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 News Stance Studios. Joined as usual with John. How you doing? Doing great, thanks.
Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels behind me. Hey, hey, hey. How are you doing? Yeah, doing doing all right. Whoa.
It's 200 episodes here at New Stance TV. What? Wow. And it seems like just yesterday we left the Voldemort Network. Uh over there on the West Coast, starting from top to bottom in the upper left, we got Quinn.
How you doing? Hey, I'm good. Good, good, good. And then uh working down to Los Angeles, we got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
I'm good. Good. And uh, of course, last but certainly never least, Jack Insley, aka Jackie Molecules. How you doing? Yeah, I'm good.
Let me ask you a question, Jack. How the hell why do we start calling you Jackie Molecules? How did that happen? I don't even remember if so long. You don't remember this?
I remember like, you know, we were Yeah, okay, go go. Oh man, I don't know if I should tell the story on it. It's related to a sponsor read that you did not want to do. Because it included the word molecular. Right.
And then you said you can do sponsor read, you can do Jackie Molecules. Oh, yeah. It's all coming back to me now. Right. Mm-hmm.
That was back when people still cared about terminology. And I particularly hated the term molecular gastronomy. And so never wanted to say it on air. All those old lines have been, they seem so quaint. They've been erased.
Uh everyone's either retired or died. So it doesn't matter anymore. Nice. All right. And then, of course, uh today's special guest is Dave Wandrich, whose new book, The Comic Book History of the Cocktail, illustrated by Dean Coates, right?
Cod's Coats. Yeah. Like Katz. Anyway. Yeah.
Except nicer. He's a very sweet guy. Yeah, yeah. But it's not spelled that way, people. No, with a K.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And an O. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. Uh, so uh welcome. So this is the portion of the show where we just uh, you know, shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes about stuff that's happened in the past week or so or whatnot. And uh last week we didn't have uh, you know, any of the West Coast people because Amazon decided that they were gonna turn off everyone's phones. It seems like a plan.
Yeah, as one does. Yeah. By the way, I didn't know this until after I got uh home that day, but also no architects could do any work. Did you know that? Yeah.
Yeah. I heard that. Yeah. Right, because uh they were they do everything in in CAD these days. Well, well, but so they've done in CAD.
I mean, like my wife's the last generation of people that actually like learn to draw by hand, you know what I mean? And use the old school AutoCAD with like the weird like like pre-made tablets and all that. Um but now it's not only CAD, but it's all shared live with all the subcontractors and engineers, and it's great because it stops mistakes from being made. Like you no longer have an engineer putting a duct through someone's forehead. Right.
You know what I mean? Because they can fix this. Although, you know, I mean I'd pay money to see it. Yeah, it depends on well, so going back uh even further before I finish this. Do you remember when they built the Conde Nas Tower, the original like one in midtown?
Yeah, yeah. And a pipe fell off the ceiling and went through someone's apartment and through someone's head. Ooh, that's not nice. No, no, but I didn't know her, and this is now, you know, 20 years ago at least, or more. And so, like, we always used to ponder like you're in you think you're safe because you're inside of a small cube.
Right. Like in the upper floors in Manhattan, you're like, I've I've arrived, I'm safe. Now remember, at this time I was living behind, I was living in an illegal loft with a Fox police locked door that was like bolted on like all sides, like as New Yorkers did in the in the old days. Yeah, it would have taken it would have taken an act of God or a series of explosives to get me out of my apartment back then. And uh it's just the idea that you could be sitting in your apartment having a cup of coffee and a pipe would just like fall through your head.
Yeah, through your ceiling, which is made out of you know, compressed Kleenex and uh crazy, right? Uh oh boy. Yeah. Anyway, so they all use a program to try to prevent this stuff from happening now, but it's run by Amazon. Like the back end is run by Amazon, so all the architects went dark.
Crazy. Well, judging by their recent work, I don't think we missed very much. Hey now. Listen, architects have been making bad things for a long time. Oh, I know.
Like, since there's been architects, there's been bad architecture. And we'll get to this later about cocktails. Since there's been cocktails, there's been a lot of country. There have been bad cocktails, right? Yeah.
It's just we tend to focus on the ones that are coming out right now. Yeah because that's when we're alive. Yeah. Uh uh, but uh Nastasia, something for you. So the people won't know this, but uh back when Nastasi and I used to live on the same coast and actually go to work back, you know, together like people did, one of the things we would do is listen to Jim Croce, because Jim Croce, right?
Uh although Nastasia, like there's there's two of his famous songs, Nastasi and I have bone bones to pick with. So you don't those of you who don't know, Jim Croce was a singer songwriter who died in a playing class in uh crash in Nakedish, actually, in the early 70s, taking off a horrible crash. The pilot had run like two miles to get there, but he was a little old, he had a heart condition. He was probably he died, I think, on takeoff, and therefore everyone else died. Anyway, uh so two of his most famous songs are about bad phone etiquette and uh being what Nastasia used to like to call a beta male.
So she has a problem with these two songs, one of which is Operator, where clearly Jim Croce, he calls this operator to try to get a number and doesn't understand that the operator is just in the service industry. He doesn't want to deal with his shenanigans. It's not a bartender. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah.
So Nastasi and I'm like, well, what does this operator give a crap about you know? And he goes on and on and talks to that part, to that to that uh operator. The worst part, right, Stas. Well, what's the do you remember what the worst part of that song is, Stas? Uh no.
He says you can keep the dime. Yeah. You can keep the dime. It's it's there's no mechanism for that. There's no and first of all, it's the company's dime.
It's not the operator's dime. Yeah, yeah. Worst. Worst. And the other one, for those of you who aren't, you know, old enough to remember this.
When I was a kid, and even Nastasia, who's younger than I am when she was a kid, I'm sure Dave you're the same way. Not picking up the phone was not an option. When the phone in your house rang, you picked it up. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And if you weren't gonna pick it up, you had to leave the house. There was no you didn't just sit around listening to it ring. No, that was that was uh the collapse of civilization right there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Like, so like I know it's impossible for like the younger generation to understand this, but it just wasn't an option. You didn't really ghost people who didn't send it to voicemail. No, no, there was no voicemail. Yeah.
It's like not picking up the phone would have been the equivalent in like, you know, the 1700s of walking up to someone with a white glove and slapping them across the face. It just wasn't done. You know what I mean? Like, at least not without consequences. So uh consequently, you didn't call people late at night.
