower part of the coast? He's engineering another podcast. All right.
Okay. All right. And then uh from his Heidi Hole up in the upper upper left, Quinn, how you doing? Hey, I'm doing all right. Yeah?
Good, good. And today's special guest is Robert Simonson, uh, who I've known for whom I've known. Is whom is dead, right? Uh don't uh don't put don't put me on the spot here. I don't know.
I'm whom. I mean, like when you write, do you whom? Wait, you speak do you whom? Uh I I I do. I don't do it so much when I write because it is generally regarded as pretentious, even if it is correct these days.
So, like so you're the reverse. You do it when you speak, but not when you write. Because you're like, I want to be a person, but then when I'm writing, I don't want people to think I'm a freak of stuck up. Like that? I think that that's the definition of most writers.
They want to be a person, but then when they write, they want to be thought of as another person. All right. Okay. So you're two people at all times. All right.
Well, you're on the show today because you have uh a new book that actually I I worked the uh launch party. That's right. You were at the launch party. We had a lovely uh event at Porchlight, a bar here on what is that, 11th Avenue in uh Manhattan. And they do a great job.
And I managed to uh I was very honored. I got you behind the bar and you made drinks for an hour. Yeah, yeah. So that bar was uh so he was head bartender at Booker and Dax at the time, Nick Bennett. Nick Bennett was like, uh, hey Dave, uh like I think he thought I was gonna be mad because there's a whole generation of uh like hospitality people who got mad at their at their crew when they left to go do a new job.
Uh huh. That's like a thing. Yeah, that happens. Yeah. Uh and so like I think he was nervous.
He comes up, he's like, Dave, he's like, um, he recently left Porch Light because he's uh he's doing the dad thing now, God bless. Yeah, he was there seven, eight years, long time. Yeah. So when he left Booker and Dax, he was like, Dave, uh, I gotta um offered a job to start my own because he thought I was gonna be mad. I was like, that's the best thing I've ever heard.
Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? I was like, I'm so proud. You know what I mean? Like that because to me, the greatest thing you can do is have somebody that's working with you be phenomenally successful.
Yeah, I know, but you may be a rarity in bosses in that case. I mean, I think I think a lot of other ones do get mad, you know, when people that they've trained from the ground up take off and you know do their own thing. Well, he was his own person. He came from a Morie Margot before he was at Booker and Dax. I mean, remember remember Amory Margot used to be tiny.
Mm-hmm. I mean, it still is tiny, but it still says tiny, but the original one is closing at the end of the year. Oh, really? But super tiny. And it was also an incubator for a lot of like uh cool.
So many. Yeah. So many bartenders. Yeah. There's a lot of incubator bars.
I was uh very proud that Booker and Dacks was an incubator bar. Yeah. I that was where I first met Nick. I didn't I did not meet Nick at Amory Margo. I met her at Booker and Dacks.
Yeah. Yeah. Also from Amori Margo. We had Southern Teague behind the stick for a while. Mm-hmm.
He's still there. He's still there. And he's there at the bigger Amori Margo. Oh what? Booker and Dex.
That's right. I always forget that. He was one of the openers of Booker and Dax. He already was at it doing Amori Margot, but he just wanted to catch the thing. He used to be How long did he stay at Booker and Dax?
Year or two? Two years? Okay. He uh, you know, yeah, you always know that uh you've worked with Southern Teague because he uses ridiculously long stirring spoons. Like absurdly long stirring spoons, like like poke your guest in the eye long.
And I don't know whether he used to like I don't know what, like whether he was like reaching across the bar to tap people on the forehead. I don't know what you're gonna do with such a long spoon. So it was one of the bartenders, one of the kind of bartenders who brings their own equipment to the job. Well, look, it was early days at Booker Index, and you know, I made everyone there was a huge argument. I made everyone stirring tins because you know I believe in stirring in in tins, but a lot of them wanted, and I think that one I kind of won, although they weren't too happy with me, but I let people use their own spoons because I mean we provided spoons.
Sure. I mean, and uh I think we we let people use their own jiggers. Yeah because really you we want people to be fast. I mean, nowadays, you know, in the in the style of like uh more like an Eric Castro's theory, I'm a believer in all bar stations identical, not even mere images of each other, completely identical. And the reason being that it allows you to support it look if it's a if it's one bartender a shift, set it up however you want.
You know, unless the bar back's ever gonna have to step in and make drinks. Right. But in if if there's two bartenders are gonna support each other, it's very helpful to have one bartender be able to just go to the other person's station and go. It's not like in a kitchen like this Joker behind me, where like, you know, you have your own station and you set it up. No one's gonna come in and run your station unless something horrible happens.
You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
When I'm in a bar, you're supposed to be like boop, and then move to the next boop. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, I think things have changed probably. A lot of bars are more like that in the early days and the aughts in the early 2010s.
Everyone was so individualistic and they had this innate faith in their own tools as being better than the other guys' tools or it's gonna make a better drink. But I think we'd probably move past that. Yeah. Yeah. Poor poor crafts person blames their blames their tools for the low quality of the drink.
Right. Yeah. Uh what's funny about that is that um this is maybe a little known. Well, let's push the book first. So uh the new book out is the encyclopedia of cocktails.
That's right. Uh The People, Bars, and drinks with more than a hundred recipes. Yeah, and you're one of the people who are in there. Yeah, thank uh so like is it like how more than a hundred or is it like a hundred and one, or did you get like a hundred and three? I think it's like a hundred and three, a hundred and four.
Yeah, that's better. Yeah. Like a hundred and one is like, come on, dude. You know, yeah. Well, then you're just being purposefully random.
Yeah, you know, it's like there's no mean, there's no logic to it. If it's 104, if it's also if it's an odd number, you're like, I want it to be an odd number. So like if it's 104, you're like, well, I just came up with the recipes I was gonna come up with, and it happened to be over a hundred. You know? Well, I knew that the publisher wanted more than a hundred, so I had that number to work with, but beyond that, I could go as far as I wanted to.
The more recipes, the better, as far as they were concerned. Freaking 10 speed. How are they to deal with? They're like so big. I mean, like, like, you know, in are they as big in they're as big in cocktails as they are in cooking, right?
Like they for a while they owned like a everything. They did so much work. I think they still own it, pretty much. Uh I yeah, no, they're great to work for. Um their sister imprint is Clarkson Potter.
Clarkson Potter is more food. 10 speed, I think, in the public's mind is cocktails and spirits. And uh But they they used to do wing weird winged food stuff like I believe 10 didn't 10 speed do the original uh uh bread builder's book, the this uh Alan's whatever his name is uh Scott Wang, whatever it was, the original how to build your own like open hearth bread. They may have. 10 Speed has a weird uh history.
It goes back a long way. It was an Emeryville, uh little independent uh publishing imprint. Then they made a lot of money. They published that book, What Color is your parachute? Remember that?
Oh my god, yeah. Yeah, but and and then it just got the color of flaming. Yeah. Like on fire and like falling through the sky. Like that's the color of our parachute, right, Nastasia?
Yeah. Flaming. Yeah. Yeah. You're like you're like, oh, let me hit the ground at a reasonable speed before the parachute burns up and then don't let it light me on fire.
