Walking That Line

I’m on strike at the moment, and that moment may last a while. Might as well keep limber by making a few recommendations.

What I’m Watching

Rabbit Hole (Paramount+). I waited until all eight episodes of the first (only?) season of this show dropped to make sure it stuck the landing. It did, so now I can say this Kiefer Sutherland series is the best thing I’ve seen on TV in a while, and stronger than any thriller novel I’ve read recently. And I won’t tell you why.

Doing so would spoil the fun. More than one episode of Rabbit Hole ended with a reveal that had me saying “What the fuck?” aloud to my TV. But every twist feels organic, thanks to the show’s devilishly intricate structure and to its premise. Sutherland’s John Weir specializes in shaping perceptions to aid his corporate clients, his tactics and slippery morals perfectly illustrated in the extended sequence that opens the premiere episode; right off the bat, you’re advised not to trust what you see. An old friend hires Weir and his team for a job that ends with Weir framed for murder. Where the show goes from there is … well, you’ll have to watch for yourself.

Rabbit Hole is consistently funny, which shouldn’t have surprised me considering it’s the brainchild of Glen Ficarra and John Requa (Bad Santa). They write beautifully for Sutherland, wringing laughs out of his gruff persona. The show’s sensibility and Weir’s character are established in this early exchange between Weir and the FBI agent determined to take him down.

FBI Agent: Corporate espionage is a dirty way to get rich.
Weir: Espionage? What are you talking about? I’m not a spy.
FBI Agent: Manipulating people and situations to influence markets for client advantage is … what, then?
Weir: Consulting.

A sequence when Weir, the target of a city-wide manhunt, strolls into a New York police station to see the “evidence” against him is a marvel of low-tech deception and social engineering. And a running gag involving Kiefer and hammers got me every time.

But the show also succeeds as a thriller, tackling thorny topical subject matter in a manner that consistently raises the stakes. The supporting cast is richly idiosyncratic, and when the actor playing the show’s Big Bad finally showed their face, I was ecstatic. (And even that reveal has a reveal.) If the show doesn’t return, its sole season goes into the books a winner, ending on a perfect note of 1970s-style paranoia.

Paramount+ may be primarily known for Yellowstone and Star Trek spinoffs, but it’s also the home of The Offer (my favorite show of 2022) as well as the bonkers Catholic X-Files, better known as Evil. That’s a solid batting average for a streaming service.

Transatlantic (Netflix). I wrote about it in my guise as Renee Patrick, but nowhere near enough people are paying attention to this lush limited series, so I’ll also laud it here. It’s about the ragtag efforts of the Emergency Rescue Committee to transport artists from Europe to the United States in 1940. Like Rabbit Hole, it employs a tone you don’t expect; it’s light and even fizzy, which only lends the dark moments more impact. Watch it for Justine Seymour’s costumes, each and every one a knockout, and the haunting score by Mike Ladd & David Sztanke.

What I’m Reading

The Pitfall, by Jay Dratler (1947). The 1948 film noir Pitfall has been rediscovered, due in part to the efforts of my friend and colleague Eddie Muller. It also stands out by having a femme fatale who’s no seductress, but a woman simply trying to do her best. It’s not the fault of Mona, played by Lizabeth Scott, that men are drawn to her, like bored suburban family man/insurance investigator Forbes (Dick Powell) and sleazy stalker shamus Mac (Raymond Burr). The source novel is by Jay Dratler, who didn’t work on the film but whose own impressive string of noir credits includes the Hitchcock knockoff Fly-by-Night (1942) and Laura (1944). Dratler’s book is back in print, part of Stark House Press’s Film Noir Classics line. (Hat tip to Saturday Evening Post columnist Bob Sassone for reminding me about this series.) Reading it is an object lesson in adapting material, particularly under the strictures of the Production Code.