No. Ever. No, because that that was like your nearest and dearest have just died. Ding ding. Yeah.
So Nastasi and I, you know where I'm going with this, Daz, right? Yes. Yeah. So he's like, Jim Croce, I know it's kind of late. We're like, oh, who died?
And he's just calling to say he loves her in a song because he's too beta. Just tell her in real life that he loves her. He wakes her up, makes her think that her family's dead. Anyway. Well, that's a you know, put it this way, uh, once she got over the initial shock, it was like, this is much better than what I was thinking.
I guess. But I mean, to me that's Yetz loves me, okay. I guess to me, it's a turnoff. I don't know. What do you think?
You know what I think. All right, all right, true. But here's what's gonna make you mad, Nastasia. So one of my favorite comedians, uh Tim Robinson has a new show out, and they they make a plot point. Hey, out of Jim Croce's I got a name.
So now you are gonna probably have to endure Nastasia, a bunch of people who don't know from Jim Croce listening to it and then telling you about it. Yeah, see there's nothing Nastasia hates more. Yeah. Yeah, than someone else like horning in on her business. You know what I mean?
Anyway. Yeah, that's not that's not good. No, that's basically uh it's not food related, but that's you know You know, when they just when Fela Kuti got discovered by the hipsters. Worst. It was the worst.
I'd gone to see him at Felt Forum in 1986, you know. You know, I uh I I had his record since I was like 20. Now you're just another Schmo. And now I'm another Shmo, and everybody's like playing it. And uh, where's the fun in that?
Yeah, well, that's but that's another good thing about getting older though, is you no longer have to be different from other people. No. You know what I mean? Like, you know, uh, you know You don't have to keep up. You don't have to do anything.
No. No. You can you can like what you like and not worry about it, you know, nobody's gonna judge you. And if they do, all they're gonna say is you're old, which is obvious. So sick sick burn, bro.
Yeah, exactly. Where'd you come up with that one? Yeah. Well, you know, uh my new favorite phrase is uh get older, die trying. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Um so uh what are we what do we got on the West Coast? What do you got in the week? What's the week of in review? So I was at uh Thunderbolt last night.
Nice. Oh, you know, good friend, uh our friend Mike's place. And my girlfriend uh and I was like, let's catch the end of the Dodgers game. It was like bottom of the eighth. I was like, let's just catch the end of the game, World Series game.
Yeah. So needless to say, I don't know if you saw the game went eighteen innings. Wait, what? No, I did not see this. Uh the only thing, you know, the the last thing I know about baseball is that uh Lou Garrick played a lot of games and got ALS.
Like I don't know, I know nothing about baseball. You know what I'm saying? But I'm sure most people who listen to this will know this stuff. 18 innings is um a lot of innings. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that's playing until three in the morning. Right, but you get arrest for three outs all the time, right? I mean, you get to sit down for a while. Yeah, it's not I'm not talking about the players, I'm talking about the fans.
No, but that's why you do it at a cocktail bar and not at the stadium. Yeah. Well, even there it would get uh it would, you know, after about the 14th inning, I think I would detect a certain theme, you know. Well, Dave, are you that kind of guy that uh that gets up at the seventh inning so that you don't have to deal with the traffic to get your vehicle that way, you know, if if you're driving, get out of this name. No, I'm unfortunately that kind of guy who hasn't been to a baseball game since I saw the Mets in uh 1977.
Nice. And then, you know, I just went off and hung out in punk clubs and did that kind of thing. Uh yeah, I I I have been to a couple baseball games because uh, you know, my you know, Dax wanted to go, so I've been to him and people always leave. I haven't liked moron. That's like uh is that me?
Uh that's like uh that's like uh morons who like and this I see this every year and I'm about to see it again, who go to see Handel's Messiah. Yeah, they get up after the Halloween chorus and walk out. The worst. Yeah. Morons.
Although I I go to the opera every now and then and I will leave uh after i i I will leave during the second intermission. Yeah sometimes if it's not in a German opera. Uh I'm just messing up. Usually not Verdi, let's say. You know, he knew how to make things kind of amusing.
Yeah, there was some snap there, but uh or Bellini, you know, people like that. But uh yeah, I c I can I could see it under some circumstances. It's like I got I got my money's worth, I got enough. This thing is going on and on and on, and I'm gonna go home and go to bed. Wow.
I I like I like the idea that you would get your your money's worth but you're like, I know the story anyway. Yeah, I've seen it before. You know, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I guess that's true. But it depends.
I mean if somebody's really just uh killing it, you know, uh in the uh in the tenor line or whatever, soprano line, then then I might then I'll stay. But let's also be honest, right? You're not like preventing someone else from seeing the opera by leaving. No. That the opera houses aren't full of people.
You can get tickets to the opera. You can get tickets for very cheap if you want. So, but like like Handel's Messiah at Trinity is like this sells out like this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
So you're literally preventing someone from seeing it. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, it's horrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like that's when you have an obligation to stay. Yeah. And also, I have to say this. If you're gonna do, don't have the first time that you listen to Messiah all the way through be live. Like listen through it a couple of times so you get familiarize yourself.
So you know what's gonna happen, you know. We like sheep. Get to learn to like the less famous parts. That's all I'm saying. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Appreciate them. You know, I I went with my wife to see a weird uh organ German organ music from the 1600s being played at St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue, right around the corner from here, which has a very good organ and very good acoustics. But everybody is sitting in the audience and the organ player's behind us.
So everybody's kind of like craned around trying to crane around and finally just gives up and stares off into space and lets the lets the music wash it wash around them. And that was sort of the best way. As one should. Yeah. You know what's weird is like, first of all, like it's just so random, we shouldn't get into this.
First of all, uh Dave's a bit also a bass player, so like, right? You're also like back in the day. Back in the day, ex-bass player, let's say. Yeah, me too. Anyway, but uh so like organ music, I love organ music, right?
Oh, it's phenomenal. And nowadays you can go find like organs with old school, non, non uh even non-equal tempered organ. You can find all kinds of cool stuff. But uh the more I think about it, like back in the day, what's so funny about people like Bach is that they were just work a day musicians. They were cranking stuff, cranking stuff out.
Every day. They wrote music every day. Yeah, wrote it. Yeah. He's like, Oh, hey, yeah, here.
Oh, took out a few D minor. Boom. Yeah, yeah, boom, done. Next. You know what I mean?
