Cocktail of the Week: The Liberal

A few years ago, prior to one of my periodic trips back to New York, I stopped by my usual haunt to ask the crew where I should bend an elbow. They suggested one bar in particular. Good drinks, good people, lots of buzz. Then they asked me to prank the place.

“Go in, tell them we said hello,” I was instructed. “At some point, a round or two in, order a Liberal.” The cocktail is made with Amer Picon, the bitter orange liqueur from France which regular readers know can be tough to acquire. Said Big Apple bar had a bottle of Picon prominently displayed on their shelf.

And there, I was told, it would stay. “It’s just for show. They refuse to open it because they’re afraid they won’t get any more. So go in, ask for a Liberal, and tell us what they say.”

Subterfuge on behalf of my home away from home. Who was I to say no?

I entered the bar in question and spotted the Amer Picon exactly where I was told it would be. I began with a superb house drink. A highly competent bartender asked, “What’s next?” Ice water in my veins and nary a quaver in my voice, I suggested a Liberal.

The highly competent bartender didn’t bat an eye. “That’s a good one. The Zig Zag makes those beautifully, don’t they? But they use a very specific type of bitters and we’re out of them. Let me fix you something like it I think you’ll enjoy.”

He did, and I did. In Seattle I relayed my report, which was met with nods of approval. “Blaming the bitters? That’s a smart play.”

Now that Bigallet’s China-China amer is being imported to the United States, Amer Picon is no longer the problem. It’s the rest of the Liberal that’s giving me fits.

The recipe as it first appeared in George J. Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks (1895) couldn’t be simpler: “one dash syrup, half a jigger Amer Picon bitters, half a jigger whiskey ... a small piece of lemon peel on top.” Maybe too simple; half whiskey and half Picon isn’t the modern version. We’re a bit closer by the time of Albert Stevens Crockett’s 1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days, which drops the syrup, adds a crucial missing ingredient – the drink is now half whiskey and half sweet vermouth – but scales the Picon down to a mere three dashes, which hardly seems worth the trouble of flying back from Marseilles with several bottles taped to your chest.

The China-China burning a hole in my liquor cabinet, I set out to find an acceptable contemporary variation and was flummoxed. Rye had become the default whiskey choice, but aside from that the recipes frequently contradicted each other. One called for equal parts rye and vermouth while preserving Crockett’s minimal quantity of Picon. Another was spirit-forward but boasted equivalent, hefty portions of vermouth and amer. The whiskey was too dominant in my initial attempt. What was the formula for the lovely, balanced cocktail I’d enjoyed in the past?

So I did something I’d never done before. I reached out to the man who’d made many of those cocktails and contributed mightily to the Liberal’s revival, bartending icon Murray Stenson.

Professional that he is, Murray replied to my question with more questions. Bourbon or rye? Which sweet vermouth? Amer Picon or ... ? The ryes I favor are robust, so Murray suggested an equally sturdy vermouth like Carpano Antica Formula. Which, naturally, I didn’t have. That meant only one thing: trial and error.

My next Liberal paired James E. Pepper’s 1776 straight rye whiskey with Cocchi Vermouth di Torino. It was a very good drink, but these elements were almost too similar. Their spiciness echoed each other and overwhelmed the China-China, even with a dash of orange bitters to bolster the citrus notes.

For Liberal Number 3 (a phrase previously only heard on the MSNBC version of The Dating Game), I opted for Rittenhouse bonded rye and a vermouth with some feistiness, Punt e Mes, along with Angostura bitters. Result: pay dirt. The Angostura provided a solid foundation, the cleaner taste of the rye giving the amer room to run. Murray told me the Liberal recipe “just depends.” But with the master’s formula in hand, you can continue to experiment.

Unless I’m pranking you. Or he’s pranking me.

The Liberal

Murray Stenson variation

1 ¾ oz. robust whiskey (rye)
¼ oz. sweet vermouth (Murray suggests Carpano Antica Formula)
¼ oz. Bigallet China-China amer (in place of Amer Picon)
1-2 dashes orange or Angostura bitters

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

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.