I hope never to catch on fire again, by the way, Robert. Yeah, that would be bad. Once you've caught on fire at once, you can kind of check it off the list. Are you talking about your your art experiment way back when you were doing the George and the Dragon? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the one like where your wife said, if you ever do that again, I'm gonna divorce you. That one, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But uh in general, uh don't do that.
Anyway, so you're saying uh they started as a smaller. But I think about 10 years ago, I mean, they really uh got into the cocktail thing before a lot of the other publishers realized it was a thing, and you know that new books were needed. And uh they were on the ground floor with that. And they've they've done a lot um of the important cocktail books over the last 15 years. Nice.
Uh if you are listening on Patreon, you can call in your questions to Robert Simonson at 917-4101507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, and uh either John or Quinn, tell them uh how to be a Patreon and why they want to do that. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. You got a bunch of different awesome membership levels, membership levels.
Um you get access to the Discord with a whole community of listeners to ask awesome questions, really engaging community. And you also get discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters for books like this one. Yes. The Encyclopedia of Cocktails is on our list. We typically, whenever we get an author on, we as long as Kitchen Arts and Letters carries them, which they typically always do.
We uh what's that? Do you have a kitchen you have a Kitchen Arts and Letters hat? Oh, that's cool. Holy smokes. That's a that is a fantastic shop.
Yeah, that's a great museum. It's the best. Do you go in there and sign books when you do the thing? I do. I haven't done it for this book yet, but usually they call me up and you know, you you've been there, it's the tiniest place, you know.
And so I mean, but a lot of books. Yeah, yeah. So when uh when liquid intelligence came out, I went, I I came up with a a new recipe. I come up with a new recipe uh for milk syrup. Uh and uh that's where you you you make a 50-50, like a one-to-one with milk, and then you add uh citric acid and it kind of pre-breaks, so it gets like almost a yogurt y texture, but then when you shake with it, it doesn't break ever.
Like it doesn't curd up, it stays completely okay, but it's not yogurt-y tasting, it's milk syrup. You can do the same with cream, you could do cream syrup, you could do milk syrup, so like my grasshopper variant is cream syrup and I you know, milk syrup and aparol is good, even though it looks like Pepto Bismol looks. I mean. Like, do you like Pepto Bismol look? Uh no.
Wait, is it Pepto Bismol or milk and magnesia that's totally pink or both? I think both. Both. Yeah. Both.
I think both. Both. Yeah. Yeah. So we didn't.
I didn't call the drink, I didn't call the drink Pepto Bismol. No, that would not sell. Yeah. Because I figured, yeah. So I called it Soft Sell because the entire time I was making it, I was singing Tainted Love to Myself over and over and over.
Nice. Well, that's a time honor tradition of uh naming drinks after songs. Barthes, you would love to do that. I did not know this. What?
The paper plane named after the song. Like uh Yes, which was actually called Paper Planes. The song, yeah. Yeah. By what is it?
M I A? I don't know whether it's me or M I A. I always say M I A. What am I supposed to say, folks? Am I remember?
Doesn't she live in Queens? No idea. It's not my group. You have to ask Sam Ross. He's the guy who's a good thing.
It's a great song. Is it? I have never actually listened to it. I've just drunk the drunk drink. Wait, wait.
Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You call out, you give me this great fact. Don't you you have a phone, I can see it. You've never listened to the song. I may have.
I don't know. It's not really important. It's important to find out why. It's got like a gun, it's got a gunshot and a cash register sound. I am a name.
It is catchy. If a cocktail has a curious name, it's my job as a reporter to ask, you know, why did you name it that? Because there's always a story behind it. But not to listen to the song. I mean, it's it's only like it's only like three minutes of your life, Robert.
You couldn't freaking. You couldn't Is this the one that's the uh the the clash cover? Oh, is it? Is that what it's sampled? All I need is a little bit of.
I promise I'll listen to it directly after this show. Yeah. Yeah. Take a mile day. It's a great song.
Anyway, um I don't remember the lyrics, but whenever it comes on, I dance like a mother. Right? Like a mother. Stas, you like that song? I don't know if I know it.
I'd have to hear it. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this song. Oh my gosh. So I was working on uh speaking of songs. I was working on uh infusions for the you know the redo of the book, Should I Ever Get It Done?
I was doing and I I did like a 24 infusions in little mason jars, and I stacked them up, and then what song could I knock out of my head? Ball of Confusion, because I was like, wall of infusion, bum, bum, bum. That's a great song, right? That's what the world is today. Yeah, late temptations.
Do you like that? Do you like the late temptations? Uh yeah, yeah. They had to do something to keep their act fresh. And so they got into uh, you know, the psychedelic stuff.
I think they put out some good songs. Cloud nine. Oh got into psychedelic shack is like the whole thing is amazing. I love that whole like superstar. I like that stuff better than the old temptations.
Than the old temptations, the the old school Motown temptations. I mean, well, they're still Motown. What do you think about like the early 70s temptations with the very, very long songs? You know, Papa's Rolling Stone. That's a great tune.
That's my favorite. That is my favorite temptation song. And the long version with the like the two minute intro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, you know what?
But it's not good for bars. No. Bar music is very important. I I discovered something recently. I had this idea, somebody mentioned it to me.
You know what you never hear in bars, cocktail bars? The Beatles. Ever. Well, unless Nastasi is putting on Rocky the Squirrel or whatever it is that she actually likes. She says she loves the Beatles, but she actually likes whatever.
I don't listen to the Beatles, but I do agree. It's not exactly bar music. Well, it's also because of Ascap and BMI. You're playing those, you know. Yeah, but nobody actually follows those rules.
Oh, I think a lot of people pay those. I hear a lot of Rolling Stones. That's true. That's true. Led Zeppelin, I guess you would too.
Nastasi, what's the actual Beatles song that you say that you really like? I'm not going into this at all. Okay. Let's get back to the first one. What is this?
The third rail? Beatles? Something like that. I don't know. I don't know what it I can never tell us.
I never know, I never know. Um I never know. Although I'll give you, I will give you, what will I give you? I will give you $50 if you can name Nastasia's favorite slow burn song. Of all songs?
Slowburn intro. Slow, but you mean like a long intro before you even get to the lyrics? Before you get to the main part. Uh Eminence Front by the Who? No, no, no.
Uh no, but a British a British person. Uh the Phil Collins. What's the Phil Collins song styles? I always forget the name of it. That's uh Oh no, that's not my favorite slow burn.
I just like the video. You like the video because you don't think he's ever gonna make it to the drum kit. Yeah, it's um what the hell is that? Is that I can feel he feel you coming in the air and is the air tonight? But he comes in and he has to like get all the way up to the drum kit and you're like, he's not gonna make it, he's so small.
Yeah, and he makes it. He makes it every time. That's the advantage of it already having happened. You know that thing that Phil Collins does every New Year's Eve? Where he tells you when to start that song so that the drum thing kicks in at midnight.
He really does that. He does it every year. I like that. It's probably the best thing Phil Collins does. Really?