Brandenburg Concerto, okay. Okay, I could do that. You know what I mean? It's such a weird thing. A couple hundred years later, you get people, they get maybe five symphonies, nine symphonies, and they're tapped out.
Yeah, no, he there was no bottom there. No, Haydn did over a hundred. Yeah. A hundred. Yeah.
That's a lot. That's a lot. He's like, oh, the Estrahazes need another. You know what I mean? You know, handle like, uh, now they want music for their fireworks.
Okay. Exactly. I think bars are in the middle of the city. I'd imagine him as Yiddish instead for sure. Alright, maybe.
Who knows? Who knows? You never know. No, I think bars are the same way. You still crank them.
You crank them? Yeah, yeah. I mean, anyway. Uh all right. Uh, what do you got, Stas?
What do you got for me? Uh well last night it was like uh it was 57 degrees here. Um so I went over to Polski's house and he was making a uh bratworth, ham hock, and boiled potatoes for dinner. Like we were like hibernating. We're talking about Aaron Polski, aka Polcat, uh whose uh beverage company he now has live wire, but ex Harvard and Stone, you know, bar bar bartender's bartender, uh, and like tall-looking, metalhead-looking dude.
Um friend of the show. So, no sauerkraut. And sauerkraut. Okay, okay. I was gonna say, I was like, boom, boom, boom, and no sauerkraut.
Well, you know, I I would expect uh uh mustard and uh uh as we call it in Trieste, where my dad is from, Kren, which is fresh grated horseradish. Oh and that uh, you know, with mustard and and horseradish on your pork, that is heavenly. So did you go for the brats or for the hawks or for a mixture? All of it, all of it. But Dave, I want you to say what you and I have started doing where I send you a picture from LA and then and then what?
Oh. So uh, you know, I am in a uh I am in a fourth floor post-war apartment in New York City in a 20-story building with a view of the fine fair supermarket. Which is one one it's not one notch above or below, it's the same notch as like a sea town or a key foods. You know what I mean? They've tried to gussy it.
Yeah, well I mean food key foods can be good is the thing. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I've never seen a really good sea town. Yeah. I mean, they're like they're they're trying to shade it from C Town up to like food emporium.
Yeah. They're trying to get up to food emporium levels for those for the old school. They're dreaming. Yeah, old school New York supermarket aficionados, those who actually have shopped at a Gristetti's. Yeah.
Uh but uh so that's my view. And so like she'll send me like she's outside because people have outdoor space there. You have outdoor space because you're in Brooklyn, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't have outdoor space.
I have a little tiny like patch of grass. Uh huh, nice. Which is nice. Yeah. I'm not complaining.
Your own grassy swart is a little bit more. It's a brand new building, uh gazing down on it. Uh well, you know, can't have everything in life. So anyway, so like she sends me a picture of it. Yeah.
But you could we could blow it up. I mean, we won't talk about it because if it happens now. I would never d dream of doing such a thing ever. Just for the record. You can dream.
One can dream. No, just for the record, never. So uh for the record. Yeah. For the record, never.
Yeah. Uh it wasn't me. So Nastasia around sunset, whenever that is where she is, like, you know, she'll send me a picture of this like gorgeous sunset that she's like sitting outside sipping her, you know, she sits real sparkling wine and not pet not because that's not her life. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So not that pet not whatever. Okay. So anyway, you get my point. So uh and so then I'll send her, I'll send her back a blurry photo from across the room of my tiny window, dark with like three city lights like peering into it.
Well, you know, New York supposedly has other charms. So I don't know what they are. But yes. I mean, look, I love this certain aspects of the scene. Oh, yeah.
It just gets to you. Well, they've also the kind of the fun aspects have been draining out. You know, like the little mom and pop shops that that you never know what you're gonna find. It's like, wait, like there's the like you go to the Jazz Record Center on the uh fourth floor or eighth floor, I think, of a loft building in Chelsea, and they've got like every jazz record ever, ever put out in there for sale, you know. And there are all these guys just going through it.
That kind of stuff I really like, but that's shrinking every year. There's gotta be just new stuff we don't know about though, like uh like uh I forgot I forget her name. Uh her dad was, I think Peter Sheldall, the critic. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh Carla, I know her.
Yeah, yeah. She wrote, you know, St. Mark's Is Dead, and her whole point is is that everyone has always thought that, you know, it sucks now. Yeah. You know, I mean, I you know, even my era, which is what's great about her book is reading it, I was like, Oh yeah, I remember thinking that all these kids sucked.
Although I always thought it was my generation that sucked. Yeah. I was like, we suck, not these younger people that sucked. Yeah, where we we failed them. Yeah.
I'm uh I I believe that I'm the first generation that hated itself. Or the first in my memory. Well, some of the beatniks were pretty uh pretty down on themselves. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Maybe, yeah.
See, it's what you say, everyone thinks they're new in there. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? And before that we didn't have generations because everybody worked for a living. Yeah, I just remember thinking we were a bunch of unmoored like morons.
Yeah, there was some of that. I I was pretty unmoored, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But you know.
Yeah. Eventually, uh we found some somewhere to uh to uh limp it onto. Uh Quinn, what do you got for me before we get to cocktails? Uh I got a lot of stuff, so I'll taste it out a little bit over a few shows maybe. But we found a source for uh buffalo milk.
So obviously I've been making gelato with that. Just plain milk and then a chocolate with buffalo milk. And those turned out really good. Okay, good but different how from the other milk that you use. Other than the fact that it came out of a different animal.
Slightly slightly richer. I find that the the buffalo milk, at least that we got, had a slightly almost muddy taste, almost a natural acidity to it. So it was quite good. I'm a I'm assuming this is uh Italian type buffalo, not not uh American Great Plains buffalo that you're milking. Yeah, no, yeah, one more buffalo, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Well, I'm I'm I'm not milking it. I'm just paying through the nose for the milk. Yeah. You're subsidizing the milking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and there's that whole, like, he's in Vancouver Island, so there's that whole Italian expand community, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Nice. Yeah. All right. But so you think is it worth the extra money? Or is it just a nice to have done.
Um I think I really did like the results with the when it's like on its own. I think obviously stronger the additional flavors get like it would be worth it. But there's still some combinations. I wouldn't mind uh trying them with. Well, this brings me to something that I just I just handed in the last of the new revisions, by the way.