Which is ironic, given that in the novel, Forbes is no insurance man but a screenwriter. Mac isn’t a private eye but a Beverly Hills cop. He had a hand in arresting Mona’s purse-snatcher husband and wants to make a move on her, but knows he doesn’t stand a chance … unless his buddy Forbes, whose wife is currently very pregnant, sleeps with her first, then vouches for good ol’ Mac. Nothing that sleazy or disturbing occurs in the film version; in the 1940s, it never could. Mona remains the same, a goodhearted woman powerless before her power over men.

The book is packed with vintage Hollywood detail. Forbes says of Schwab’s: “It’s movie-town’s drugstore, and better stories are enacted at its counters and in the rear of the prescription counter than many a studio shapes into its best product.” Toiling on assignment at Fox while he agonizes over Mona, he thinks, “I knew I’d lick the story. I never met one that couldn’t be pounded into shape if you beat your head against it long enough and if you made real people live in it.” Dratler certainly did that here. The Pitfall is a close-quarters study of obsession, as short and sharp as a kidney punch. And it features an extended metaphor involving a centipede that’s still wriggling away in my brain.

What I’m Drinking

I discovered this Martinez riff courtesy of Cocktails with Suderman and was sold on it before sip #1 because:

a) it’s concocted by genius bartender Phil Ward, whom I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in action at the New York bars Death & Co. and Mayahuel and who has gifted us with modern classics like the Oaxaca Old Fashioned and the Final Ward;
b) it features the artichoke-heavy amaro Cynar, a personal favorite;
c) it’s named after a modern noir classic. Forget it, reader, it’s …

Cynartown

2 oz. London dry gin
¾ oz. sweet vermouth (Ward recommends Carpano Antica)
½ oz. Cynar

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a Luxardo maraschino cherry.

Cocktail of the Week: Tales of the White Negroni

At the heart of this week’s entry lies a temptress known as Suze. Her wiles are such that I haven’t actually tasted the drink this post is putatively about, much less prepared it myself. Instead I offer two variations that attempt to carry on in her absence.

Suze is made with a species of the flowering plant gentian. According to Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist, gentian’s use for medicinal purposes dates back to 1200 BC. The plant is harvested at an age when its roots weigh several pounds. The bitterness of those roots informs a host of liqueurs including Campari and Aperol, but in Suze it’s the whole show. I’ve tasted Suze. The best word for its flavor is funky. Additional tidbits about Suze –

- It’s beloved in France, where gentian grows in the mountains, but has only been commercially available in the United States since 2012.

- It comes in a bottle approximately the size of the torpedoes from which Joaquin Phoenix got his squeezings in The Master.

- In Washington State, one of those bottles will run you about seventy dollars.

- As the product of a Catholic union household, I cannot in good conscience drop seventy dollars on a mammoth bottle of liqueur possessing a taste I am inclined to describe as funky.

- Craft cocktail bartenders in Washington State are also galled by that price, particularly when they know you can pick up a bottle of Suze in Parisian supermarkets for the spare Euros found in the couch cushions. So plenty of craft cocktails bars don’t have Suze, either.

The Fatty 'Cue White Negroni

All of which comes as a disappointment in light of the growing popularity of a drink called the White Negroni. Created by U.K. bartender Wayne Collins in 2002, the drink riffs playfully on the basic structure of the Negroni: gin/aromatized wine/potable bitters. The relative scarcity (and high price) of Suze has led others to tinker with that formula even further. Several of those later innovations, mercifully, all use ingredients I happened to have on hand.

First up was a variation from Michael Dietsch of Serious Eats. Dietsch used Cocchi Americano in place of Lillet Blanc, which is now my default substitution, along with dry vermouth. My contribution: grapefruit bitters. The drink certainly qualifies as white – I’ve had martinis that aren’t as clear as this – and its crisp, cool taste is bolstered by the presence of grapefruit. But I longed for some additional bitterness.