Yeah, that thing every year. I used to uh I used to time so um my favorite ministry song of all time is obviously Jesus Built My Hot Rod. And obviously. Yeah, red line white line version. And it's uh it's the version that came out on the EP that has the just engine on the cover.
And it's so much better than the album version than a Psalm 69 version, like the best. And so I used to be deathly afraid of flying, such that I would have to like load myself with uh a Valium to do it. Mm-hmm. But I would always time that song so that when it busted from the intro into the plane was actually on the runway taking off, so I can still to this day feel the airplane taking off when that song plays, which is amazing. It's amazing to link in your mind a song with a physical feeling and then be able to refeel the feeling every time you hear the song.
Awesome. Drag racing, drag racing. There's no use trying to talk. No human sound can stand up to this loud enough to knock you down. It's a great song.
Burnout. Like that, like I I don't know. Did you grow up with that kind of ministry? No. No?
No. No. I did. It's a terrible thing to taste is a great record. Oh my gosh.
With that crazy album cover with uh the skull on it. Yeah. You know what? What happened to him? I mean, I know obviously a lot of things happened to him, but like the new min the new ministry stuff is just so I can't.
I can't. I can't. Anyway. He's got a lot of guns, that guy. Oh yeah?
Oh yeah. We tried to do an interview with him in Texas, and he has like told us to get off his property. You set up an interview with him? Yep. And he's like, off my property.
Exactly. Oh my God. So crazy. All right. All right.
So uh this is what, the 89th cocktail book you've written? It must feel that way. Um, no, it's the seventh. Seven. But I I uh in as many as I am annoyingly productive.
I realize that. Well, how what makes you like for those who Okay, so first of all, I think I like a little of the self self-deprecation here. Under the under the uh handle, uh sorry, the the heading cocktail writer, you say something like, you know, like uh from a bunch of dilettants and weasels or something. I'm paraphrasing. But basically you mean the entry for cocktail writer?
Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, isn't that what you wrote? Well, yeah, I mean, it used to be um it wasn't a profession. It uh previously a hobby of the drinking dilettante.
That's correct. Yeah. Yeah, people, this wasn't a job. I mean, there we we you and I know a lot of people for whom this is a job, a full-time job now, including myself. But back then it was just like a hobby.
You know, you like to drink, and so you might as well write about it, you know, people like Charles Baker and I don't know, Lucius Bebe, you know. They wrote about other things as well, but they wrote about cocktails from time to time. And as far as newspapers were concerned, it was just like a general assignment reporter was sometimes sent to a bar and said, you know, go interview the bartender and see what people are drinking. Right, because you used to write other stuff from the time for the times, not just a lot of people. Yeah, I wrote I wrote mainly theater stuff, and I did some stuff for the uh late lamented city section.
I did some travel things. But they don't have the city section anymore? No, no. That was a sad day. Well, what's been gone for like 10 years?
Do we not have the city anymore? I haven't gotten the print paper in a long time. I think that just falls into Metro. Uh City section actually did only existed for about 10 years. Uh yeah.
It was kind of like uh micro metro, you know, hyper hyper metro. Speaking of this, speaking of the city, I was thinking about this on the way over here, biking over here. Like, we are the only city I know of that is so conceited, has its head so far up its own behind that it just makes its own traffic rules and its own traffic signals. Like for those of you that don't come to New York, New York is the only place that you can't turn right on a red, right? Oh, that's true.
Yeah. And I love to turn right on a red. Yeah, well, but here's the fun thing, right? So there's no signs anywhere in New York City saying that you can't turn right on a red. So if you if you rent a car, if you fly into one of our fine, fine airports.
Sarcasm. Yeah. Uh, you know, and you you somehow you rent a car and you drive in in New York, you're gonna get a ticket. Because there's nowhere does it say No right on red. No right on red.
You just have to know it. You have to know it. And it's like uh that's how you know a New York City driver, someone who only drives in New York City, doesn't have like an out-of-state place or anything like this, they're only a New York City driver, and they show up in your fair town wherever you live. They're the ones who are driving so aggressively that you can't believe it, but then they're sitting there at the red light with their blinker on waiting to turn. You're like, what is it?
Right and then you beep at them and they're like and they peel out a thousand miles an hour when they realize they're allowed to make that right turn on red. Yeah, that happens to me all the time. Happens to my wife too. We go to other we travel a lot, we go to other states, we forget in most other states you can turn right on red, and then people, somebody behind us is always honking at us. Yeah, yeah.
And you're like, I'm the aggressive one. Yeah. Yeah. I uh I'm from Wisconsin. Wisconsin has great rules.
You can turn right on red and you can do a U-turn anywhere. Anywhere. Anywhere. Oh, that would be mayhem here. Mayhem.
Uh another one I saw, there's a a random like parking thing. I mean, not parking up, uh traffic sign, but maybe they have it elsewhere. You guys tell me it's just a white line. Mm-hmm. Have you ever seen this anywhere else other than New York?
It's just a white line. You don't get to make up your own traffic signals. It's just a white line, and I think it means bus only. There's no sign that says, hey, by the way, this traffic signal you've never seen before in your life that now you're supposed to obey, it means bus only. You ever gotten a ticket for a you went through in a bus lane and you didn't know it?
No, it happens all the time. I live here though. Like I know what a you know. They're invisible bus lanes all over the city, and they'll give you tickets. I like that.
Yeah. Look, this whole place is a money-making racket. You know that the no turn on red is only in the city, the rest of New York State, you can turn on the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I grew up around Westchester.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's just here. And then and you know, like I guess I they don't tell you about it.
No, no, well, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Right. Even if it's even if it's random and it goes against everywhere else. Like we are like, you know, you'd expect, like, you know, someone named Cletus to pull you over and give you like it's like some sort of old school thing. But here we are in New York.
Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. Somebody should run for mayor on that platform. No good.
I will change the no-bright turn on red. You know what's the only other thing that we do here as New Yorkers I've noticed is jaywalk. Everywhere else you go, nobody jaywalks. And I was just on the way here this morning. I did it and there were some tourists waiting, there were no cars coming.
It's like, why is he doing that? That's illegal. They said that to you? Well, they I heard them, the like mom say that to the doctor. Exactly.
Yeah. We're busy people. We have places to go. Oh my god. Oh my god.
I'll never forget like the first time I went to Savannah, Georgia. Well, in fact, the only time, because I never went back. But like uh I went to Savannah, Georgia, and I just stepped off the street and all the cars were like, what? And they stopped. I'm like, I'm just getting ready to walk, dudes.
Mm-hmm. No, no, that's how you you can tell New Yorkers anyway, because they're they're not content to stay on the curb. Just one foot into the street, you know, you got that slight advantage, so you have to take it. I'm gonna make a pitch that it's polite because it's letting someone walk on the sidewalk is its own form of whatever. So you're like the the like getting off the curb just into the street is like an exit lane to get out, but you're not in the way of the person who's actually crossing the other way where they they have the light.
It's polite. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I think uh most people sort of feel that we don't even own the sidewalk anymore in New York, so we may as well take some of the road back. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh but people who step into the bike lane, oh my God. Yeah, you're taking your life in your hands. Especially if I'm in that bike lane.
Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's right. You bite you biked over here.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Hey, uh, when you're on your bike, do you stop at stop lights and stop signs or do you breeze right through them? I st I stop or rolling stop.
So like uh I look my my general rule is uh is don't make somebody else hit the brakes or feel nervous. So if if a if a car has to hit the brakes because you're running a light, or if another biker or if a pedestrian has to stop what they're doing because you're going through the light, you've done a bad thing. Otherwise, hell with it. In fact, like how many times have you seen bikers get T-boned because they're waiting, and then when they start up at the red light, the person just makes the turn right into them. I've seen it so many times.
Like, so like I know. Like I'm just gonna sit there at the light and wait to get T-boned by that car. No thanks. You know what I mean? You have to be pretty fearless to uh to bike in this city, definitely.
Because everyone's going kind of slow. It freaks me out outside of the city where people are doing like 80 mile an hour next to you. I've seen a lot of fast bikers in this city, very fast, faster than cars often. Well, yeah, it depends. I mean, like you're only allowed to go where anyway, whatever.
Yeah, I think we This is a this isn't about cocktails. No, no. All right. Uh we missed a section of the show where people say if they've uh had anything or done anything interesting uh food-wise over the past week. Anyone, anyone?
How's your Belgique menu going, John? It's stalled some had no call, no show last week, and yeah, just been back to hiring, unfortunately. Life gets in the way. Oh, so no call, no show, instant fire, man. I like that that's in fire.
You know, I gave him three or four days and then he texts me back on the fourth day and says, you know, I was in the hospital. Like I'll come in tomorrow with paperwork. And then he just never showed, and I've never heard back from him. So yeah. It's great.
Love it. Yep. Love it. Love it. That's why it's so hard to do anything.
It really is. Pressure of service is the reason why. That's why when I was at the French Culinary Institute, it was such a good like thing because people could come in and we could iterate stuff for them without because we didn't have the pressure of service. You can't it's so hard to do development and service at the same time. So hard.
It really is. Yeah. Um, you know, and let and especially nowadays that everyone wants to like be a human being and like do everything else. Like there's no time left for development. You know what I mean?
Yeah. It's very difficult. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying it's hard. It's hard, yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah. Uh uh speaking of uh times a change in uh so uh how many of the books would you say that you've done are historically bent? Uh well, most of them, but some of them are historically bent in the idea that we're talking about the distant past. Like I have a book about the martini and a book about the old fashioned, and so it takes the whole history of that drink up until the present day.
Um and then there was a book called A Proper Drink, which was a history of the cocktail revival, which was more of a narrative, not recipe book. That was six years ago. Yeah, it came out 2016, so it takes the movement up until uh 2016 and then stops there. Obviously, a lot has happened since then. Nothing.
Nothing, and nothing important has happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not not a thing. Not a thing. Um yeah, and this one is, you know, as an encyclopedia is also historical nature.
Yeah, you know, but modern and past. So this is kind of bridging that. I've I've tried to encompass everything. It goes back to um the late 1700s and encompasses the entire cocktail history in the world. It comes up until 2023, actually.
I I kept adding updates and sentences until it went to a print. Nice. Well, I um I'm sure your editor appreciated that. Uh actually she encouraged it. Really?
Oh, nice. That's strong. Yeah. Uh okay, so question. Do you so history is a point of view with a bunch of cherry picked is not the right word because that is pejorative.
Nastasia's least favorite word that I use. But like, so when you're writing a history, right? Mm-hmm. Do you first of all, do you agree that like all histories are points of view, obviously? Yeah, they're to a certain uh extent, they are subjective, yes.
I mean, somebody else would have written the encyclopedia cocktails, and I think about two-thirds of the book would have been the same, the same subject matter, but the other third would have been selective. Right. And so the thing is right, people get to kind of choose, people get to kind of choose what the canon is, in the way that like MOMA chooses what the canon of art is. Right. Um for good or for ill.
Um so when you're doing something like this, how do you especially now, how do you choose when you are going to leave someone in, for instance, David Embry, who was very important but was a rancid individual, versus more modern people who you might not have in who have done bad things but also had influence. How do you kind of draw that line between like bad actors from the past, bad actors from the present, or do you not feel like you have to parse that so much when you're working on it? You have to uh parse that a little bit. I mean, uh if uh if a person is important, they're important. I mean, they may have be a bad individual.
You mentioned David Enbury, who was uh idolized by many people in the revival. Yeah, produced this great book, um uh The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. And then we found out later that his uh sympathies t lended towards uh the Nazi and all that kind of thing. And so it's it's difficult to like him anymore, but still he made his contribution, and so he remained in there. He's also a bad tipper.
Uh was he? And met yeah, so that that guy who had that amazing cocktail book collection. Yes, uh, who died a number of years ago, saw him give a talk in like 2008 or nine at an early tales of the cocktail. And uh I was like, he said he'd poured drinks for him. Mm-hmm.
Right, because he's old, you know. And I was like, oh, how was he? He's like, bad tipper. I was like, oh, son of a son of a gun. That's bad.
Uh he lived up in Larchmont. I actually saw his house once. It was for sale, um, and briefly had this fantasy of buying it and turning it into a bar. I didn't have the money to do that. And no, now I'm kind of glad that I didn't do it.
Yeah. But um uh another person, another figure that's in the book is Charles Schumann, who is basically like the Dale de Graff of Germany, even of Europe, but he's gotten into a lot of trouble um in recent years, uh, due to his um antiquated sexist points of views of who belongs behind a bar and who doesn't. And yet he's still in there. I mean, I but I include a line about the controversy so that people have a full picture of his impact and career. Yeah.
Let me see, I got some questions here. Oh, by the way, I noticed that uh you talk a little bit about Calvados versus uh Applejack a little bit and Apple Brandy. And you brought some Calvados. Well, so like here's the thing, right? This is my pitch to everyone.
Since you're if you're a cocktail person, you can make this happen. Yeah. Uh so first of all, uh, you know, going back to like uh cost and all that, like one of the things I think that Sasha and his crew, his ilk are not necessarily remembered for by JQ Public, is that they used very cheap liquor to very good effect, right? And so like things like Rittenhouse, which were fundamentally free, not anymore, but they were fundamentally free at the time, uh, hard to get, but not expensive. They would make a lot of these amazing drinks around it.
Same with like, you know, the uh Laird's Apple Brandy, the bottled and bond, you know, that really fit their whole brand, right? You know, Lisa Laird is what, like a billionth generation, like family-owned uh apple brandy distiller right over the river in Jersey, uh-huh, uh still making it. You know, and and when I was, you know, young, you could just get the Apple Jack, which is the the blended. And then, you know, really I've you know, like Chad Solomon and Sasha's whole group kind of brought back the you know, the prevalence in bar in the bar world of the bottled and bond uh hundred, you know, the hundred-proof bottled and bond uh apple brandy from Laird's. Yes.
Which is, you know, a great product. I use it. Um, but it's almost impossible to get their Jersey Lightning, which is their moonshine. Yes, you don't see that very often. It used to be impossible to get the bonded.
Yeah. I mean, there was this great campaign during the aughts among bartenders to get it. But that's because of the whole Sasha crew. It's like all their crew. I would like to add though, you said that they made good drinks out of uh inexpensive booze.