Miscellaneous: Assorted March Recommendations

You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age, by Robert J. Wagner with Scott Eyman (2014). You know you’re getting a true inside Hollywood perspective when your guide ends an appreciation of the home owned by longtime friend Harold Lloyd by remarking “I shot episodes of Switch and Hart to Hart there.”

Robert Wagner has lived in Los Angeles for 75 years. His new book (co-written with Eyman, whose biography of John Wayne is out next week) represents an attempt “to document a way of life that has vanished as surely as birch bark canoes. And I want to do this before the colors fade.” The colors aren’t fading for Wagner yet; he can still recall what he paid for his cocktails at a host of now-shuttered Tinseltown night spots, including an exorbitant dollar fifty for a French 75 at the Trocadero, and conjures up his first meeting with Judy Garland, singing at a party at Clifton Webb’s house, with immediacy.

Wagner keeps the book light but also laments the press’s current adversarial relationship with their celebrity subjects and how, with the emphasis on the bottom line, “the movie business has been converted from a long game to a short game.” But there’s little room for grousing when there are parties to attend and polo matches to play. The names from a bygone era he casually reels off – Chasen’s, Ciro’s, the Brown Derby – are still, for some of us, an incantation charged with magic, and Wagner knows how to cast the spell. He has a gentleman’s eye for refinement and strikes an effortlessly rueful tone, a pleasing combination. The book is like uncorking a bottle of wine and having one of TV’s most debonair presences regale you with stories.

Sorcerer (1977). Director William Friedkin’s adaptation of the novel that inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear had the misfortune to open a few weeks after Star Wars and never recouped its budget. It fared no better critically at first, but its reputation improved over the decades; I know plenty of people who prefer it to the Clouzot film. This change of fortune came about in spite of the fact that for years Sorcerer was essentially out of circulation, with no decent print available.

Thanks largely to legal action by Friedkin against the studios involved, the situation has improved. A 4K digital restoration of Sorcerer is in limited release prior to its Blu-Ray debut. Seeing the film on the big screen confirms that Friedkin’s take on the tale of four outcasts forced to ferry volatile explosives overland is one of the most intense films ever made, with the justly-celebrated rope bridge sequence easily a masterpiece of action. It’s almost unfair to compare Sorcerer to Wages as the two are so different, but if pressed I’d give the nod to Wages – with the proviso that Sorcerer has a much, much better ending.

Stranger by the Lake (U.S. 2014). Henceforth, whenever I’m asked to provide an example of Aristotle’s unity of time, place and action – it happens more than you think – I’m pointing to this film, which won the Un Certain Regard directing prize for Alain Guiraudie at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Unless my interlocutor objects to repeated shots of the male orgasm, in which case we’re going to have a problem. Every scene unfolds along an isolated stretch of beach where gay men come to cruise. Franck (César award winner Pierre Deladonchamps) is drawn to the spoken-for Michel, lingering to watch him – and witnessing him murdering his lover. But knowing Michel’s secret only heightens the attraction. Guiraudie turns the limited locations into an advantage, using the arrangement of parked cars not only to convey exposition but heighten suspense. Highsmith meets Camus with copious male nudity in a thriller that mesmerizes down to the calculatedly oblique ending. Here’s the trailer.

Cocktail of the Week: The Honeymoon

Nothing like paging through an old cocktail book and chancing upon a drink that sounds like it would suit your palate – and for which you possess all the ingredients. The quencher in question is the Honeymoon, the tome Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual. Only it isn’t.

