Cocktail of the Week: The Cuba Libre

We’re not talking about a simple rum and Coke here. It’s called a Cuba Libre. If you want to sound knowledgeable, pronounce it Kooba Lee-Bray. If you really want to sound knowledgeable, guzzle them while grousing about goddamn Kennedy calling off the additional air cover back in ’61. This will ensure that the seats on either side of you at the bar remain unoccupied.

True confession time: I never had respect for the rum’n’Coke. And I wasn’t alone. Spirits writer Jason Wilson dubs it “a lazy person’s drink.” The venerable Kingsley Amis took issue with the Coca-Cola half of the equation, feeling that rum was “quite wasted in my view when teamed with that horrible stuff. I love America, but any nation that produces drive-in churches, Woody Allen and cola drinks can’t be all good.”

The story goes that the Rough Riders brought the then now-in-bottles! soda to Cuba when they went to liberate the island nation in 1898, mixed it with the native flavoring rum, and drank to their inevitable success with the battle cry of “Free Cuba!” Too bad the timeline doesn’t quite work out; the drink didn’t catch on until after the Spanish-American War. I have visions of servicemen stationed in Havana once hostilities had ended offering the toast ironically but that too is wrong, irony not being invented by Madison Avenue advertising men until the mid-1960s.

Order a rum and Coke in many bars and you’ll receive a bonus lime wedge if you’re lucky. It’s here that the problem begins; no mere garnish, lime was originally an essential ingredient in the Cuba Libre. In The Gentleman’s Companion, Charles H. Baker, Jr. lamented the cocktail’s popularity in the 1930s. “The only trouble with the drink is that it started by accident and without imagination, has been carried along by the ease of its supply. Under any condition it is too sweet. What’s to do?” Baker, engaging in “clinical experimenting for which our insurance carriers heartily dislike us,” determined that the juice of one small lime was necessary. He also suggested muddling lime peel in the glass before building the drink. The Joy of Mixology author Gary Regan finds that step excessive, but observes that lime juice is necessary “to balance out the sweetness of the cola.”

Another statement from Gaz worth noting: “This drink is seldom held in high regard, but when made properly it can be a heavenly potion.” Which explains why the Cuba Libre and its variations turn up with regularity in craft cocktail bars.

Many such establishments make their own cola. I don’t. What got me to take a fresh look at the Cuba Libre was the abundance of cane colas now commonly available, including Mexican Coca Cola and my default choice, Trader Joe’s Vintage Cola. These are truer to the cocktail’s history and easier on the teeth. Turns out the experts are right; the addition of an ounce of lime juice turns a frat boy’s stalwart into something worth lingering over. Provided you brush afterwards. (This message brought to you by the American Dental Association.)

Jason Wilson suggests other changes that push the drink toward its tropical origins. (Good luck getting authentic Cuban rum – or authentic circa 1900 Coca-Cola with that extra snap of cocaine, for that matter.) Meyer lemon or key lime juice instead of regular lime, a few dashes of Angostura bitters, even – madre de Dios – adding some gin. I’ve laid on more soda, prepared to indulge in some clinical experimenting of my own.

The Cuba Libre 

2 oz. rum
1 oz. lime juice
approximately 3 oz. chilled cane cola

Build in the order given in an ice-filled Tom Collins glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Movies: Day and Date Theater

Once more into darkest cable box, armed only with blog and remote, to spotlight a pair of movies released to theaters and on demand simultaneously.

Arbitrage. There are heroes, and then there are protagonists. Richard Gere clearly plays the latter here. His Robert Miller is a respected financier, an oracle of Wall Street. Only he’s shorted himself on magic. Having taken a multimillion dollar bath on Russian copper, he’s borrowed a fortune to make his firm seem solvent in order to hoodwink a competitor into buying it. The papers haven’t been signed yet, and his CIO daughter is on the trail of his skullduggery. What he needs is a relaxing night upstate with his French mistress. But Miller dozes off behind the wheel, wrecking the car and killing her. He flees the scene with the aid of his late driver’s son, unintentionally putting the young man’s future in jeopardy.

Astonishingly, you end up rooting for Gere’s master of the universe to get away with, if not murder, then massive fraud and manslaughter. As writer/director Nicholas Jarecki provides a behind-the-velvet-ropes-and-curtains tour of Manhattan’s tonier precincts, the film plays like a particularly luxe episode of Law & Order with no order and precious little law. (You do get Tim Roth as an outer borough Columbo who knows Miller is guilty and will cut corners to prove it.) A terrific Gere is ably supported by several actors portraying the celestial objects drawn into Miller’s orbit, like Susan Sarandon as the wife who has learned a thing or two about negotiating and Stuart Margolin as his cagey attorney. A sleek, suspenseful look at how the other 53% lives.
 
Knuckleball! In some sense, this engaging documentary came out a year early. It focuses on the 2011 baseball season as Tim Wakefield prepares to close out a lengthy career based on the fluttery pitch of the title, leaving the Mets’ R.A. Dickey as the game’s last such hurler. One season later, Dickey is an All-Star and a factor in the Cy Young conversation, having notched 19 wins and counting, leading the league in ERA and innings pitched, and ranked second in strikeouts. In perfecting an 80 mph version of the knuckler, Dickey has come as close as anyone to doing the unthinkable: inventing a new pitch. A brief primer on mechanics would have been welcome, but otherwise the film does an admirable job explaining the commitment required to master a pitch that, in the words of Jim Bouton, demands “the fingertips of a safecracker and the heart of a Zen Buddhist,” as well as profiling the handful of members of the brotherhood.