Um that didn't mean it was bad booze. It was it was good spirits. It's just things were cheap back then because they were unappreciated. Uh they used to have uh Pappy Van Winkle in there well. Yeah, well Pappy Van Winkle used to be well, the other the lower marks.
I used to buy the 15 for $30 a bottle. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, they're at Astor. Like I didn't have to search around for it. I could go to Astro Place or Warehouse Wines, which are two like relatively large wine stores, you know, near Eighth Street, you know, in Lower Manhattan, and I just go buy it.
Right. Nobody wanted it. I remember when it changed, uh, because I called Julian Van Winkle. So we were do the the a bunch of Spanish chefs were coming over. So it was Ferron Adria, like Martin Barasatigi, like the Arzaks, like you know, Kiki de Costa, all these people were coming over to the French Culinary Institute.
Yes. And my job was to get them something American. So I'm like, I'm gonna get Pappy 15. Okay. Right.
So and because it was still like $30 a bottle, but it had just hit. This was like 20, like this is like 2005 or six, maybe six six maybe. And uh it had just kind of hit, and I was like, I can't find it anywhere. What the hell's going on? Because I just bought a bottle recently, you know what I mean?
And the price hadn't spiked. So I called Julian Van Winkle the third or whatever his name is. You had his number. Back then you could just get in touch with people. Okay.
I got call him and he's like, Yeah, no, you can't, I can't. I was like, I like I was like, this is what I want to get people to show what America is. You can't get me like 10 bottles. He's like, No, they're all gone. I was like, damn.
Yeah. I was late to that party. I I mean I had by the time I was trying to drink the Pappy stuff, you know, it was all expensive and allocated. Yeah, my first bottle of Pappy was 20, but I wasn't buying that because that was like $45, $50 is too much. It was a gift.
Yeah. From Bobby Flay, actually. Yeah. Way back in the day. The whole bartending community, all of us, we sort of created our own problem.
We like pointed to all the good stuff, saying, This is the good stuff. Then everyone else knew, and the prices skyrocketed. And now, like all the wonderful spirits that we drank for nothing, we can't even get. We used to use Yamazaki and Habiki in in cocktails. Eric Castro told me that at the Rick House in San Francisco when they opened in the late odds 2009, they had that in the well.
They put it in all the cocktails. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so this is uh so what is your point of view, by the way?
Do you uh when you are making an apple brandy cocktail, do you think it is better with Calvados or with Applejack? Uh Calvados okay so that's what I'm gonna say. Most Calvados to me, like so look, like Laird's apple brandy is very woody, right? But it's you know, hundred proof. But like considering the color of most Calvados, it's extremely I don't think it plays well in the kind of drinks that I like to make.
I like to if I want apple brandy, a lot of times I want to shake with it. And I just don't think it works very well in most shaking drinks. But this, which is blanche calvados and clean as a whistle, is cheap. It's just unavailable. This is like 30, this is like 30 something a bottle retail.
And but you can't find it. Is that you can't find it? Yeah. Baron Francois does not push this stuff. This is Druin's uh you pronounce it my my French friend, my Belgique, my uh homme de Belgique.
La blanche de Christian Douan au de Videocido. Yeah, it's delicious blanche. It is delicious, but it's so different from Laird's Applejack that like I say in the book, you it's not necessarily better cocktail, it's just a different cocktail. Right. So, but this is also different from anything from Calvados.
This, like, is this is a shaking dream. You can shake this like nobody's business. How clean is that? It's very clean. So did you use this in cocktails at Booker Index in existing conditions?
Existing conditions. We used to pour more of it than I think anyone else. We also used a blanch a blanche armagnac, which is like the cleanest grape, you know, unaged grape. Because when for me, in a shaking cocktail, unless I'm looking for Joe, you want to try this stuff or no? No.
Uh unless I'm looking for like a specific characteristic, I kind of want like clean, and this like lets the apple kind of come out, but it does, it doesn't have a lot of other crap riding over it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yes. And it's a good product, right?
It is. No, it's a great product. Why don't why don't people buy this? I sent a message to Baron Francois, which is the thing. I was like, what the hell?
And they're like, yeah, literally one store carries it in Manhattan. I think in spirits there are certain lost causes. I've covered this beat for 17 years, and I've seen people like you champion certain spirits like Calvados, like Armagnac, like uh Aqua Vit. Aquavite's the best. It never happens.
It's never gonna happen. It's not gonna tell there's something about the American palate. They don't know, they do not want these things. But this Americans would love this. You're saying Americans wouldn't like this?
Yes, that's what I'm saying. This American is an everyday drink. It's not gonna replace in cocktails. In cocktails. Well, it's if it's your bar and you're making the cocktails, you can put whatever you want in them.
Yes, I don't know. That doesn't mean that they're gonna start ordering it straight, the way they order bourbon straight. Oh no, no, I don't think this is this is not a straight sipper. I would rather straight sip aged calvados. Uh-huh.
But I'm I'm as a cocktail, to me, that's a versatile ingredient. Whereas like aged Calvedose, not so versatile. Mm-hmm. Right? Or like, you know, frankly, like a lot of like Aqua Beat is very versatile to cocktail drink.
Again, I don't drink it straight. Yeah. But it's like super good. I mean, unless you're doing the skull thing. But yeah, no, it's great.
It's great. Uh Toby Cicchini's a big fan of uh Aqua Vit. And if you go to Long Island Bar, his bar in Brooklyn, he uh he will pour you some. Yeah. He has a few cocktails, no, maybe two on the menu that have it in it.
We almost always had a Linny drink on the menu. Did you? Yeah. And uh and did people order it? Oh, yeah, all the time.
Okay. Uh and uh I love Linny, and uh for years I did a uh a um project at the French Culinary Institute, the Skull Project, where we made our own aqua beat illegally, and we're doing uh, you know, doing pictures of people skulling. We have Merle Haggard. Nastasi and I and Travis, my brother-in-law, flew to Modesto to go to a Merle Haggard concert to get him to skull. Remember that, Stas?
That's awesome. Yeah, I do. Modesto. It's the best thing that has ever happened to a person in modesto. So you met him?
Yeah, a couple times. All right. Excellent. That's great. Yeah.
We got uh Dick Cavot. Dick Cavit. Yeah. He's still around, isn't he? I don't know.
If he is, he's a billion years old. You know, I found out that he slept with Janice Joplin. He got around. He knew a lot of people. He used to own a mansion out uh in the Hamptons that was built by Stanford White.
Burned to the ground, though. Oh, all right. Well, I'll just check out. By the way, speaking of uh Janice Joplin, Nastasia will like this fact, but it's not radio related, so I'll keep it brief. The the place that we went after the Pauly Shore concert, Barney's Beanery, was where Janice Joplin had her last drink.
I think it might have been the one in Hollywood, though. Oh, we weren't in West Hollywood? No. Oh, it's the one in West Hollywood, sorry. It was probably Southern Comfort, I would guess.
She drank that. She made Southern Comfort so famous, you know, among the hippie community. First thing I ever got drunk on. I mean, not drunk, uh sick on. Hmm.