The Honeymoon is one of a host of cocktails that first appears in a 1916 book with the pedestrian title Recipes for Mixed Drinks by Hugo Ensslin. Ensslin toiled behind the stick at the Wallick House in Times Square, described by David Wondrich in Imbibe! as “one of New York’s second-rank hotels.” While Ensslin may have lacked the chops to “earn him a place in the oral tradition of New York bar lore,” he performed a far greater service. He recorded how bartenders prepared drinks in the period prior to Prohibition, knowledge that would have otherwise been lost. Among the cocktails he preserved for posterity are the Aviation and the Deshler. The treasure trove of tipples he left behind greatly influenced Duffy and Harry Craddock of The Savoy Cocktail Book fame, both of whom plundered Recipes wholesale.

Despite its New York origins, the Honeymoon became a fixture on menus at Los Angeles’ Brown Derby restaurants, an impressive accomplishment considering they had their own signature cocktail. There’s a drink with the identical recipe called the Farmer’s Daughter. I want to say it’s named after the funky chalet-style hotel on Fairfax, but the dates don’t work.

An apple brandy sour with dual sweeteners, the Honeymoon has partisans who insist it be made with calvados. No doubt that’s an impressive version, but bonded applejack hasn’t disappointed me in this drink yet. The spirit-forward recipe below is from Jim Meehan’s PDT Cocktail Book. The apple’s crispness predominates, but is pleasantly modified by notes of citrus and a potent blast of sweetness courtesy of Bénédictine resulting in a fuller, rosier flavor. The Honeymoon is a blushing bride of a cocktail, a smart, tart beverage worthy of the attention given to many of the other drinks Hugo Ensslin remembered for us.

The Honeymoon

2 oz. apple brandy
½ oz. orange curaçao
½ oz. Bénédictine
½ oz. lemon juice

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

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 Hotel Nacional Special

One of the joys of buying a new bottle for the home bar is the opportunity to recreate a perfect memory. Two years ago, I visited San Francisco’s temple of rum Smuggler’s Cove. There, I savored one of the finest cocktails I’ve ever had. With the purchase of some apricot brandy, as discussed last week, I was finally able to try my own hand at the drink.

Wil P. Taylor was the bar manager at the Waldorf-Astoria when Prohibition forced him to ply his trade in warmer if not more temperate climes. He assumed the same role at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. Charles H. Baker, Jr., singing his praises in The Gentleman’s Companion, said Taylor was at his post in 1933 when the Cuban army “mighty near blasted a marvelous hotel off the map” in order to capture officers loyal to deposed president Gerardo Machado. Taylor, Baker notes, “kept right on managing just as if it had been old times!” In 1946, the Nacional would be the site of an infamous gathering of Mafia chieftains including Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, who would eventually strike a deal with Cuba’s president Fulgencio Batista to take over part of the hotel and open a casino there.

Taylor’s reputation was made with a cocktail perfected during his stint at the Nacional, which Baker would immortalize as “one of the three finest Bacardi drinks known to science.” It’s a daiquiri variation – in some circles it’s known as a Nacional Daiquiri – but what a variation. A few words on the ingredients.

Rum. Recipes call for either an aged or a white rum. Aged, obviously, is preferred. I used white.

Pineapple juice. For the most part, canned pineapple juice is viewed as an acceptable substitute in cocktails. I’d make an exception for the Hotel Nacional Special, where that intense flavor is the entire point. Hold out for fresh juice.

Apricot brandy. Again the question is raised of whether to use apricot brandy (read: a sweet apricot liqueur) or a drier eau de vie. Taylor, in his original recipe, specified “dry apricot brandy,” which would indicate the latter. I don’t have an eau de vie, so the choice was easy. Besides, the liqueur’s additional sweetness is far from an obstacle here, blending with the pineapple’s fulsomeness in splendid style.

Simple syrup. Reliable sources endorse using pineapple gomme syrup, a sweetener made with gum arabic, which combines the simple and the pineapple juice into a single element. I cannot speak to that innovation myself, but regular simple in conjunction with fresh pineapple juice worked magic.

Lime juice. Just regular fresh lime juice. Nothing to see here. Move along.