Extra, Extra!: Noir City

First, some housekeeping. No, this has not become a cocktail-only blog. It just seems that way. I’ve wanted to post, honest and for true. But work commitments have kept me busy. This plethora of projects has alas forced me to skip this year’s Bouchercon in Cleveland.

At least some of that work is now available for your delectation. The latest issue of Noir City, the e-magazine of the Film Noir Foundation, went out to subscribers over the weekend and it’s a dazzler. Featuring gorgeous design work by Michael Kronenberg and fully optimized for the iPad, it’s got more rich content than ever. Included in this edition are Eddie Muller’s interview with Hurricane Billy himself, William Friedkin, whose latest film Killer Joe is a hell-bent hoot and a half. Imogen Sara Smith’s cover story on noir’s glorious golden bad girl Jan Sterling. A pair of pieces by my comrade in arms Jake Hinkson on pregnancy and children in film noir. Plus lots more.

As for me, I’ve got two-part salute to noir in miniature. I interview artist and photographer Jonah Samson, who recreates the landscape of film noir in gorgeously detailed dioramas. And I talk to documentarian Susan Marks about her film Of Dolls & Murder, which profiles forensic science pioneer Frances Glessner Lee and her singular Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, gruesome dollhouse-sized crime scenes that have been used to train detectives for decades. Susan’s film is available on Netflix Instant and iTunes, and is well worth watching. Plus Lee’s work will serve as the inspiration for a new HBO series from huge talents Guillermo del Toro and Sara Gran, so read my article to get up to speed.

Most exciting is the debut of my crime fiction and cocktail column, Keenan’s Korner. It’s named in tribute to Kiner’s Korner, which for many years was the New York Mets’ post-game show. Meaning that I have managed to combine baseball, cocktails and crime fiction in a single enterprise, thereby making this column my life’s work. In this opening installment I review a trio of books from Hard Case Crime including, appropriately enough, The Cocktail Waitress, the newly-discovered lost novel by hardboiled master James M. Cain.

Head over to the Film Noir Foundation, make a donation to support the restoration of classic film noir, and the issue is yours. In it, Eddie details the next three films the FNF will have an active hand in salvaging and screening across the country in the coming year. Go ahead. You know you want to.

More posts are coming, I promise. In the meantime, go see The Master, in 70mm if you can. It’s as good as advertised.

Cocktails of the Week: The Boulevardier/The Old Pal

I promised a favorite variation on the Negroni last time, didn’t I? I lied. I’m spotlighting two of them. I’m just that generous.

For an object lesson in how changing a single ingredient can transform a cocktail completely, look no further than the Boulevardier (pictured). In last week’s Negroni, I merely altered the kind of Italian vermouth used to give the drink a different complexion. Child’s play. The Boulevardier keeps the rosso and the Campari and jettisons the gin for whiskey.

The drink was first publicized by Harry McElhone, the one-time bartender at New York’s Plaza Hotel who hied himself to points continental in the wake of the Volstead Act and eventually opened Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Harry also penned a pair of manuals, Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails (1922) and the admirably titled Barflies and Cocktails (1927). The Boulevardier is cited in both. It was the regular drink of Erskine Gwynne, a wealthy young American – one of the Vanderbilts, don’t you know – who came to Paris to publish a literary magazine called, you guessed it, The Boulevardier. Gwynne, according to some accounts, may even have invented the cocktail. We do know that Harry set the formula in print decades before the Negroni, the drink that clearly inspired it, was introduced to Americans.

So you’ve changed one element of the Negroni. Once again I quote the immortal wisdom of Homer Simpson: you can’t go this far and not go further. Change another element and see where that lands you.

Harry McElhone did. In Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails he also includes the Old Pal. This drink, named by “Sparrow” Robertson, then sporting editor of the New York Herald in Paris, switches from sweet to dry vermouth to produce a wholly distinct experience. Of the two I prefer the Boulevardier, which is sweeter, fuller, and akin to a slightly bitter Manhattan. But there are times when the resolute sharpness of the Old Pal is what the doctor ordered.

Some notes on preparation: Both original recipes, like that of the Negroni, called for equal parts. They’re still quite good that way but contemporary versions tend to be spirit forward, which is reflected below. The Boulevardier can be made with either bourbon or rye; I prefer the latter for many reasons, but in this instance it’s because it stands up to the Campari better.

The Boulevardier 

1 ½ oz. rye or bourbon
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1 oz. Campari

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a cherry or a lemon twist. But choose the cherry. And the rye.

The Old Pal 

1 ½ oz. rye
¾ oz. dry vermouth
¾ oz. Campari

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Cocktail of the Week: The Negroni

The Negroni is such a classic that it didn’t take long to round up a few choice quotes praising it from some estimable spirits writers. Like David Wondrich, who called it “one of the world’s indispensable cocktails.” Or Jason Wilson: “just about the perfect cocktail ... so simple even the worst bartender can’t mess it up too badly.”

But my favorite comes courtesy of that heroic appreciator of alcohol Kingsley Amis, who said of this simple combination of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari: “This is a really fine invention. It has the power, rare with drinks and indeed with anything else, of cheering you up.” Truer words never spoken.