Hey, hey, congratulations. Thanks, yeah. So, like, you know, it's the 10th anniversary will come out when it's been 13 years old of my book. But uh I just handed in and like I realized that in the first edition I had never written like uh like just a here's like basic premises of how to think about making drinks. And what Quinn just said, I'm glad to hear you say this, Quinn, because often this is like I feel like I'm like screaming into the night.
If you're gonna use some ingredient that is either hard to obtain or special in some way, don't cover it up. Yeah. Highlight it. Right? Like, don't be junking it up.
You're like, you're like, well, don't infuse it with chamomile and then uh you know don't don't blend it, uh blend it in a half ounce in the back of your cocktail somewhere. Dumb, dumb that is waste. This is why, like, you know, like uh this is the this is uh the problem with uh shotgun cooking, shotgun mixology, all of these things. It's like if if you're just trying to make something that's you know, if you want to be Coca-Cola and be a new mix of flavors that has no distinct thing other than itself, and you're the one lucky person among millions who can make a mixture that is as iconic as coke, God bless. Right.
Otherwise, highlight the ingredient that you're that you're focused on. I was in uh Venice just a couple days ago, and I we went to a cocktail bar, and it happened to be an Amaro Nonino takeover of the bar. And they had a complicated list of cocktails with good, you know, a Nino's a very good brand of uh of you know Italian grappas and Amari and Pair TV and all that stuff. But uh so they they had this complicated cocktail list that like they were using top quality stuff and everything was hidden. Yeah.
And so I went to the bartender, can you just like put two parts of this really nice aged grappa, one part uh bianco vermouth, and uh a big bar spoon of of your bitter, of your Amaro, and just stir it up. And there you could taste everything. It was delicious. I mean, the best drink ever, no. But fine, and you could taste the quality ingredients.
Right. That's that's that's the thing. Don't so like the w like one the the th the bullet point in my thing is have a good idea and then don't mess it up. Yeah. Yeah.
That's good. Simple. You know what I mean? Um which by the way, we're gonna have a bone to pick because often you conflate new techniques and shotgun, like just like throwing crap against the wall. Not the same.
Not the same. No, it's true. I I have limited space to to get into the subtleties, let's say, of modern mixology, and I wanted to have a little like impact. So, you know. Yeah.
But uh I'm glad to see that uh uh our friend Lucinda Sterling uh Sterling got a recipe in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Uh Rusty Nail variant if my memory serves me to be a little bit more. Yeah, the trusty nail with uh Janeaver.
Yeah. Very simple drink, very tasty. Yeah. Works great. Uh okay.
So people are always with with like a uh, you know, Philip Duff excluded, of course. Like people still, they're not I would never use Jennifer and Gin in the same No, they're different. So different. But why do people even like because just because they had a historical connection, people try to make a connection with them. And I'm like, don't.
They make dry martinis with this stuff. That's a horrible drink. Yeah. Because it it's it's whiskey. All it is is is malt, whiskey, uh, mostly malt, like rye malt and uh and barley, I mean, originally, uh, with with just a little bit of uh juniper and some hops.
The hops are key, and it gives it this kind of bitter dry thing going. Yeah, and people are like, well, you know, the gin comes from I don't care. Yeah, I don't care. They're different. You know what I mean?
The English couldn't make Dutch gin. They did they couldn't afford the grains, so they did something different. Yeah, so and they made it a completely different spirit. Uh but anyway, so that's yeah, that that that always bugs me. Yeah.
But uh I mean, I I don't know whether it's actually gotten a resurgence or not. I think it's a good spirit to work with. It can be, but uh you have to be, you know, you have to like treat it like whiskey. You know, you make whiskey drinks with it and it's delicious. But if you make gin drinks with it, uh many of them are are just kind of thin and wrong.
Although, you know, it does make a good sour, so but so does whiskey. So well, I don't know. I I am not a huge whiskey sour guy, unless it's got the egg white in it because just the the wood and citrus. You know how you used to you used to hate like uh hot citrus drinks. Yeah.
I don't know if you still do. But you used to hate it. I I I do because they strip your throat. Yeah. Well for me like heavily wooded, like especially scotch, which is not even new, so it doesn't have the the vanilla and seedness of it.
But like, you know, so like I can tolerate it with American whiskies or like new oak whiskies. But like in Scotch, it's like unless you add something like ginger to it that covers up that kind of pukiness that you get when you mix like the heavy wood and the citrus, just don't love it. Unless it's got an egg white or something that that that strips some of the astringency out of the bag. I I like uh American whiskey better for for that uh for for sours. But uh you know what's really good with scotch whiskey is if you just use uh lemon peel and sugar.
Sure or use oleosaccharum that that's great. Because it doesn't get puke because it doesn't exactly it doesn't have the acidity. Right, right, right. It doesn't have the reflux uh yeah yeah which I don't know what causes that I gotta get Ariel on that. I've I I've asked this question a bunch.
Maybe someday she'll figure it out but like what is it like there's two things I don't like that come out with um certain like w whiskey even like apple whiskey used uh like you know layers usually using is uh there's a a puke note in my mind and uh and a bubblegum note neither of which I'm particularly fond of like bazooka joe like a bazooka joe note not fond of it. No. You know what I mean? No, nor should you be. No.
Yeah, there the you you know, um American whiskeys uh can be so woody. And uh that's something you gotta watch out for. And then uh you get so much uh acids from the wood that it really uh uh it boosts it extra once you add citrus. Uh yeah, right. But uh stick to twists and old fashioned.
Yeah, you know, but you gotta dial it down. I I always dial down the proportions. People to put too much juice in their juice drinks also. Yeah. I'll I'll use half an ounce.
I I don't think you need much more for a three-ounce drink. In the cocktail book, you are well, I mean obviously it's history, so you're doing things that are historical as well as new, but clearly, you know, a proponent of the sugar in the bottom. Um but uh having run all these tests on this, I think it really depends on the style you're shooting for. Like the more the more you do that, the more you're looking for like booze forward, like less diluted. Yeah, it's brighter.
Yeah, it's like so it's different, like style. So when you're longer, I think the syrup is actually better. But when you're shorter, in terms of some of the In a daiquiri is the only thing I've really tested, but yeah, uh often the syrup gives it a plasticky texture that I I don't think the syrup is fully blending with the citrus. Well, because the the water is already and the sugar have already like bonded. And the tests are tastes syrupy.