My rendition of the Hotel Nacional Special didn’t match the one served at Smuggler’s Cove in terms of sheer transcendence – they frothed a pineapple right in front of me, for God’s sake – but it was still a roaring success. The luxuriant taste of the pineapple crossed with the apricot’s sweet earthiness isn’t a memory any more. It’s only a few shakes away.

The Hotel Nacional Special

2 oz. rum
1 oz. pineapple juice
½ oz. lime juice
½ oz. simple syrup
¼ oz. apricot brandy

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a lime wheel.

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.

Keenan's Klassics: Coldblooded (1995)

A lot of irons in the fire these days, kids, so posts may be even more sporadic than usual. In the meantime, here’s an oldie but a goodie, an essay I wrote for Ray Banks’ late, lamented film site Norma Desmond’s Monkey in September 2011.

Now that the independent film cycle of the 1990s has receded into the mists of time, the truth can be told: the bulk of the movies it spawned simply don’t hold up. It’s true of any creative boom in which the inmates, however briefly, run the asylum. For all the splendors of the auteurist flowering of the 1970s, many of the films made during that period come across now as druggy and self-indulgent. The moral is don’t kick against the pricks, artsy types. A lot of you need a firm hand on the reins.

The Sundance craze of the ‘90s was ultimately co-opted by the studios with the result that the Coen Brothers stable of players turns up in the Transformers movies and the reward for demonstrating vision on a budget is being handed a superhero franchise. Independent film’s true legacy – intimate storytelling that isn’t afraid of dark places or protagonists – isn’t in theaters but on cable television. I will even posit that it was worth sitting through all of those grainy coming-of-age tales and different-drummer comedies so episodes of Louie could be pumped into millions of homes each week.

The truly interesting work in any movement is done in the margins, and no genre is more marginal than the crime comedy. Aside from the fact that Quentin Tarantino raised the form’s bar ridiculously high, there are too many opportunities for lazy transgression. Make the main character a hit man, as plenty of ‘90s filmmakers did, and you risk putting bigger fish in a smaller barrel.

Bringing us to Coldblooded. The movie wafted briefly into theaters in late summer 1995. The biggest name attached to the production was producer Michael J. Fox, who also surfaces in a cameo. It didn’t make much commercial impact, but I remember it with affection. A more recent film brought it to mind anew. Forget this year’s Jason Statham/Ben Foster update. Coldblooded is the actual remake of The Mechanic, replacing the original’s vaguely Mansonesque vibe with coffee shop quirkiness. And yet somehow it works.

The film was written and directed by M. Wallace Wolodarsky, who without the initial earned a place in comedy heaven for his work with partner Jay Kogen on the first four seasons of The Simpsons. (There’s a ‘90s staying power test. What would you rather rewatch, any Sundance prizewinner or “Lisa the Greek”?) Jason Priestley stars in an example of an indie film benefit I wouldn’t mind having back: the casting of recognizable TV actors in unlikely roles. One year later, Priestley’s Beverly Hills 90210 cohort Luke Perry would deliver the performance of his career opposite a sensational Ashley Judd in John McNaughton’s neglected low-budget true-crime tale Normal Life.

Priestley pushes deadpan to dangerous levels as Cosmo, a man-child who is essentially the ward of an unseen gangster. He’s perfectly content working as a bookie, seeing perfunctory prostitute Janeane Garofalo on the company dime, and living in the basement of a retirement home. (Cosmo’s dire digs are a triumph of production design, from the outdated appliances to the hideous mossy green stairs.) But when Cosmo’s benefactor dies, he’s forced into a new role in the organization: trigger man. The transition starts with an internship at the feet of the current holder of the position, the affable Steve (Peter Riegert).