The drink’s origin story smacks of apocrypha. The legend goeth that in 1919, Count Camillo Negroni – yes, you’re expected to believe there was a Count Negroni – requested that his Florentine bartender liven up his customary Americano by replacing the soda water with gin. The barman, a sterling specimen of his trade, did as he was asked, adding an orange twist instead of the Americano’s usual lemon to tell the beverages apart.

Here’s the thing. Not only was there a Count Negroni, and not only did the story happen as told, but the Count ended up in America working as a rodeo cowboy, sending a great story into the stratosphere. One hopes he brought enough Campari for the rest of the riders. European bar manuals, according to Jim Meehan’s The PDT Cocktail Book, featured drinks made with the same three ingredients called the Camparinette and the Campari Cardinal. But it was always the Negroni in Italy, where it found favor with visitors from abroad like Orson Welles, who discovered the cocktail while filming Black Magic in Rome in 1947. Said Welles: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.”

Balance has always been key with the Negroni, an equal parts drink. Some contemporary bartenders ratchet up the amount of gin considerably, noting that the original ratio is a relic from an era when spirits were of poorer quality. But I’m a traditionalist. There are also versions made with vodka, prosecco, even tequila. I’m sure they’re swell. (OK, fine. I’ll highlight a favorite variation next time.)

Not to say I don’t experiment. I simply prefer to do so within proscribed parameters. The Negroni I’ve been making lately uses Bombay Sapphire, a softer gin, along with Punt e Mes, a sharper vermouth that pairs up nicely with the bitterness of Campari. I also switched back to a lemon twist and found that it tied the flavors together beautifully.

Negronis can be served on the rocks, which makes for near-ideal summer drinking. Enjoy them for the next few months up in a cocktail glass as a lively reminder of the season fast fading.

The Negroni

The Summer of 2012 Variation

1 oz. gin
1 oz. Punt e Mes (in place of sweet vermouth)
1 oz. Campari

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist out of a sense of adventure.

Cocktail of the Week: The Opera

Still have that bottle of Dubonnet Rouge from last week? You’re refrigerating it, aren’t you? Because it’s an aromatized wine, you know.

No sense letting it go to waste. There are any number of simple cocktails that exploit Dubonnet’s unique charms. The Bentley, for instance, pairs it with equal parts applejack and makes a solid after-dinner selection. Go with equal parts light rum instead, add Angostura bitters, and you have the Bushranger.

Gin, as mentioned, is the favored mixer with Dubonnet. The simplest combination is the aptly named Dubonnet cocktail (or, in some circles, the Zaza). Equal parts gin and Dubonnet. Lemon twist. Done. Add a dash of Pernod and it’s the Apparent. The variations are practically limitless.

A more complex drink that allows Dubonnet to take the spotlight is the Opera. Its origins, as is so often the case, remain murky. In David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, it doesn’t even contain gin but equal parts Dubonnet and white label rum, plus a dash of lime juice and an orange twist. His alternate, with gin instead of rum and maraschino in place of lime juice, is closer to the version served today. According to Jim Meehan’s The PDT Cocktail Book, the recipe as it originally appeared in Jacques Straub’s 1914 Drinks called for equal parts gin and Dubonnet plus “a splash of Crème de Mandarine;” Meehan’s contemporary variation goes heavier on the gin and replaces the last ingredient with Mandarin Napoleon and orange bitters.

I turned to the redoubtable Patrick Gavin Duffy and his Official Mixer’s Manual. He, too, tips the balance in favor of gin. Bear in mind that many bartenders will use half as much maraschino as Duffy suggests to reduce the sweetness, but I like the foundation it provides. Duffy also doesn’t use bitters, but that final element of citrus proves a lovely addition to the notes provided by the Dubonnet and the twist. The Opera has the kind of sophisticated flavor that may not rattle the rafters when it steps up for its aria, but it will ring down the curtain nicely.

The Opera

2 oz. gin
½ oz. Dubonnet
½ oz. maraschino
dash of orange bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Cocktail of the Week: The Deshler

Dubonnet. Blue M&Ms. Taylor Hicks. What do they have in common?

Each of them won their coveted place in history as the result of a competition. Dubonnet’s, at least, wasn’t rigged. (Purple M&Ms and Katherine McPhee forever!)

Quinine, an essential defense against malaria in the era of empire building, is an extract from the bark of cinchona trees. It’s also impossibly bitter. The English took theirs by adding it to tonic water, which in turn they doused liberally with gin. The French, as is their way, proved a fussier lot, to the extent that in 1846 the government ran a contest: help our Legionnaires choke their medicine down! Parisian chemist Joseph Dubonnet took the prize, masking the quinine with fortified wine and a potpourri of flavors including cinnamon and orange peel. The aperitif quickly outgrew its therapeutic and Gallic origins; it’s Queen Elizabeth II’s preferred tipple.

Dubonnet is frequently blended with gin, but it works astonishingly well alongside rye in the Deshler, a World War I-era variation on the Manhattan capped with additional orange notes. It first appears in Hugo Ensslin’s pre-Prohibition landmark Recipes for Mixed Drinks (1917). Note that Ensslin’s original recipe calls for equal parts rye and Dubonnet.