In the test that we've ran. Yeah, what we found is is that people who liked uh like Julio Cabrera and and Shannon uh Mustafer who you know liked a particularly dry with the amount of sugar they added, yeah. Very spirit forward daiquiry, those specs did taste better with sugar. And people who were, you know, doing uh like you know, a regular length American bartender shake with uh, you know, like one and a half ounces rum and three quarters each of syrup and two well, two, three quarter and flat three-quarter. Okay.
So that that spec, people in general at the at the seminar we did this at, and I've done it a couple of times since then, preferred the syrup. So it all really depends on the spec you're aiming for. It depends on your palate too. But uh but I mean like the same people tasting it, right? Two-thirds of them preferred sugar when it was their spec.
Right. And two-thirds of them preferred simple syrup when it was my spec. Uh, you know. Yeah. And so it was like, yeah, you know, but so it just goes to show that like life is complicated.
Yeah, you know, drinks are complicated. Yeah. You've got very, you know, few variants, but they are variants. Yeah. Uh well, and I think uh, you know, as a historian, you know, you can speak more to this.
Uh, but I think we make a mistake when we assume that someone who wrote a recipe back in the day was merely stupid. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, of course. Yeah.
Some some of them were, some of them were incompetent. As they are now. As they are now. But some of them knew exactly what that was, you know. I got onto the stir the sugar in instead of using syrup from reading old bartenders, and they say, you know, you should do it this way.
Don't use the syrup in in your sour. Just uh and I tasted it, and and for me, for my palate, bang, that's what I like, you know, is is because again, I don't use as much uh citrus as modern uh Mr. Potato Head bartender specs call for for a daiquiri. Right. I follow the old Cuban recipe which said half an ounce.
Right. So at half so you yeah. So but that that's the whole that's the whole thing. You look at something with your modern eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you're like, oh, that's not enough sugar. Well, it it isn't, probably, if you are one, using the amount of acid that you're gonna use, and two, if you're going to dilute it as much as a modern bartender dilutes it with their shape. Right, right. So those two things are true. Yeah.
Way too much. I mean, you know, not not enough sugar. Like you know, so it's like um Well, also people, I think there's a kind of a range between uh minimum necessary sweetness and maximum acceptable, you know, that where uh at minimum necessary, anything below that, no matter who you are, it's gonna be like tooth setting, you know? Right, yeah, yeah. And maximum acceptable is like, okay, this is sweet, but still tastes like a drink, not like uh uh juice or yeah, juice or syrup, you know, or something like that.
And that's a pretty wide range, and there's a lot of stuff that can go on in there. There is, but I would say even more than that, the o like the optimum for even an individual person can vary depending on the style you choose. Oh yeah, you know what I mean? So it's like no, I could see that. And so I think people often don't look at the to uh look, some recipes just suck.
Yeah. Yeah. But like if you look if you look at a recipe, I always encourage people, take it seriously, just make it the way they wrote it, at least one time. Yeah. At least one time.
Well, yeah, I I I see a lot of people who don't know who would never do that. Yeah. They they they of course they know better. You know, they know better than Harry Craddock. What the what does he know?
Well, uh isn't it Nastasia that hates the most when someone like leaves a recipe review and they s and they review it, but they say all the changes they've made. Yeah, yeah. Don't review it. Uh no, it's not the recipe. Not the recipe.
Be like, here's the recipe. Here, I made the recipe as written. It was good. I also did this variant. Fine.
Mossel Tough. You know what I mean? It's like knock yourself out. But uh, you know, at least make it as written once. You know.
Oh well. I s I subbed, I subbed out the lime juice with pineapple juice, and it just wasn't the same. Yeah. What a surprise. Yeah, dunces.
Uh you know, I talk about that in the comic book history vid in the dark ages uh of the 60s, etc., where uh pineapple juice replaces lime juice in a lot of drinks because it's pre-sweetened. There's nothing you need to do to it, you know. Yeah, well, uh, let's let's get to the book. Let's get to the book then. Uh so this is the comic book history of the cop.
How did this happen? First of all. Uh John, have you seen this? Take a look. Thank you.
I was talking with the publisher about some projects, and this is one they suggested. And I'd been thinking about doing a comic book for a long time anyway, because uh it's a good great way to reach people, and it's a great way to make stories come alive, you know. Uh so I was I jumped on it and did it, and it turned out to be a lot more work than I thought because they wanted it to be a serious history of the cocktail. They didn't want it to be just you know, breeze through. Yeah.
They they wanted it with notes and they wanted it like like let's make this real. And for those of you that don't, by the way, uh in the time we have remaining, if you're listening live on Patreon, calling your questions uh to Dave at 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And for those of you that don't know uh uh Mr. Wondrich's bona fides, uh he was uh the he wrote he yeah, English English PhD professor, blah, blah, blah.
But uh comparative lit, yada yada. But uh 1999, I guess started writing about cocktails for for Esquire. Yeah, right, and was their cocktail editor, I guess. They had Yeah, I was their drinks correspondent. Yeah, and you know, I started at the top of the biz and I've been working my way down ever since.
But then uh in 2003, like right when all of this uh stuff was hitting the fan, right? And by that I mean, you know, I first became aware of kind of what was going on with this with this cocktail McGill in like uh other than you know, making and drinking them myself and like you know, uh in like 2004. So in 2003, like uh Dave planted his flag early with this book, they kind of changed a lot of people's trajectory called uh Imbibe, which was uh 2007, that's 2007. Oh, wait, yeah, yeah. 2003 was the original cocktail book.
2007 gets messed up. 2007 in bibe, but still only like a couple of years after people started doing this stuff. Yeah, yeah, it was still early. Because really, like I didn't I like in 2002, again, 2002-3, when I became friends with Evan over at WD50, like he introduced me to some of the people from Milk and Honey, which was I guess 2003 or 2002. When was that?
Yeah, that oh 1999. Really? It opened the same month I started writing for Esquire. It's funny. Funny, yeah.
Yeah. I didn't they weren't on my radar for that. December, December 1999. Yeah. So then, you know, there was this kind of underground thing, but then buy, which I guess like now is a couple years later, but still like three or four years later.
Yeah, yeah, not that much like cemented that importance of kind of history in this cut in the cocktail, in the cocktail renaissance, I would say. I tried to, you know, just get the uses of history, you know. It's like, here's why you learn this stuff. You've got stories, you've got uh inspiration to make your own drinks. You you know, there's a lot.
Well, you know, I mean, to go back at the time, there was it was a weird time because it was still seen as a need to recapture something that was lost. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that's what most of the good practitioners who are still remembered today, that's what they were primarily focused on. I think it's a mistake to say that they weren't because I was friends with all those people.