Riegert is the rare actor who can mine humor out of being the voice of reason. Every few years he uses this gift to deliver a peerless comic turn. Local Hero will forever be the best known of these, but in Coldblooded he offers one of the great lost performances of the 1990s. His Steve is a cheerful tummler, eager to have a protégé to whom he can pass along his wisdom even though he knows it will mean his eventual replacement. He’s forthright about his profession, complete with little jokes he’s worked out – “Guns don’t kill people, we do,” followed by a used car salesman’s hearty chuckle – and helpful hints offered in front of victims. Riegert relishes the details of Steve’s middle class life: the procession of sports shirts that are a shade too gaudy, the petty grudges against the organization’s other men, the obsession with his car. To this day I recall Riegert’s precise pronunciation of “Cadillac Sedan de Ville” and his line about occasionally reading the newspaper behind the wheel in his driveway. But additional grace notes trace Steve’s slow unraveling, culminating in an authentically disturbing drunken late-night phone call with Cosmo that Steve can’t recall the following day.

Cosmo’s efforts to deal with the stresses of the position – including his natural aptitude for it – lead him to yoga and an instructor (Kimberly Williams) who needs to be rescued from loutish lover Josh Charles. Priestley plays his character as a down-market version of Peter Sellers in Being There in these scenes, Cosmo’s inexperience with women rendering him perfect boyfriend material. Case in point: his surrendering the TV remote to his paramour, the contemporary equivalent of a knight laying down his sword.

Coldblooded unfolds in a strangely depopulated Los Angeles reminiscent of a hipster hit man film from an earlier generation, Murder by Contract. The small cast, including Robert Loggia as the new capo, forces the plot to become somewhat mechanical. And no professional killer would use his own car on jobs, especially when, like Steve, he has everything in his ride set just the way he likes it. Coldblooded may ultimately seem like a slight film. But its easygoing charm and Priestley’s moving, minimalist performance coupled with Riegert’s richly nuanced one give it more heft than many of the trendy favorites of the era.

Cocktail of the Week: The Claridge

Another Rubicon crossed, another benchmark bottle acquired.

Page through any vintage cocktail book, like the ones I cite incessantly, and apricot brandy appears with regularity. The drinks calling for it remain, for the most part, obscure. But everything old is new again in the cocktail renaissance. I’ve had several impressive drinks using the spirit, some classic and some contemporary. Possession being proof of commitment to the cause, the time had come for me to pick up some of my own. It was an easy decision to make now that Giffard’s once difficult to find Apricot du Roussillon (like Marie Brizard and other notable brands, technically a liqueur and not a brandy) is available in area supermarkets. I bought it mainly so at some point I could make both the Charlie Chaplin and the Douglas Fairbanks, thus completing the trifecta of tipples named for the founders of United Artists. But my first homemade apricot brandy cocktail had to be accessible – and, more importantly, consist of other ingredients I already had on hand.

Enter the Claridge. Its namesake, surprisingly, is not the London hotel that was birthplace of the Hanky Panky and current target of a nasty takeover fight. Instead the cocktail hails from the Continent; gaz regan relays its Parisian provenance. The Savoy Cocktail Book includes both the Claridge and a drink with the identical recipe called the Frankenjack, likely after a New York speakeasy called Frank and Jack’s according to Erik Ellestad of the essential Savoy Stomp.

Proportions vary depending on the recipe, but the ratio of ingredients (gin, dry vermouth, triple sec, apricot brandy) remains 2:2:1:1. There are differing schools of thought on the garnish: lemon twist, cherry, or none. I went with the first. Like gaz I’m a “hog for bitters” and tossed in a dash per his suggestion. The resulting cocktail was a lovely, delicate rose of a drink, balancing the flavors of apricot and orange with the aid of a hint of Angostura.

Mentioning the Claridge on Facebook brought admirers out of the woodwork. Cale Green of Seattle’s Sun Liquor said the drink was “amazing” with an apricot eau de vie, or “water of life” in French, a purer essence of the fruit made by distilling fermented apricot mash. I stopped in at the Zig Zag where several compatriots raved about that preparation of the drink sans bitters. Every day’s a school day, as my friend Ray Banks says, so I ordered a Claridge with eau de vie. The drink was a marvel, extremely dry with a fruit taste both pronounced and crisp.