But what of the cocktail’s namesake? Dave Deshler was a lightweight boxer who in a fourteen year career amassed a remarkably even-keeled record of 27 wins, 25 losses and 24 draws. The New Jersey-born, Boston-based battler’s non-alcoholic claim to fame is an ignominious one. During Deshler’s bout against Young Nitchie at the Brooklyn Beach Athletic Club on August 7, 1911, referee Johnny McEvoy left the ring in the seventh round, refusing to officiate. According to reports, “McEvoy stated to the crowd that Deshler was stalling and not trying to box his opponent.” Both Deshler and Nitchie begged to differ. The crowd sided with them, raising a ruckus while the pugilists’ managers recruited a volunteer to referee the final three rounds. But officials backed McEvoy, the fight ending in a no contest. Deshler would defeat Nitchie on points a year later.

Here’s hoping that isolated incident is not why Dogged Dave had a cocktail named after him. A century later, this Deshler still packs a punch.

The Deshler

Hugo Ensslin, Recipes for Mixed Drinks (modified)

1 ½ oz. rye
1 oz. Dubonnet
¼ oz. Cointreau
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Book: Hitless Wonder, by Joe Oestreich (2012)

Watershed doesn’t get much radio airplay outside the Midwest, as if radio airplay matters anymore. On Rhapsody they’re under “noise pop,” which I didn’t even realize was a category of music. Give a listen to “Anniversary,” a brittle little gem that will introduce you to the memorable phrase “shotgun divorce.” The song’s potency comes from the fact that it’s about a long-term relationship running out of gas; only someone who’s been around can tell that story.

The band built up a following in the Heartland, centered around their hometown of Columbus, Ohio. They were poised to break out in the mid-1990s when they were discovered by rock god Jim Steinman and landed a major label deal. Then the worst of all possible fates befell them: no fate at all. This “surefire Next Big Thing” discovers “it’s damn near impossible to shed Next and Thing and become simply big.”

They’re still around after 20 years, a bunch of guys pushing 40 and in some cases tumbling over it, vacating their day jobs to pile into a rental van and play their hearts out for dozens of people on a good night. Joe Oestreich, the bass guitarist and one of two lead singers – that arrangement may be part of the problem, but hey, the band is the band – explains why they do it in a dazzling memoir. His book is like one of those perfect pop songs that lays bare the meaning of life in a tight 2:20. At its core, Hitless Wonder asks questions that don’t only apply to aging jukebox heroes. When do you give up on the dream? How do you measure your worth when every standard is in flux? What if you’ve got the talent and the drive but none of the luck? What takes more pride, walking away or rocking on?

Oestreich alternates between documenting Watershed’s checkered history and its most recent tour, in support of an album few clamored for and even fewer have purchased. The departure puts strain on his marriage; his wife leaves him at the airport with the words, “No one gives a shit about a Watershed tour except the guys in Watershed.” Oestreich’s chronicle essentially bears that out while observing that it doesn’t matter. His band “would forever play in the minor leagues. But that was okay: a win in the minors was still a win.” Or as the friend of a friend puts it, “That’s the key. Having something to aim at. Whether or not you hit it is immaterial.”

Oestreich is a terrific writer; it will be hard to forget the revelation that singing into the ancient microphones at CBGB is “like licking the screen door at a VFW hall.” He’s particularly strong when detailing changes in the business, like the tyrannical crooked math behind New Band Nites: “This is how rich capitalists convince poor folks to vote Republican. We’re not fucking you; we’re giving you the power to sink or swim on your own – in a system that’s designed to fuck you.” This “generational divide” has affected the music itself. “Watershed belongs to the last wave of bands that dreamed big,” their fantasy futures defined by big label deals and arena gigs. Oestreich contrasts this with one of their opening acts, a duo influenced by Radiohead “but even more experimental and ponderous – all bleeps and bloops and self-indulgent passages that are so damn long, I swear I can see the singer’s beard growing.” Coming of age at a time when artists break on YouTube and roller derby has claimed the arenas, it makes sense for bands to become “uneasy with big.”

But for all his rhapsodizing about the allure of the road – you’ve got to love any band with a philosophy inspired by “John D. MacDonald’s literary hero Travis McGee, the self-proclaimed ‘salvage expert’ who works when he wants, thereby taking his retirement in installments” – Oestreich keeps the focus on hard choices. He and his bandmates are good enough to be paid to do what they love but can’t earn a living at it. When you claim a seat at the table but somehow don’t get anything to eat, you’ve got to find other ways of sustaining yourself. Oestreich details one way that’s possible in a moving book about marriage, friendship, and how Cheap Trick fucking rules.

Cocktail of the Week: The Block and Fall

As bartender at New York’s Ashland House hotel, Patrick Gavin Duffy served men of letters like Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. But Duffy’s contribution to world literature warrants praise of its own. The Official Mixer’s Manual (1934) provides an invaluable record of pre-Prohibition cocktails and cocktail culture. Duffy’s book was “revised and enlarged” by the food writer James Beard several times, with the later iterations losing some of the original’s sterner sentiment. My 1956 copy doesn’t include Duffy’s cranky counsel on how to practice the trade of bartending, which includes the admonition to keep interaction with the customer to a minimum. Ben Perri of the Zig Zag Café tells me that in earlier editions of the Manual, drinks that Duffy deems no longer worthy of being prepared are marked with an asterisk. My friend Eddie Muller sums up the book’s old school appeal by noting that his copy highlights “exactly TWO (2) cocktails with a vodka base.” By 1956, the number had swollen grotesquely to a tumescent twelve.

Duffy remains a tremendous resource, full of drinks that have unfairly fallen out of favor. Consider the Block and Fall. Much as I’d like to believe the stories that the drink’s name is a warning of its potency – have one, walk a block, and you’ll fall – the handle is simply a variation on block and tackle.