Yeah, never been a favorite of mine. Never had it again. Yeah. People hit me. So Misty Calcoffin, who also was in the book and working the event, did a peach drink with with I think it was I can't remember whether it was Rye or Bourbon.
And uh I was like, oh, you know, uh SoCo is the first thing that ever made me sick. And she's like, oh, can are you triggered? I'm like, no, that was a long time ago. I'm 52. That was like a million years ago.
You know what I mean? Like it's like five lifetimes ago. Uh I remember when the Sazrec company, they reintroduced it, they relaunched Southern Comfort recently, and I interviewed uh them about it. And um it's it's always assumed it's a a whiskey drink that there is whiskey in it. For the longest time there was zero whiskey in that.
And so the biggest change they did was they put the whiskey back in. It was neutral grain spirit. And and peach garbage and fake wood? Yeah. Yeah, just terrible.
Just poisonous. Poisonous. And now it's it actually doesn't really taste that much better, but it does have whiskey in it. All right. Okay.
Um I also like when you in your infusion, you you call out hibiscus. Like of all the things to call if you're only gonna call out five things, hibiscus. What's wrong with that? I see a lot of cocktails with uh hibiscus. I love hibiscus.
I've used it many times. This is my bartenders use it many times. I love it, but it's just like if you're gonna choose like four things. Well, what would you choose instead? I mean, I put in jalapenos jalapenas in there.
I mean, it's very common as far as tequila drinks are concerned, mascell drinks are concerned. Yeah. I guess there are a million things to infuse. I just put in the things that I saw most commonly at bars. All right.
Let's talk about a different book, The Three Ingredient Cocktail. Sure. Yeah. So I love three ingredient cocktails. So do I.
But w for me, so like I ran years ago at Booker and Dax, we we ran a three ingredient cocktail contest with our bartenders. First person to get a three-ingredient cocktail menu uh on the menu, they won a prize. I forget what it was. I think we gave them one of the Meehan Jim Meehan roll-up bartender bags. Oh, those were cool.
Yeah. I still have one. Yeah. Um, but uh yeah, Kyla, I love a three-ingredient drink just because I think it it promotes mental diligence to be able to just do it with three. Yes.
You know what I mean? But like uh you get to you work very hard on those three ingredients because like, you know, we weren't just choosing three ingredients off the back bar, it was three ingredients. You know what I mean? So you know, you were allowed to, you know, tweak, you know, center fuel, whatever you needed to do to the ingredient to get it where it needed to be, do it. And it ended up being a drink that Jack Shram did called the uh tropic thunder, which was uh what was it?
It was uh milkwashed, I forget what it was milkwashed rum and uh pineapple syrup, I think pineapple syrup and lime, I think I forget something like that. Yeah. Great. And so, yeah, what so what's your reason for doing the three ingredient book? Yeah.
Well, that's a very Booker and Dax three ingredient cocktail. Yeah. Um I wrote uh that book in uh 2017 because uh we were in the thick of the cocktail revival, and there were a lot of ornate eight ingredient cocktails out there. And I was worried that everybody who loved these cocktails was intimidated and thought they could not make cocktails at home. And I wanted to remind them all the best cocktails that were ever invented were very simple, and you can make them too.
Oh, you have to you you only have to get a few ingredients and you can perfectly construct these things at home. And so that's what that book was about. That's what the motivation was. You're coming at it from a totally different angle than we were coming at it from. There's stuff on the back bar, stuff you find in the liquor store.
And I think there are just a few syrups in there. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe a couple infusions. Yeah, because I because for me, it's like we I always in my mind, like the difference is like very kind of sparse, like a couple of ingredients versus like shotgun style.
Just like what you know, what what what do I have back there? Blah blah blah. Like you know what I mean? Like, right. It's like uh I I liken it to um modern chickens.
So like uh modern chickens are like amazingly big and tender, and they you know, they they're very efficient at converting f uh food to to meat, right? But they are a layer of a billion different weird interventions on top. And some of these cocktails are like that, where it's like, well, that's not quite right. So add just a sousant of this, add like a little bit of the thing. Yeah, that's your approach.
No, no, no. I'm like three ingredients. So, like Yeah, but you want to mess with all three of them. You can mess with the ingredients, but I'm not, I don't, but I'm not like I don't want to be I'm not like I'm gonna take these three ingredients, but then I'm gonna add 30 other things to make it taste okay. Right.
You know what I mean? I'm like, you know, let's like focus on this flavor, this flavor, and this flavor, and getting those flavors to work together rather than, you know, you know what, every cocktail needs in the world, it needs a bar spoon of Susan, a bar spoon of chartreuse. Which by the way, makes everything taste good. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's a just a different style. Right. You know. But you're not gonna like grab Channara off the shelf and say, let's put this in this three ingredient cocktail. You're gonna say, How can I make Channar better?
How can I make my own Channar? So you're gonna do it like that way. I would focus on like Channar is delicious. So you okay, so maybe you would use Jinner. No, I use it, but I I would use when I use it, I focus on it.
You know what I mean? So like I I do a a frozen drink that's basically just channel and apple and pineapple juice. Okay. It's great. Channar and pineapple, good buddies.
But there are very few bartenders out there anymore that just rely on what's on the back bar. Uh Phil Ward out in Long Island Bar, he's owned one of the last that I know. He doesn't invent new cocktails, he doesn't create new ingredients. He just whatever's on the back bar. That's those are his the limitations he sets up for himself.
And he makes it Which is smart, which is why people make his drinks because they're easy to do. Right. So like, you know, I've always like promoted uh a non-back bar approach, and this is why very few people make the drinks. You know what I mean? Like Yes, that's why it's hard for you to come up with a modern classic.
Exactly. Exactly. Uh okay, this is from uh Fuchi. Uh talk a little bit about Absinthe. Uh, have my first cocktail made with absinthe, and I quite enjoyed it, Death in the Afternoon.
Uh Absinthe, lemon, semi, semi-rich sugar. Although look, people, there's no reason to ever make a semi-rich. Either use rich simple or use one-to-one. Like anything in between, please, please, please. Why make your life hard?
Semi-rich. Does he mean like one and a half to one? Is that but yeah, but a lot of Europeans do this. What what the heck? Like, get with the program.
It doesn't make any sense. Well, that's that's what keeps the world interesting. Bartenders have a lot of habits that we don't have, and some of them don't make any sense, but it's kind of fun that they exist. They have weird, they have weird jiggers over there. And like I asked a bunch of people in London when they they I was doing a talk, and uh I was like, What's your standard pour?
Standard pour here is 60, right? You know, two ounces, 60 standard pour for a cocktail. Yeah. And they some dumb number, like 50 or like some crazy number, some some sort of random non, I was like, what the hell? And they're like, yeah.
I was like, Europeans, man. Although they're not European anymore. You see that thing at uh European bars, a lot of European bartenders do this when they're making a drink. They'll have the two tins, they fill one tin with ice, and then they put the other tin on top of the ice in the other tin to keep it chilled while they're then they start pouring the ingredients in the second one. And it's just so strange, but they swear by it.