More to my liking was the White Negroni credited to the New York restaurant Fatty ‘Cue. As in Dietsch’s drink, they use gin (favoring Plymouth), Cocchi Americano, and dry vermouth. They also throw in my old favorite, celery bitters, then push the result more toward the Negroni camp with the addition of the artichoke liqueur Cynar. (Fatty ‘Cue also garnishes the glass with a fennel frond, which is the kind of flash I leave to the professionals.) It’s more herbal than Dietsch’s cocktail but still possesses a bright, clean taste. This is the one I’ll make when I wonder what a White Negroni with Suze might be like.

The White Negroni I’ve Never Actually Had

Wayne Collins, London

2 oz. Plymouth gin
1 oz. Lillet Blanc
¾ oz. Suze

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The White Negroni, Variation #1

Michael Dietsch, Serious Eats

1 oz. gin
1 oz. Cocchi Americano
½ oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes grapefruit bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The White Negroni, Fatty ‘Cue Edition

Fatty ‘Cue, New York

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. Cocchi Americano
½ oz. dry vermouth
¼ oz. Cynar
2 dashes celery bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist, or a fennel frond if you have that kind of time.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Bensonhurst

What better way to follow up the Brooklyn than with one of the many innovative tributes to that occasionally elusive classic? Particularly one that makes use of that bottle of Cynar I cracked open a few weeks back.

Chad Solomon, formerly of New York’s Milk & Honey and the Pegu Club and one of the founders of the catering and consulting firm Cuffs & Buttons, crafted this concoction in 2006. By then twists on the Brooklyn had already become a cottage industry. Unlike most of its Kings County brethren, the Bensonhurst honors its progenitor by keeping the dry vermouth. In place of Amer Picon Solomon opted for the artichoke liqueur Cynar to acknowledge the long Italian-American history of the namesake neighborhood.

In his quest to create what he dubbed “a tough-guy drink,” Solomon also devised a true connoisseur’s cocktail. The Bensonhurst is rye forward, but the other flavors remain very much in evidence. You’ll find more maraschino in a Red Hook – Solomon called for a very precise two tablespoons in his original recipe – but its presence is a constant. The vermouth smoothes the edges and permits Cynar’s herbaceous quality to sneak in for a bow. One variation suggests merely rinsing the glass with the liqueur, but I prefer to have Cynar’s bitter complexity in every sip down to the last. The traditional version doesn’t have a garnish. I tossed in a cherry because I had one and nobody got hurt.

The Bensonhurst

Chad Solomon, New York City

2 oz. rye
1 oz. dry vermouth
1/3 oz. maraschino
1/4 oz. Cynar

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a cherry if you feel like it.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Cin Cyn

Picking up that bottle of Cynar, the artichoke ambrosia, from where we left it last week. Don’t be surprised if I hoist it again in the next few entries. It’s a big bottle.

The spelling of Cin Cyn – or is it Cyn Cin? – is a nod to two of its ingredients, red vermouth (Cinzano being a popular brand) and Cynar. In some circles it’s known as a Gin-Cin-Cyn, a la Rin Tin Tin, to include the base spirit.

By now the cleverboots among you have made a pair of deductions. The drink is a variation on the classic Negroni, and its name is pronounced “Chin-Chin.” Dubbing the cocktail after the informal Italian toast “Cin Cin” is a way of honoring the national origin of its elements. The phrase is said to be an onomatopoetic rendition of the sound of clinking glasses, which is a lovely thought.

Too bad it’s untrue. The toast isn’t Italian, either. (If I’m going to burst bubbles, I might as well burst as many as possible). Its usage comes from eighteenth century British and Portuguese traders who misheard the Chinese expression “qing-qing,” or “please-please,” a response to offers of food and drink.

The Cinzano plug in the name aside, any sweet vermouth will work here. I opted to keep the Italian theme but ratchet up the flavor by using Punt e Mes, with its robust bitterness. That, in turn, demanded a staunch gin that could keep pace, like Tanqueray. Angostura or Peychaud’s bitters are typically included, but I followed the lead of Jason Wilson and went with the orange variety. They make a fine complement to the orange peel, a length about an inch or so wide, used as a garnish instead of a narrow twist. After the oils have been expressed, of course.