You know what I mean? That they didn't also know what was new and going on. Yeah, there was uh I I broke it down in the comic book history, because I I had to, I've never really talked about that period, you know, but I had to talk about it in this book. And I kind of think there were maybe four different constituencies that came together to be the cocktail revolution. There was like the bar flies and traditional bar people who just wanted bars like in the old days, you know, and like Dale was was was big on that.
Uh he's also practicing bartender, though. Yeah, exactly. Uh there were uh the culinary artists, the people who were uh looking at advanced culinary stuff and thinking, why don't we do this in the bar? This would be very cool and useful. Most of them were at restaurants.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, because they had to be. I mean, where else would you get the stuff? Then there were the antiquarians who were like, I've got to dig up this like dusty bottle of blah, blah, blah, you know, and and find this old cocktail book that nobody's seen in in 60 years. And and that was that was uh that was a crew, too. And uh, and you put them all together, uh and you get basically what we had, you know.
And everybody, like in the various groups, agreed on a few things. Fresh juice, use good quality spirits, you know, learn how to use your tools properly. So it wasn't like the they would I don't think people were really at each other's throats yet. No, we all they they never that's the that's the messed up thing. Yeah.
Like for as much as people try to make hay that there was these kind of camps, like that entire group would come because we were downtown. They would come over to the French culinary. Yeah, exactly. We would all hang out. Yeah.
Everybody was friendly, everybody, you know, and everybody was like, huh, that's interesting what you're doing. I might not, you know, do that, but cool. But there was a lot of stuff, like even like with the new tech stuff, right? Like two of the first people to buy centrifuges that I knew were Chad and Christy. Yeah.
And uh Alex Day. Yeah. From Death and So De Death and Co. and I forget where Chad and Christie were. You know, kind of uh moving the art forward.
Right. Well, but the thing is like they never really they never wore it necessarily on their sleeve, except except at Walker Inn. But you know what I mean? But they never kind of like uh present that. It wasn't uh like uh Matthew Bax's bar in Melbourne that I that's gonna be.
Yeah, I never went there. Yeah, oh what an amazing bar. All the booze in the bar, all the bottles hung from the ceiling on bungee corns because they needed the back bar for their centrifuges and uh roadovaps and all that stuff. That was the era when the the this kind of stuff on the internet was so new that you still had people who thought they could crib other people's ideas and not get caught. Yeah, yeah.
So there was someone I forget who it was in Australia who got nuked because came over, did a a tour of the US, went to WD50, which is Wiley's restaurant, and then cribbed a bunch of stuff. And then the people in his hometown, I for even forget what the chef's name was, were like, uh, we've all been around the world. We know this dish. There's the internet now. You know what I mean?
It's like it's fine to do like uh it it it's it by the way, no one needs to do a new new anything, right? But if you're going to present as new, don't crib without reference. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could do like homages to anybody.
Yeah, yeah. That's fine. Yeah. Everybody likes that. Everybody loves an homage when it's delicious.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Exactly. And you can tinker with it just a little bit. Do whatever you want.
As long as you tip the hat. Yeah. Tip the hat. Yeah, easier. Also.
Yeah. Always easier. Yeah. Um, anyway, but I think what's interesting, uh, and so like to get back to it before we get to the the book again. I saw that you wrote uh, I don't know where it is.
I don't have it. I have it. Oh, uh in January of this year, why is my drink so damned weird in punch? Yeah, right. And I think, you know, I think we have like slightly differing perspectives on kind of what's going on.
Maybe we don't. I'll ask you. Like for me, the pandemic, which you you know rightfully say in here, like a bunch of old timers, not even old timers, like relatively young timers, got out of the business. Yeah. And when it came back, there did seem to be a great unmooring of things.
Yeah, all the history programs uh that were teaching bartenders like their traditions and et cetera, those all went away. Yeah. But it's been great for me. Yeah, see? It's all it's always good for somebody.
Yeah, well, because uh all these old lines were erased, yeah. And, you know, the people I don't really feel like I have a camp, but people who thought that I had a camp, like they're more people in my quote unquote camp than you used to be. Well, young bartenders, what's really hard for a young bartender is talking to people. Yeah. You know, what's really easy for them is manipulating their digits and uh making complicated things.
All kinds of digits, like finger digits and yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. Moving, moving, moving their little fingies. Yeah, exactly. Because uh they they're good at that, you know, they're dexterous, they're energetic, they're ambitious.
What they're not great at is schmoozing with customers and talking to them and seeing what the customer wants. They're much better at uh saying, I made this for you, admire it. Right. You know, you know So that's that that's that's sort of where I come down on it. But I mean I think that the complexity of the complexity of menus, and I had this argument with uh Jeremiah when we were opening Contra, is you know, he didn't want the menu to be, and first of all, Nastasi will verify this.
I detest choice. Like I just don't like being overwhelmed with choice. Just tell me what I'm gonna have, do a good job. That's me though, right? But I think you can I think there's a difference between presenting a menu that's overwhelming and because there's ways to make new things inviting.
Yeah, but you know what's even more inviting is you have some old things on the same menu as the new things, so that you're not shoving all this innovation uh down the throats of your customers. You know, it depends on what you're yeah, I think it depends on what you're shooting for. You know what I mean? Well if you're shooting for an all-young people bar where where you've got, you know, the the latest and the greatest of uh of the you know of the current generation, and you're you're trying to be cutting edge and all things, et cetera, then then that's one thing. You know, that's that's a bar that I'm not gonna go to, but never.
Well, I mean, but the thing is that like you can be you can be not doing the classics, but also not being crazy. Yeah, you could do that too. I mean that's but that's like hopefully my shtick. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, no, no.
Simple flavors. Yeah, you you're you're always very good about that. But you know, you're not uh you you're you're on the conservative end of the spectrum now, which has got to be weird for you. But the thing is, I think I feel like I've always been there. It's just people didn't know.
Right. You know what I mean? Like, but uh you know, you know, uh uh so many uh new bars, they they're really, really, really pushing to to do these complex drinks that are that are using rare ingredients and uh and all that. And I guess it's fun, but it's uh it's not fun for everybody. Yeah.
And all those people, when I when I wrote that article, they all said, well, you can just order a regular cocktail then, old man. And no, you can't. They're not stocked for it. The bartenders aren't trained to make the classics. They don't have any of the rare ingredients you need need to make some of the classics, and they're not interested.