Yeah, well, you know, look, uh as long as you're focusing on whatever you're doing, you're you're you're good. Anyway, you know, so uh um question about absinthe. Yeah, so uh talk so you know you're you're gonna know a lot more about absinthe than I am, so talk about it. Uh oh, sorry. I doubt it.
So Death in the Afternoon Absinthe lemon, uh uh sugar syrup and prosecco in coop glass. You do talk about the coop glass. I do, I do. I talk about the coop glass, which made a huge comeback in the last 20 years. Before that, everything was served in a martini glass.
Which they're they're terrible. Up glasses, they're the worst. Yeah. They suck. Though they'll never they'll never die the martini glass.
I hope they do. They never will. Because um, there's something about that uh there's certain customers who want that glass. And also if you give them a martini that's not in a martini glass, they will get upset. They're not getting what they expect.
But absinthe, I am if you come to my bar, people get ready to get upset. Yeah. Uh absinthe, I think is best in uh small touches. That I always think of it as an accent ingredient, and that's how it best flatters a cocktail. I'm not a big fan of absinthe, like an absinthe frop or something that's mainly absinthe.
I mean, you really have to like that. Is that because you're an American like I am and you hate all liquorish? What about you? What about you, Frenchy, Frenchy, French Belgian man? Are you an absinthe man or no?
Oh, you hate licorice. I hate licorice. Oh, yeah. He's the only euro that hates the bigger. I was just in Athens for the first time, and I did not drink any Usoak.
I just, it's not my thing. Did you fall? Did I fall? Mm-hmm. What do you mean?
So Athens is like the slippery place on Earth. Oh, yeah. Although everything's marble. Yeah. It was very slippery.
Yeah. Did you fall? No, I didn't. But I almost did. Nastasia and I went barefoot sometimes.
It was so slippery. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I just wanted to say to them, you know, marble's not great for everything. Yeah. Well, the whole place is like the the it's built on a marble hill.
The whole thing is marble. Mm-hmm. Nuts. Yeah, and if it rains, forget about it. Yeah.
And they don't have like, I guess, lawsuits like we have here. So it's like, you know, it's like, oh, that dude, he slid down the mountain and died. You're like, oh, Christ gave a speech here and he slipped down the mountain. Didn't kill him though. You know what I mean?
It's like, it's crazy over there. Yeah. There was a moment in time in the late aughts when we were trying to make absinthe a bigger thing in this country, and we actually opened absinthe bars, but most of them like flopped almost immediately. Uh it did double digits growth because everyone thought they were gonna get high on Fujone. Uh-huh.
You know, and then Well, it was this forbidden thing, and everyone wanted to taste the forbidden thing. And then they said, Oh, it's licorice. Okay. They're like next. Yeah, they're like, oh, I like I like Van Gogh and Latrec, so like I'm gonna like this.
Yeah. And no, oh, I hate this. You know what I mean? Wow, this I hate it. Um I like it actually.
I'm fine with it. But you know, like uh Well, like I said, I like it in little touches. Do you know what I you know you know what the the best little touch is? A tiny, tiny, tiny old, old, old man in Marseille pounding like little glasses of uh I forget whether they're like uh are they Ricard there? They always forget whether they're Ricard in Marseille.
There's like Preneau and there's Ricard. Mm-hmm. I forget which one is Marseille, but like they're sitting there around the old ports going, I think it's Richard down there. Yeah, like just taking these little shots. Yeah.
Little people, little shots. So old. I love it. Yeah. The old port in Marseille is fantastic.
I've never been. Oh my God. You never been to Marseille? No. Oh, Marseille is great.
John, you like Marseille? Yeah. Fantastic. What about you, Joe? Sas, anyone?
Marseille? It's got grit. Never been. It's got grit. Do you like seafood soup?
Sounds good. It's the cap it's the world capital bully base. True. I know it has this reputation for grit. Is that it have a reputation for criminality for a long time?
Is there a difference? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I don't like things that are totally on the up and up. So like you go into Marseille, and like, you know, you're getting like sea urchins off the off the boat as they come in, and like at any minute you could get ripped off. And I'm like, I I feel it here. It's good.
You know what I mean? That's the town where I saw an organ grinder get so mad at his monkey. The monkey was acting up. And so the organ grinder like has the monkey on the thing. He's packing him back up in the van and he just goes wham and smashes the monkey's head into the van.
And I was like, oh, this place is rough. When the organ grinder and the monkey are getting into a fight on the street, I was like, this place is legit. You know what I mean? And yeah. So I was like, I love it here.
Like, I I could be here a long time if I only I spoke French. Weren't the first scenes in the French connection in Marseille? Probably. That's where a lot of the lot of the drug running and stuff was. Yeah.
And then you take a train, like not even like an hour, maybe an hour up to X, and it's like freaking Westchester up there. I was like, Oh my God, those people were like compared to Marseille, not my what are you you're more of an X kind of guy, right? Yeah. We do Calisson, uh sit in my cafe, eat my calison, whatever. Uh do they have any cocktail bars in Marseille or are they just all shooting Ricard?
I don't know. I haven't been there in a long time. I haven't been there since the revival. But I would love to go back. There's got to be at least one.
We stayed in an old Corbus A so like the reason we were there is my wife was doing a project on a on a designer named Charlotte Perrion, who did a lot of uh furniture. Then my wife was a scholar of Charlotte or is a scholar of Charlotte Perrion. And so she did all the furniture in this uh building he did called Unite, which is like one of the early kind of post-war uh corbu, like high rises outside of Marseille. So we stayed overnight in that hotel. It was fun.
Excellent. Yeah, but he was a scumsucker. Oh, yes. Corbus? Yeah.
Yeah. I was I do not know. Not my Bailey Wake. Taking anyway. Yeah.
But I'm gonna have to add Marseille to the list. Places to visit. I mean, when I say scumsucker, I mean like just, you know, taking other people's ideas. It's a general, like, you know, mid-century, like male, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Well, you don't become that famous without, you know, doing a few bad things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Doing some people wrong.
So you're so you're you don't have any uh words of wisdom for on absinthe for uh Oh, you know, I do. I mean, you sit just spare sparingly. I mean, I th it is a great accent, and there's so many uh cocktails that require it. That's one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it back so desperately, because every time we opened an old cocktail book, half of the cocktails asked for absurd. Well that's because they were all at that one from that one period of time when it was the catch up of the day.
Right. It was the bartender catch-up of the day. Yeah. And it was a good catch up. It works.
It works like a mansion really works. You know, if you pick up a book from like, you know, two thousand and like 11, two thousand twelve, you you'd think that Fournette's in everything. You know what I mean? Because it was catch up for a while. If this person lives in New York, do they look do we know where they live?
No, no information. I would recommend they go. That's a legendary. That's your dad. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Well, okay. I would recommend they go to Maison Premier, a bar in Brooklyn. They have more absinthe than anybody, and you can just sit there and taste a bunch and find out which ones you like. They also probably have more cocktails with absinthe in it.
I like the theory of the drip. Yes. Drips are fun. The absinthe drip is fun. It's fun.
Yes. But then you end up with a milky glass of licorice. But it's fun to watch. Yeah. Yeah.
I happen to like licorice. Um but Americans just we hate it. We really hate it. I like Twizzlers, which is not licorice, but we pretend it is. Uh does Twizzles even make a black?