That said, this cocktail is strong. It’s also astonishingly complex, growing more nuanced as it settles. Cognac and Cointreau may not at first glance seem like a natural pairing but they complement each other nicely, with applejack providing a welcome bite and the Pernod floating pleasantly above it all. It tastes like a vintage cocktail, something Duffy might have poured for J. P. Morgan (another of his customers), meant to be sipped while sitting in a leather chair and conspiring to knot the unruly republic together with railroads. It’s one I’m launching a campaign to bring back.

The Block and Fall

Patrick Gavin Duffy, The Official Mixer’s Manual

1 oz. Cognac (or brandy)
1 oz. Cointreau
½ oz. applejack (or Calvados)
½ oz. Pernod

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Book: My Life as a Mankiewicz, by Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane

A rave review from Leonard Maltin – we’re close personal friends, as you may know – convinced me to pick up this memoir. Reading it made me realize exactly how much Tom Mankiewicz shaped my adolescence.

Sure, it’d make me look better to say I was influenced by others in the clan Mankiewicz. Like Tom’s father Joseph L., who won consecutive writing and directing Academy Awards for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. Or his uncle Herman, who co-wrote Citizen Kane.

Nope. I’m a Tom Mankiewicz man. He wrote a trio of James Bond movies including Diamonds Are Forever, which served as a young boy’s introduction to kink. I watched Superman and Superman II (on which Mankiewicz is credited, for reasons detailed in the book, as “creative consultant” even though he’s responsible for damn near every line of dialogue) more times than I could count. He did a page-one rewrite on War Games. His first directing gig was Dragnet with Dan Aykroyd, a movie I committed to memory before ever seeing a single episode of the Jack Webb series. (“They ought to transfer you to Missing Persons, Streebek. You know everybody.”) Even his TV work made an impact; Mankiewicz essentially created Hart to Hart, which he cheerfully describes as a Nick and Nora knockoff.

Given his impressive Hollywood pedigree, it’s no surprise that Tom Mankiewicz led a charmed life. Humphrey Bogart gave him his first drink, and he grew up on the set of his father’s film Cleopatra. (In an odd quirk of timing, I read this book right after Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.) His ultimate insider status provided Mankiewicz with a unique perspective on show business. Every luminary he meets is a wonderful, decent person – well, except for Robert Redford – and the perpetual bachelor had “a nice little thing” with seemingly every actress he encountered. But Mankiewicz also had a hometown boy’s sharp eye for industry absurdity, put to particularly good use during his stint with Superman. Producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind were funding the first two movies as they went, meaning they “couldn’t show (the director) a budget because they couldn’t tell him how much money they actually didn’t have.”

The book, assembled by longtime friend Robert Crane after Mankiewicz’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2010, is ragged and grows progressively sour as the business Mankiewicz was born into becomes more corporate. But it’s filled with stories you haven’t heard before and wisdom worth remembering. Think of it as a long, boozy afternoon at Musso & Frank with a peerless raconteur.

Cocktail of the Week: The Alaska

This will be the second consecutive cocktail of the week featuring yellow chartreuse. It’s my way of helping out the liqueur that I think of as a neglected little brother. You know, like Eli Manning or Bobby Kennedy.

Green chartreuse gets the lion’s share of attention in the current cocktail renaissance. Both varieties are made in France from a combination of 130 spices, herbs and flowers according to a recipe known only to two Carthusian monks, and they ain’t talking. Green is stronger both in alcoholic content (110 proof) and in taste, and as such is called for more often these days in drinks like the Last Word. 80-proof yellow is nowhere near as intense in flavor. It’s lighter, more herbaceous, almost honeyed. This pronounced difference in tone and texture is why yellow chartreuse does not make an adequate substitute for green; it has more in common with Strega than its own sibling.

Still, the yellow has charms of its own, not the least of which is a long, mellow finish. The best way to appreciate it is in a cocktail that puts it in the spotlight. The Alaska has been around at least since 1930, when it appeared in The Savoy Cocktail Book, but no one seems to know where its name came from; odds are, then, that the drink didn’t originate in the Last Frontier. Maybe its color prompted a midnight sun reference. The Alaska is essentially a more herbal martini, with chartreuse instead of dry vermouth. (As for the bitters, remember that’s how they used to make martinis, and it’s how I still prefer ‘em.) A bold gin is a good choice here. Yellow chartreuse may not be as boisterous as green but it still takes over a room, and you’ll want a gin that can go toe-to-toe with it.

The Alaska

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. yellow chartreuse
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Miscellaneous: Words of Wisdom

Listen to me. In your life you’re going to have a lot of successes and you’re going to have some failures. You’re going to have wonderful things happen to you and a couple of disasters. It’s gonna go up and down. But you know what? First, you’ve got to be a gent.

Producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli in MY LIFE AS A MANKIEWICZ, by Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane

Book: Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter (2012)

Porto Vergogna is the ugly step-sister of a series of picturesque Italian cliff towns, a backwater no tourist visits on purpose. So the arrival of a beautiful American woman in April 1962 is naturally assumed to be a mistake. When the woman reveals that she is an actress filming Cleopatra in Rome, that she was sent to the town, and that she is dying, she becomes an obsession for Pasquale Tursi, proprietor of the aptly named Hotel Adequate View.