We we specifically don't carry some things because we don't want to make certain drinks. Right. Because we hate those drinks. Yeah. But that's I feel like that's fine.
Like I specifically don't have certain ingredients because I don't want to make those drinks. You don't want to make espresso martinis or porn stars or whatever. Yeah. So can you do it? I'm like, No.
No. Yeah, that's that's the old way, is like, no, we don't have vodka in our bar. Yeah, I mean, which I do. Like, I don't like I kind of wish I could sell more vodka drinks because I think it's a good canvas for certain flavors. Yeah, it does.
I do too. No one will order it from us. I make, you know, I make vodka drinks occasionally. No one will order it from us. I can't use it.
Yeah, nobody nobody wants me to to give them a vodka drink also. One of the best drinks I ever made at existing conditions was a vodka drink and no one ever ordered it. I used to do it uh we did a very nice vodka old fashioned with uh with demerara syrup and you know a couple like interesting bitters at uh five ninth over in the meatpacking district back in two thousand three four or five whenever the hell that was and uh that was that was really interesting. Nobody ordered it at all. No.
Right. It's like it's like you get to you get to a point it was super tasty. Yeah you get to a point where people like trust you to do all of the stuff but not to make something with vodka to tell us yeah exactly no no it was you know the it drinking is always performative and they were performing people who don't drink vodka drinks. Yeah yeah yeah yeah you know that was their their stage. Yeah use uh use the appropriate spirit for the task exactly is there a question coming in there's two questions on Discord oh wait can you can you read them John because I can hear him better uh first is I would love if one rich had any major surprises or new info come up from the research on his of his other editors while working on the Oxford companion that's the first one.
Uh yeah there was lots of stuff um you know everybody everybody dug in and uh I worked with Frederick Smith on the rum entry and Frederick is a very interesting guy and has uh had a lot of interesting uh uh stuff that about uh the the early rum trade. Uh I'm trying to remember. That book is two books ago now. So and uh it was so traumatic, I've put it somewhat somewhat out of my mind. But uh yeah, I I learned uh Doug Staley from DC is a really good researcher of uh bartenders and old cocktails, and he found a a bunch of interesting stuff.
Uh I can't remember exactly the details of it. But yeah, you know, everybody uh almost everybody pitched in really well. A few people never turned in anything. I didn't. I was supposed to do something I never did.
Well, you know, we don't hold it against you, I'm here. But uh, but it that happens. Uh uh, but okay. What was the other question, John? Yeah.
The other one was could use some collective advice and or recipe from the Dave's about a large format cocktail or punch for a studio opening in two weeks. If only we knew someone who wrote a book called Punch. And if only there wasn't a section in the comic book history of the cocktail, which Patreon users can get at a discount from Kitchen Arts and Letters. If only there wasn't a section on punch with instructions in this book. Illustrated instructions, no less.
Yeah, you know, if only we had that kind of resource here, Dave. Yeah, I know, right? Well, I mean, the only advice I'd say is use pot-stilled spirits, uh, rum, preferably. If you if you use good pot still rum with lemon peel and sugar left overnight and lemon juice and water, you're gonna make the best bowl of punch that ever anybody's ever had. It's incredibly simple.
Where are you on the giant block of ice to prevent overdilution as it sits? Uh if I'm doing it for uh a long afternoon, I'll do that. I'll use that. If I'm making the punch to be served out instantly, I'll use small cubes. So what is the like so what's the usual use case here?
Like uh you what's your optimum size punch bowl? So if I'm gonna have a party, how many times should I think about refilling my punch bowl? Let's say it's a two-hour party. How many times should I refill it so it's freshened? How many people see it all it's all based on that?
Right, but in other words, but like what's the actual sit time? What's the good sit time of it? Oh, it could sit for an hour if you've got a big block. It's okay if it gets diluted, it's better. That's that's the that's the best thing about punch, is as the party goes on, it gets weaker.
And so people could keep drinking it without getting as absolutely trashed as you would expect. So, although you also advocate small cups. Yeah, I do. I do. In the in the comic book history of the cocktail, you call out uh I can't count that well m visually, memory-wise, but something like five or six of the classic ones, even though you don't necessarily give recipes for it.
Yeah, yeah. Uh what's your favorite of those? And you know, I've never had fish house punch. I was gonna say, 'cause you're a Pennsylvania guy. Yeah, and peach brandy.
I've never so first of all, uh, they were supposed to bring remember like 10, 12 years ago they're gonna bring peach brandy back? They tried. They tried. But I've never I've tasted a sample, I thought it was good. And the secret, because they went out of business, I can tell you all, is they were buying, they were buying 55 gallon drums of uh just expired peach puree from the Gerber Corporation.
Okay. So that they could distill this like fairly high quality, but no longer baby friendly peach goop into peach brandy. Oh, I manage and process. Yeah. Because they are you you beat them down with sticks or grind them, and the peaches are, you know, sticky and gross.
And and uh we i i you would think it's just a southern. We grew peaches up here. I'm sure it's a good use for our country. Oh no, they made more than peaches. They made it in New York.
Uh it was we don't make the best eating peaches, but I'm sure they distill wine. It was America's luxury spirit. It was the most expensive spirit made in America until it disappeared in the second half of the 19th century. So is that where peach stops comes from? Uh peach schnaps is like you take a little bit of peach extract and some beet uh beet spirit and a lot of sugar and you pour them together.
And uh there's there's nothing natural to it. But uh uh unfortunately the real stuff was like distilled from peaches. I've tasted some that's good. Oh my god, yeah. The the uh high wire distillery, uh Ann Marshall and Scott Marshall make a really lovely one.
Every year they make a small batch and uh but it's not it's not punch price friendly. No. It is from it is in my house. I I will use it no matter what, you know, because uh it makes the best punch. Oh, the other truly amazing punch, I think, is uh Chatham artillery punch, which is you also mentioned in the book.
Yeah, I don't know that one. Oh, lethal, lethal, lethal. So what so give give me the give me the basics of the two punches? Uh Chatham Artillery Punch is uh quart of bourbon, quart of strong Jamaican rum, quart of cognac or armagnac, uh another quart and a half of shrub. With the oli the oleo shrub.
Yeah, olio shrub is which is uh we don't need to get into it now in detail. You make it make a make an oleo like like modern, but then you add juice, the you add the juice back to it, shake it, dissolve it, dump the whole McGill in. Exactly. And then uh you fill it up with three three quarts of champagne. So how long is that last the champagne, or is it okay that it flattens out as much?