No. I don't think so. They may they use it. I'm hearing from Joe that they they do, but like no one. Oh yeah.
All right. Jason writes in uh if you were on the Titanic and you were going down with the ship, by the way, famous publisher uh from the Roy Crofters, uh uh Hubbard was his name, but not related to the religion guy. Uh he and his wife went down on the Titanic, didn't go on the lifeboat, just stood up there and thought it was a romantic way to go down. So if you're doing a Roy Crofter's like sinking on the Titanic and you're gonna order three cocktails instead of trying to get yourself on that lifeboat, what are they? All right, so you're going down on the Titanic.
Right. And it takes a couple of hours. I mean, I've seen both movies. It takes a while. So you can get a good three cocktails in.
Yes, yes, yes. And I would I would assume they had good cocktails on the Titanic. It was a luxury liner. Yeah. Everybody, well, most people there were rich.
Um, and you probably want a strong drink so that you can close off your mind to what is happening, which is your imminent demise. So I would have three martinis in a row. Really? Three dry martinis in a row. Why, why mess around?
It's the greatest cocktail. They would have had the best gin, and then you would have been drunk and you wouldn't care. Oh my god. So, okay, so martini. Martini, martini, martini.
So martini, though, but how fast do you consume a martini? Uh, not very fast. So you like it even as it warms up? No. By not fast, it's like 10 minutes.
It's still cold. Okay. Yeah. How fast do you drink a martini? I mean, to me, a martini is a sipper, but like in the, but I hate it when it gets warm.
No, it's deadly when it's warm. It has to be cold. So you find that sweet spot. I think you can do it, do it in 10 minutes. You don't want to gulp it and do three gulps because it's like a sledgehammer.
So you keep it like in the water, like just like cool with the ocean as it's Yeah. Maybe I would tell the Titanic steward to do it in like the Audrey Saunders style with a sidecar. So like half of the drink is out on ice and it stays cold that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like in the the Massa martini glass, you know, katana kit and it's a little bit.
Oh, right. Yeah, it's in the in the box, you know. That's a good point. Well, what would your three drinks be? What were you Joe?
What were you gonna say? There was just some news about the Titanic where they uh they found a menu. Sold the first class menu for 1.2 million at auction. Oh, really? Oysters.
What could what there weren't there beverages on the menu as well? A couple things, yeah. Yeah. Tomato juice and other delicacy. Champagne, probably.
Do you know what's funny? Certain things come into vogue as soon as a company figures out how to do it, and then they come into vogue. Like, for instance, pineapple. Like so Dole figured out how to can pineapple, and then they put a zillion dollars into making a bunch of recipes with canned pineapple because now they had this, like they took over a whole island and basically put into forced labor that entire island growing pineapples. And then they paid people, including my favorite uh Monroe Boston Strauss, to like come up with pineapple recipes.
So, like all the pineapple recipes from like the 30s and 40s, all paid for by dole. All paid for by dull. The pineapple hegemony. All these recipes that you see come out is all paid for by big whatever it is. I noticed in my research uh on the old-fashioned book, after Prohibition, the garnishes were not just orange and cherry anymore.
There was always a pineapple, and that went on through the 30s. And I was so curious. And then somebody suggested, well, that's just the pineapple industry. It is. Yeah.
They used to, they used to have a their main office um in the 48, where it was in San Francisco. And so, like, you know, Big Pineapple's money went from Hawaii over to San Francisco and then radiated out like a spider of pineapple wealth all over. And they hired the best people of their time. They infiltrated uh mac like magazines aimed at consumers. They infiltrated like professional organizations.
So it's like this is still the way things work. Big fruit. Yeah, big fruit. Uh so uh my three, I can have anything, they have anything I want. I would assume the Titanic has everything, yes.
Uh maybe not Southern Comfort. So oh, but I can't choose like drinks that like I wish that someone could make for me. It's I think this is a fantasy question, and you should just say which three drinks you're having. Uh assume the Titanic can make anything. I would have the I would have uh a drink we used to have called the VEP Chartreuth, which was yellow VEP clarified lime carbonated, which is one of my favorites.
I would have uh maybe uh purple, which is Aka Vite, and Purple Basil nitro muddled, and then a big old glass of champagne to finish off. Champagne. That's a good way to finish off. So your your wish involves time travel. I don't know.
All right, I'll say uh uh Rodolfo uh Codero writes in uh wait, uh home bar enthusiasts have my own carbonation system at home, primarily a standalone CO2 tank with a single line. The only issue is there are concerns for the safety of having a five-pound carbonation tank at home. How safe are they to have safe? Uh the main thing is if someone knocks them over and breaks them, it'll vent, but it's you know, small amounts like that, even if it vents, it's not gonna cause any any damage in your house. People have them inside all the time.
I mean, you should chain them so that they don't fall over. Uh but five pounds, you're you're good to go. Uh Dan Watson opening a new cocktail bar shortly. A large part of our program is going to be high balls and house-made seltzer, so we want our carbonated water gain to be top notch. My main question is do you still recommend the big uh the McCann Big Mac carbonator as well as the CM Becker premix taps?
Yes. Um Herring Deck in Barn Nuremberg says, uh, do you think, you, Robert, that uh that the era of the modern classic drink is over since more and more bars are making advanced drinks with homemade ingredients and have uh menus with exclusively their own signature drinks. Uh short answer, sadly, yes. I do believe uh that era is over. Uh well, it's just harder and harder to make a simple drink that can be replicated uh that is a modern class that hasn't been done before.
So, you know. Yeah. Uh almost impossible. Martin Schwab, tea infused spirits versus carbonated tea for highball cocktails. What's the best call?
Um it depends on how much alcohol and how cold they are. Carbonated tea sometimes is a little bit too astringent. What do you think? This uh this is this is your question. Yeah, I mean, I I think look, you should milkwash it.
That's what I said. I came up with a whole technique to knock back the tea because I think that like a very cold alcohol and tea is sometimes too astringent, and that's why people you go really light on the tea. Uh from S, uh carbonate a few things at home, water, uh hibiscus tea mainly using CO2 tank, regulator, and chest refrigerator. A three-year-old video on YouTube shows that you have an on-demand carbonation setup. Any big differences between the two approaches besides batch versus continuous?
That's a pretty big difference. Continuous seltzer on tap. No, Mark Powers and Company website I recommend they no longer sell to people. Um but uh yeah, no, like having carbonation carbonated water on tap, which I've had for the past 25-30 years, is the single greatest move I ever made in my life next to marrying my wife and having kids. You know what I mean?
Uh people have carbonation on their mind a lot. Yeah. Uh so uh Robert Simonson's book is the Encyclopedia of Cocktails. You can you can buy it at uh any fine kitchen arts and letters near you. Yeah.
Uh buy it from them, use the Patreon code, and by the way, Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters will be on next week. We're gonna try to get in touch with uh Will Robinson's mom, who is a supervisor of Butterball prior to Thanksgiving. But get your Thanksgiving questions in uh for next week. Uh Robert, thanks for coming on. Hope you had a good time.
I had a great time. All right, cooking issues.
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