The novel that flows from this dreamy beginning, the sixth by Edgar Award winner and National Book Award finalist Jess Walter, moves back and forth in time and across intersecting lives. We venture from Italy of the 1960s to contemporary Hollywood, stopping in Edinburgh and Seattle. We meet a host of striving and discontented souls, including a reptilian Hollywood veteran whose many cosmetic procedures have given him “the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl,” his long-suffering associate (the other job she’s considering is one of Walter’s finest jokes), writers with varying degrees of ability and ambition, and Richard Burton.

As usual, Walter tosses off gorgeous bits of description effortlessly. A commuter flight is “a toothpaste tube of returning college freshmen and regional sales associates.” Pasquale, upon encountering Burton for the first time, takes note of the actor’s enormous head as well as his other attributes. “He had the sharpest features Pasquale had ever seen, as if his face had been sculpted in separate pieces and then assembled on-site … one look and there could be no doubt: this man was a cinema star.” Walter braids his story together from a host of sources – movie pitches, unpublished manuscripts, scarcely produced plays – the approach highlighting the author’s boundless invention.

But the flash isn’t for its own sake. As the novel progresses and supporting players take star turns, Walter unveils the craft beneath, his careful construction illustrating how individual actions can ripple through the years and buffet other people, many of whom will never know the cause of the disturbance. Walter Pater famously observed that “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Beautiful Ruins comes tantalizingly close to achieving that exalted state, uniting form and content; the closing chapter has the effect of an unexpected symphony, as narratives we didn’t even realize we were following are wrapped up in a crescendo of conclusions. (A late cameo will please fans of Walter’s crime novels. At least it made me happy.) This moving, masterful book is further proof that any conversation about America’s best current novelist has to include Jess Walter.

Cocktail of the Week: The Greenpoint

This will be a fairly short post about another rye-based cocktail named after a neighborhood in Brooklyn. That’s because today is my birthday and I have other plans that include drinking rye-based cocktails named after neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

The first such drink, the Red Hook, was spawned at New York’s Milk & Honey. Another bartender at the same establishment, Michael McIlroy, carried on the tradition with the Greenpoint. (Fun facts about the neighborhood: sometimes called “Little Poland,” Mickey Rooney’s birthplace is currently featured on HBO’s Girls!) Like the Red Hook, the Greenpoint uses Punt e Mes. Here the somewhat bitter vermouth is complemented by yellow chartreuse, with its herbal, almost buoyant flavor. Two types of bitters bookend the taste to excellent effect. The Greenpoint is both lighter than the Red Hook and more layered. Another reason why it never hurts to drink around the borough of Kings.

The Greenpoint

Michael McIlroy, Milk & Honey, New York City

2 oz. rye
½ oz. Punt e Mes
½ oz. yellow chartreuse
dash of Angostura bitters
dash of orange bitters

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

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Movies: Silent in Seattle

One of the highlights of my trip to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival was the musical accompaniment provided for The Docks of New York by Donald Sosin. Two weeks later Mr. Sosin was in Seattle, participating in the SIFF Film Center’s tribute to the Library of Congress Film Archive. I was happy to queue up to see (and hear) him again.

The protagonist of The Man Who Laughs (1928) served as visual inspiration for the Dark Knight’s nemesis the Joker; Gwynplaine has had a rictus permanently carved into his face as punishment for his father’s crimes. The opening minutes of the film based on Victor Hugo’s novel pack in an astonishing number of horrors as the now-orphaned boy butchered at the behest of a monarch rescues a blind baby from the hands of her dead mother as convicts swing from the gallows overhead. The adult Gwynplaine joins a troupe of players and capitalizes on his disfigurement as he strives to be worthy of his sightless swain’s love. When word of his noble lineage reaches the Queen, the poor fool becomes a pawn in a game he doesn’t comprehend. The film, directed by Paul Leni, is a propulsive mix of tragedy, fairy tale, and swashbuckler. Conrad Veidt’s performance as Gwynplaine is a marvel. Forced to grin maniacally no matter the circumstance, he conveys every emotion through his body language and desperately haunted eyes. Julius Molnar Jr. matches him playing the character as a child, barely capable of processing his fate but already knowing to feel ashamed.

Marion Davies’ great misfortune is having her own life conflated with that of Citizen Kane’s talentless mistress. Yes, she had a decades-long affair with William Randolph Hearst, but confusing fact and fiction is akin to thinking of Orson Welles solely as a fat man who once voiced a mechanical planet. She was one of the first great screen comediennes, evidenced by 1928’s The Patsy. Davies plays the overlooked younger daughter who reinvents herself to nab her sister’s boyfriend. Her extended sequence aping other silent stars like Lillian Gish still garners big laughs.

Mr. Sosin’s scores added to the films. During The Man Who Laughs he asked for – and got – audience participation, and his wife Joanna Seaton contributed gorgeous, ethereal vocals. The combination of semi-improvised live music and a heightened style of screen acting creates a hugely enjoyable hybrid experience that in some ways is more like theater. I’m afraid I’m hooked now.

Cocktail of the Week: The Pegu Club

Comes now a cocktail so nice it took its name from one watering hole and bequeathed it to another, decades later and on the opposite side of the world.

Rum may have built the British Empire, but gin kept it running. A good belt being necessary for one’s upper lip to remain stiff, the gentleman’s club became home away from home for those serving under the Union Jack. One such establishment was located outside Rangoon (now Yangon) in Burma. The house drink, ideal for warm weather, was described in Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) as “one that has traveled, and is asked for, around the world.” That is certainly true considering that it had already appeared in Harry McElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails, published three years earlier; clearly some refugee from the British Raj had stumbled into Harry’s New York Bar in Paris and spilled the secret.