It it it lasts uh I made a huge, huge amount of it once. Uh Greg Best, the great bartender from Atlanta and I uh put it together for Southern Food Waste Symposium. And uh we used a case each of bourbon and uh and and the other spirits and three cases of sparkling wine. And uh by the end of a house, what you used to do. Yeah, yeah, basically by the end of an hour, people were sitting in the bathtub scooping out what was left from the from next to the drain.
Nice. So people were absolutely hammered. I bet. So you can make uh you can make that stuff disappear really quickly. And give us the give us the quick fish house.
Uh fish house is uh two parts rum, one part peach brandy, one part cognac, uh lemons, sugar, you know, again, you can do an oleo as uh and a shrub uh as uh uh uh uh to taste, basically. Uh and then uh water and nutmeg. Very simple. Nice. Very good.
I like how you say do uh I believe the words that you wrote in punches was nutmeg not optional. Yeah. No, you need the nutmeg. I mean that's uh well I think it's also like uh it's nice in this in the in the book is you try to bring um back, you know, the hist history. Some people have been written out of history, yeah, and you're trying to rewrite even stuff that, you know, wasn't necessarily available in terms of scholarship 15 years ago.
Oh, I but I you know, when I started uh 25 years ago and I started writing about cocktail history, uh the first thing I found is like there are so many people who have been forgotten who were really important. And, you know, some of them were white males, many of them, but many of them were were black, many of them were immigrants from, you know, all over the world. Uh there were many women making drinks, and all of those have been sort of shoved to the side. Now people are trying to bring them back, but uh a lot of the people who are doing it uh are maybe not demon researchers. So you see the same names over and over again.
I tried to get a little beyond that. Right, right. And find, you know, uh but I've been doing this for 25 years, keeping files of these people, because I think that's the real story of, you know, it's it's America. Uh there's no America without black people working in it and doing, you know, doing stuff. There's no America without women doing stuff.
Uh i i the whole idea is absurd. Well, let's go to the julep section then. Yeah. Uh and let's talk about the julep, which you, you know, I think rightfully say has been debased to a once-a-year kind of a thing. But I I actually didn't know until I read the book like the the breadth of what the julep was at one time.
It was a very fancy drink, briefly, in the years right before the Civil War. Uh African American bartenders, both enslaved and uh and uh free free blacks of color as they were known, uh were the specialists. Not the only ones, but the most prominent ones uh who made these things and they would like to use brandy, always brandy. Uh before before the Civil War, the South, it was really low class to drink whiskey. You know, and this was a gentleman's drink, so it would be always brandy.
Maybe you could sneak a little rye in with the brandy, but you needed a lot of brandy. And then they'd use like Madeira and Port and you know, bits of that, and uh uh maybe a little bit of marischino liqueur, and you know, just they were they were fancying it up, sometimes too fancy, I'm sure. As per our previous uh But I mean I never thought about this. The main shtick was they didn't have citrus necessarily. They put a little bit of some people put even put citrus in it.
So, you know, it was supposed to be no citrus, it was supposed to be mint sugar booze and lots and lots of crushed ice, of very finely cracked ice, so much that uh in these years before air conditioning, the hot, humid uh air in places like Virginia would freeze on the the moisture in the air would freeze on the outside of the glass and make a thick coating of of ice. There's nothing more exciting when you see a glass like that. Yeah, yeah. It's like that is cool. Well, I know that you also there's certain sites that I know you in particular love, like you love the site of an airline uh drink cart.
Oh yeah. It's so Pavlovian. I almost bought one at one point, and then I was like, no, I'm not gonna spoil it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's inching to me.
And I'm sitting there and then in in my seat just looking at it, willing it to come faster. Come on, come on. So speaking of days before air conditioning, I remember back when uh so one of the famous bars in um New Orleans is the Napoleon House where they they strangely do a hot muffaletta, which I actually enjoy. Yep. And uh, you know, you get their pimps, cup, and Sazeracs.
We got two more minutes. Yeah. And uh was something lost when they air conditioned that place? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it wasn't the same lazy place.
Yeah. You know, it was it was uh, I mean, like 20 years ago, I would go and sit at a table, uh, listen to the classical music and drink, uh, I'd alternate between Sazrax and Pim's cups. And there wasn't a huge crowd, but there'd be people, we'd run into people. I remember my uh uh wife and I, Karen and I ran into a former co-we worker who was down there uh having a dirty weekend with an air Air Force pilot, and we bagged her. We we ran into her at the Napoleon house, and she was like, uh this wasn't supposed to happen.
Yeah, no, it was a great place for kind of melting into your bar seat. Yeah, very good for that. Yeah. Uh all right, so last thing, because we're gonna run out of time here. Here's some uh new new-ish scholarship that I wasn't aware of, and John were talking about this.
Uh cocktail, I guess originally was uh either a piece of ginger or a hot pepper that you shoved up a horses behind. Yeah. To make a cock its tail up so you could sell it. Yeah. So it didn't seem like a worn-out old neck.
Yeah, so then it became like the thing that a gent would a sporting gent would take in the morning. You know, it's like as my cocktail, I'll take this. You know, so but uh originally, yeah, that's uh I've got I've got like little things talking about little like newspaper bits talking about uh uh ginger and pepper as cocktail. Yeah, right. Well, uh I wonder what the relative merits and demerits are of hot pepper versus ginger up the up the wrong way.
I well, you're known for experimental science. So geez, Louise. Uh all right, so listen, so again, uh the book is the comic book history of the cocktail. Also, I'll ask you this in the two seconds I have remaining. It says, I shall not reveal these secrets until I do the uh comic book history of the dive uh bar.
Is that mean that's gonna happen? I don't know. If this does well, you know, go out and buy it and then talk to me. Because for those of you that don't know, Dave is also the historian par excellence of the dive bar, which is its own awesome subgenre. Unbelievably complex and very cool stuff to to dig into.
So uh thanks for coming on. Pick up the book, uh, read it. It's got lots of good recipes you can make that, as Dave says are very well illustrated and made in the old way. So, like showing you how to make these historical drinks in the historical way rather than modern adaptations of them. So go pick it up at uh fine bookstore near you, especially Kits and Arts and Letters.
Dave, thanks for coming on. Thank you so much, as always. What a pleasure. Cooking issues.
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