And yet ... for the first time, I preferred the cocktail I made at home. The bitters and the brandy gave it more character, even if it was a bit raucous and rough-hewn. That’s a sign I’ve developed as a cocktail enthusiast more impressive than any bottle I own: I’m starting to like my own drinks.

The Claridge

1 oz. gin
1 oz. dry vermouth
½ oz. triple sec (I used Cointreau)
½ oz. apricot brandy
1 dash Angostura bitters (optional)

Stir. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

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.

On The Web: Amble to Ambler

My friend Ethan Iverson, pianist in The Bad Plus and crime/thriller fiction connoisseur, has written another of his brilliant overviews of a single writer’s work, in this case the great Eric Ambler. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek, and honored to make a meager contribution. Go read it, because I guarantee it will be the only time I ever share space with the legendary Len Deighton.

Cocktail of the Week: Up In Mabel’s Room

The Academy Awards are on Sunday, so why not spotlight another cocktail named after a movie? Even if I’ve already featured one that’s damn near identical.

Up In Mabel’s Room is a 1919 play co-written by Wilson Collison and Otto Harbach, better known as a lyricist (“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”) and mentor to Oscar Hammerstein. You can hear the plot mechanics creaking from the description: a wife divorces her husband upon discovering he’s secretly bought ladies’ unmentionables only to learn they were intended as her anniversary gift, so she sets out to woo him back. It’s like a navy strength episode of Three’s Company.

The stage smash was adapted to the screen twice. The 1926 film starred Marie Prevost, who was for a time Ernst Lubitsch’s leading lady of choice, and Harrison Ford. No, not him. The other Harrison Ford. (Admit it. You didn’t know there was an other Harrison Ford.) Allan Dwan directed the 1944 version, starring Marjorie Reynolds, Jack Oakie and Dennis O’Keefe. Here’s where things turn weird. In addition to being the author of the novel that spawned the Maisie series of comedies, Wilson Collison proved himself to be the laureate of lingerie. He co-wrote another farce revolving around an article of women’s underwear with one of history’s greatest titles: Getting Gertie’s Garter. That play was also filmed twice. The star and director of the 1926 Mabel’s Room reteamed one year later for Garter – and so would Dwan and O’Keefe in 1945.

Both stage and screen incarnations of Mabel’s Room are largely forgotten. The drink deserves a better fate. Its initial appearance came in the Cocktail Guide and Ladies Companion by Broadway producer and bon vivant Crosby Gaige. The recipe, at least as it appeared in the book’s 1944 edition, called for rye, grapefruit juice and honey. In other words, it’s a Brown Derby (aka a De Rigueur) with a different base spirit (rye instead of bourbon). While the Brown Derby still has its adherents – I spotted it on a restaurant’s cocktail list this week – its doppelganger has fallen out of circulation. I rediscovered it thanks to Dark Spirits by A. J. Rathbun. The modern take uses simple syrup in place of honey; while I would never make that substitution in a Brown Derby given bourbon’s inherent sweetness, it works fine with a typically drier rye. In Mabel’s Room the citrus and the sweetener come in generous, equal portions that still allow the grapefruit’s tartness to shine through. Personally I prefer the Brown Derby, but that one doesn’t have any scanties in its scant history.

Up in Mabel’s Room

1 ½ oz. rye
¾ oz. grapefruit juice
¾ oz. simple syrup

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

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: 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.

Movies: It Always Rains on Noir City Seattle

A scant two weeks after the big top folded in San Francisco, the Noir City carnival rolled into Seattle. Much of the Bay Area’s company of players reassembled: ringmaster Eddie Muller, the redoubtable Daryl Sparks working her usual magic behind the scenes and at the swag table, Tokyo’s stylish noir aficionado supreme Etsuko Tamazawa, the missus and yours truly. Also on hand was this year’s program, a cherce complement of films from around the world attesting to the fact that film noir, even in the middle of the last century, was a truly global phenomenon.