The recipe has a host of variations. Originally orange curaçao was called for. Some bartenders still prepare it that way, or suggest using Grand Marnier instead. I find that that substitution makes the drink too heavy and sweet. I opt for triple sec, specifically Cointreau. Some adherents drop the dash of orange bitters but on that score I’m a purist, the additional note a tether that allows your liqueur to blossom. I’ve seen versions that feature the addition of egg white, or use grapefruit as a garnish. And lives have been lost arguing over the correct proportion of gin to liqueur, with three-to-one favored by many but not necessarily, as you will see, by me.

What cannot be disputed is that the drink, however you prepare it, holds up. One of the vanguard New York cocktail bars is named after it. I’ve had a Pegu Club in the Pegu Club. The venue does honor to the beverage, and vice versa.

The Pegu Club

2 oz. gin
1 oz. triple sec
½ oz. lime juice
dash of Angostura bitters
dash of orange bitters

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

Book: American Desperado, by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright (2011)

Pick any phase of underworld life in the second half of the twentieth century – the coke spoon disco years of New York in the 1970s, the Miami mayhem of the ‘80s, the spread of cartels around the globe and into politics in the ‘90s – and Jon Roberts was involved. Already featured in the documentary Cocaine Cowboys, Roberts gets the sprawling, punishing epic he deserves in American Desperado.

Co-author Evan Wright also wrote Generation Kill, one of the best books about the Iraq war. Here he makes the shrewd decision to stay out of Roberts’ way and let him explain how a New York street punk ended up the primary U.S. associate of the Medellin cartel and eventually a CIA asset. Wright remains an active presence in the footnotes, vetting Roberts’ every word, pointing out which claims he can’t verify, citing chapter and verse on those he can.

Roberts, who died late last year, is honest to the point of being unnerving. He tells Wright in an early meeting, “I might be a sociopath. Most of the time I’ve been on this earth I’ve had no regard for human life. That’s been the key to my success.” He genuinely believes in the philosophy he learned from his wiseguy father: evil is stronger than good. Even the funny stories – like accidentally getting Ed Sullivan high on LSD, or the time one of the world’s great jockeys was almost mauled by Roberts’ pet cougar – have a sinister edge, and throughout the book Roberts offers grimly practical advice on a host of dark subjects, like a Heloise from Hell. When fighting, use gravity to your advantage and “no matter what, always be kicking his balls.” Roberts’ technique for disposing of a corpse has a brutal elegance worthy of Martha Stewart. Desperado is over five hundred pages long, all of them disturbing and compulsively readable.

It’s also spawned an even more alarming follow-up. Roberts openly admitted to helping dispose of the gun used to murder Meyer Lansky’s stepson in 1977. His more astonishing declaration: the triggerman, an enforcer for a Miami drug kingpin, became a CIA officer. Wright digs into the accusation in the ebook How to Get Away with Murder in America and turns up one shocker after another about an alleged underworld hit man turned counterterrorism expert who currently has ties to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The story and Wright’s through reportage beggar the imagination. Wright summarized his findings for the Daily Beast.

Cocktail of the Week: The Beachcomber

Sometimes you can go to the source and still come back unsatisfied.

The 1934 opening of Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood, U.S.A. is usually regarded as the birthplace of tiki culture and its many attendant cocktails. But “Trader Vic” Bergeron turned it into a movement with his chain of restaurants, the first in Oakland, California. Seattle was next. I never visited the Westin Hotel location, which closed over 20 years ago. At approximately the same time Trader Vic’s made the news when Donald Trump shuttered the outpost in New York’s Plaza Hotel. Trump said he found the place “tacky.” (I’ll pause to let you think about that for a minute.) There’s still a Trader Vic’s franchise in Portland among other cities, with a slew of them in the Middle East.

I’ve got a copy of the 1972 revised edition of Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide. The original was published in 1947. The illustrations feature what look like gremlins monkeying around the bar, no doubt the consequence of a Mai Tai or twelve. The book is written in a pleasingly gruff style, with Vic grousing about the recent crop of newer libations (“Some of those inventions are good, but some of them are terrible; I think that most of them would blind you if you drank them.”) and declaring that his “redo” of the guide would omit “nonsense” recipes for “outdated stuff that you’ll never use” such as “Cobblers, Crustas, Fixes, Sangarees, Scaffas and Shrubs” – all of which still appear in cocktail books, with many back in vogue. A section on annoying customers has a sentence that begins: “Another wiseacre who burns me to a crisp ...”

Paging through the book, I selected a relatively simple cocktail, the Beachcomber. Vic’s version is made with shaved ice in an electric blender. Aside from opting for a low-tech preparation – a Boston shaker, sans shaved ice – I followed his instructions to the letter. Two ounces of light Puerto Rican rum, half an ounce of Cointreau, the juice of half a lime, two dashes of maraschino.

The result was distinctly ... unmemorable. The Cointreau barely got any purchase, and the maraschino didn’t register at all. I’d essentially muddied a decent rum.

A few weeks later I came across the drink in Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. He “reformulated” Vic’s original recipe, doubling the amount of triple sec while simultaneously stepping up the maraschino. Regan’s version has a lovely balance, which you can further adjust by altering the amounts of triple sec and maraschino to taste. The Beachcomber really doesn’t qualify as a tiki drink. The recipe is too basic; hell, it features only one kind of rum. But pop a cocktail umbrella in the glass, and no one will care.