And what does that mean, exactly, expressing the oils? I had it illustrated beautifully to me a few weeks ago during the Bartending 101 course I bought myself as a birthday present. It was taught by Anu Apte, owner of Seattle cocktail haven Rob Roy, through her Swig Well Academy. Anu prefers wider swaths of peels as garnish because they offer more essential oils and thus more complexity. She demonstrated by holding some orange peel up and squeezing it. A visible cloud erupted from it, a spray of concentrated flavor. Hold the garnish with the peel facing down over your glass and do likewise, and that intense burst of citrus goes directly into your drink, augmenting what’s already there.

The Negroni is one of the most adaptable cocktails in the canon, with the Cyn Cin – sorry, Cin Cyn – a notably effective innovation. It’s not as bitter as a standard Negroni with Campari, even when made with Punt e Mes. The taste is both deeper and more mellow, especially with the additional orange notes. This spin on a spin of a staple earned the Chez K seal of approval in record time. It’s one of the best drinks in the Cocktail of the Week run so far. It’s sensational. How sensational? Worth buying a huge bottle of Cynar sensational.

The Cin Cyn

1 oz. gin
1 oz. Cynar
1 oz. Punt e Mes
dash of orange bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a length of orange peel after expressing the oils.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.

Cocktail of the Week: The Little Italy

You’ve got your list of foodstuffs of which you are not particularly fond. I’ve got mine. On it is the humble artichoke, not so much because of taste as appearance. I don’t like to baffled by what I’m eating. Artichokes, with their puzzle of petals and strangely fleshy hearts, seem more the product of a video game designer’s imagination than nature.

Little wonder, though, that artichokes would factor in a liqueur. As Amy Stewart observes in her book The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks they have long been viewed a digestive aid, a reputation borne out by contemporary research: “they may stimulate bile production, protect the liver, and lower cholesterol levels.”

The surprise is that Cynar (pronounced CHEE-nar and named after Cynara, the plant’s genus) is of fairly recent vintage, having been launched in 1952. It has over a dozen botanicals in play but has staked a claim to that oh-so-lucrative artichoke market. “At last, that weird plant your mother made you eat – in liquid form!” The resilient thistle is pictured right on the bottle, defiantly defining the brand. For decades Cynar has been popular in Europe as an aperitif, served on the rocks with soda and a twist of orange. But of late it’s become a miracle ingredient in craft cocktail bars, a must-have additive the way elderflower liqueur was a few years back. Understandably so, because Cynar is an unusually versatile amaro, one with sufficient bite to substitute for Campari but with a light herbaceousness that mixes incredibly well. Credit perhaps is due to the artichoke’s prankster qualities – as Stewart points out, it can fool the taste buds, temporarily blocking certain receptors so whatever they process next will taste excessively sweet – but Cynar can seemingly be added to any cocktail with delightful results.

What better place to begin, then, than with a classic? That’s what Audrey Saunders of New York’s Pegu Club did when she created the Little Italy. The Manhattan may have spawned the Brooklyn, which in turn gave rise to a host of borough-based offspring, but Saunders’ progeny sticks to the original stomping grounds enough that there’s no need to cross the East River to name it. (Note that her preparation calls for a little syrup from authentic maraschino cherries, but some of that elixir always finds its way into the glass when I’m mixing the drinks.) The Little Italy is a bitter Manhattan with a dense flavor, and consequently I’d take it closer to the source and add a dash of Angostura or aromatic bitters. It’s the perfect introduction to a liqueur that shouldn’t work, yet does beautifully.

The Little Italy

Audrey Saunders, New York

2 oz. rye
½ oz. Cynar
¾ oz. sweet vermouth

Stir. Strain. Garnish with authentic maraschino cherries.

Want more Cocktail of the Week? The first fifty-two essays are available in the Kindle bestseller DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE. Buy it now at Amazon.com.