The Beachcomber

Gary Regan variation on the original “Trader Vic” Bergeron recipe

2 oz. light rum
1 oz. triple sec
¼ oz. maraschino
½ oz. fresh lime juice

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

Miscellaneous: Silent in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the great cities of the world, a metropolis overflowing with treats culinary and cultural. What do I know about the place? Two things: the Castro Theatre and cocktails.

Earlier this year I was in town for Noir City. This trip coincided with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The three screenings I was able to attend made the jaunt worthwhile. Mantrap (1926) is a buoyant comedy with bite, a meringue laced with bourbon. Clara Bow at her sauciest is a big-city manicurist who marries the only trader in the tiny title Canadian town. When a tenderfoot lawyer shows up, Clara sets her sights on him out of equal parts instinct and boredom. A triangle of the more tragic variety plays out in the 1929 German film The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna. Brigitte Helm of Metropolis is the kept woman who falls for a virtuous young lieutenant. Their romance drives her to become a better person while he falls prey to corruption – with his commanding officer, Nina’s former lover, waiting for his opportunity to strike back.

Best of the trio was Josef von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York (1928), co-presented by the Film Noir Foundation. Brawny ship’s stoker George Bancroft and his crewmates have one night in the big city before they push off again; a shot of the six of them anticipating the evening’s pleasures is like a Mount Rushmore of lust. Before the party begins Bancroft saves the life of a suicidal bar girl played by the mesmerizing Betty Compson. He’s drawn to her, she’s amused by his interest in an existence she’s grown weary of, and they play roles for each other as their night together progresses. It’s a simple story told with bracing power. Each film featured live musical accompaniment, but Donald Sosin’s piano score for Docks deserves singular praise for its impact and effortless use of period songs.

The real highlight of the festival? Getting the opportunity to meet Leonard Maltin. Film critic, historian, and one of the great popularizers of motion picture art. His guides are always close at hand at Chez K, and it was a genuine thrill to spend a few moments chatting with him. (All credit is due to Rosemarie. I would have admired him from afar but the missus, an even bigger Maltin fan, walked right over and introduced herself. She’s like that.) Here’s Leonard’s take on the festival.

As for cocktails, we finally were able to bend an elbow at San Francisco’s famed Cliff House, a location in the noir favorite The Lineup. We also stopped by Tradition, the latest in the bar empire from the people behind Bourbon & Branch. It’s only a stone’s throw from B&B, offering a more relaxed atmosphere and a broad array of specialties; I recommend the A La Louisiane, with rye, Benedictine and absinthe. I also recommend the street theater. We arrived several minutes before the doors opened and spent that time watching a man search every inch of his car save the rocker panels with a crystal meth level of determination that rendered him oblivious to the fact that his pants had slipped down far enough to reveal what our genial host Eddie Muller dubbed a “triple Aykroyd” of plumber’s crack. We never learned what he was looking for, or if he found it. We had cocktails to consume.

Hey, we did do something cultural! We saw the exhibit “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier” at the de Young Museum. It highlights ingenuity not only in Gaultier’s ceaselessly inventive work – a dress from the then-impoverished designer’s debut collection employed wicker placemats – but in its staging, with stunning use of mannequins and a closing runway show. The exhibit runs through August 19.

Cocktail of the Week: The Union Club

Posted a day early this week ...

Life could be difficult for the turn-of-the-last-century head of a local gambling combine. Your stock in trade has been declared illegal, but thanks to steep fines and rampant graft you’re able to eke out a modest living. Then one morning you wake up to discover you have a competitor. One who flat out refuses to pay off law enforcement the way you do. Who also happens to be one of the most famous lawmen of the American West.

Such was the fate of Seattle’s John Considine. A sober man in a shady profession, he used his three gambling clubs to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with in the city. Then, in November 1899, Wyatt Earp rode into town and announced that with partner Thomas Urquhart he’d be opening the Union Club on Second Avenue South near Yesler Way. Earp was no longer wearing a badge; he’d already run a saloon in the Klondike, and his reputation had been tarnished thanks to his role as referee in an 1896 prizefight in which he was accused of fraud. The public skirmish between various Seattle sporting factions affected the mayoral election and led to a brief crackdown on vice. By the time it ended Earp had long since left, his stay in the Emerald City a footnote. (As for Considine, he ended up killing the former police chief who accused him of paying for his 17-year-old contortionist mistress’s abortion and then became a theater impresario and vaudeville pioneer. But as the man said, that’s another story.)

It’s only appropriate that a Seattle-based bartender honor Wyatt Earp’s contribution to the city’s history. That bartender is Jamie Boudreau, once of Vessel and now proprietor of Canon. His Union Club cocktail is part of the noble tradition of whiskey/Campari drinks. But instead of finishing with, say, a vermouth, Jamie blends maraschino with a tart blast of orange juice for a nuanced and wholly satisfying flavor. He’s currently pouring these at Canon with rye. I enjoyed mine so much I prepared one at home with bourbon. Either way, the result will likely have you making some contortions of your own.

The Union Club

Jamie Boudreau, Seattle

2 oz. bourbon (or rye)
1.5 oz. orange juice
.5 oz maraschino
.5 oz Campari

Shake. Strain. No garnish.