Amidst the filmgoing, there were copious amounts of socializing and strategizing. The latter has heaped quite a bit more on my plate, so herewith are truncated highlights. There is a twist ending, though, because it just ain’t noir without a sting in the tail.

Death is a Caress (Norway, 1949). The first half of what is surely the most perverse Valentine’s Day double bill ever programmed. A Scandinavian riff on James M. Cain (note the note on the homme fatale’s doorbell to “ring twice”), directed by a woman (Edith Carlmar) and made in a country with no production code and a more tolerant attitude toward infidelity. Aimless young man takes up with sexually aggressive, wealthy older married woman. Murder is never plotted, yet doom hangs in the air. A bracing lesson in gender politics. It took a while to recover from the shock of seeing characters in a 1940s film speak openly about abortion.

Death of a Cyclist (Spain, 1955). Think working for the studios in the heyday of the Hays Office was a tricky proposition? Try making societal critiques under Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Part two of the Nobody’s Getting Laid This Valentine’s Day line-up, this film from director/co-writer Juan Antonio Bardem (uncle of Javier) is a scathing critique of bourgeois privilege. Returning from a tryst, a married woman and her ex-fiancé are involved in a hit and run accident. An oily hanger-on in their circle (the spectacular Carlos Casaravilla – think a sinister Oscar Levant) insinuates that he knows all. The film eventually gets bogged down in philosophizing en route to an ending at once predictable and brazen, but its opening forty-five minutes is supple, modern, and brimming with both style and righteous anger.

Hardly a Criminal (Argentina, 1949). Bank clerk José (Jorge Salcedo), addicted to gambling, isn’t above dipping into the till to cover his losses. When he realizes Argentine law means he’ll serve the same six-year sentence no matter how much he steals, he goes for broke and deliberately gets caught, planning to do his time then live high. What he doesn’t figure on is how his actions will affect his family – and how his fellow inmates will cotton to his clever crime. A blast of pure, straight-ahead noir that you could easily see being made Stateside. Little wonder the chops on display here brought director Hugo Fregonese to Hollywood.

The Murderers Are Among Us (Germany, 1946). A day of films shot from 1946 to 1948 as war clouds were dissipating began with a landmark, the first movie made in Germany after Berlin fell. (As Eddie said when introducing Japan’s Drunken Angel, contemplate what noir means in the countries that lost World War II.) A concentration camp prisoner (Hildegard Knef) returns to her ruined flat to find an alcoholic doctor squatting there. Even as her presence awakens something in him, it also leads to the discovery that his brutal former commanding officer is prospering as Germany starts to rebuild. An astonishing artifact filmed guerilla-style in the rubble, it’s only slightly compromised by its compelling history. (Production had to be backed by one of the city’s occupying powers. Only the Soviets stepped up, but they insisted on changes in the script. Later the Americans arrested lead actor Wilhelm Borchert for falsifying information on his papers, jeopardizing imposed reshoots.)

It Always Rains on Sunday (England, 1947). A movie I’d missed in repertory screenings for years, finally viewed on a Sunday – when it was raining! Kismet! The revelation of the festival, Sunday captures a day of supposed rest in London’s East End as the city copes with war’s aftermath. The script by director Robert Hamer, Hitchcock collaborator Angus MacPhail and Henry Cornelius weaves together a mosaic of stories all anchored by the tale of an escaped convict seeking temporary sanctuary at the home of his now-married former flame played by a magnificent Googie Withers. A powerhouse of a film.

I promised a twist, didn’t I? Turns out master of ceremonies Muller would not be available to present the President’s Day roster of French noir. Not wanting to disappoint the crowd, he asked Rosemarie and me to stand in for him. A tall order, considering he was just named a host on Turner Classic Movies, but who could deny the man who’s done so much to preserve film noir? We suited up – I put on a tie, people, I got my shoes shined – and set about our task in earnest.

What made it easier than expected was the quartet of movies we were fortunate enough to introduce. Pépé Le Moko (1937), with Jean Gabin incarnating the essence of la belle France as the gangster who yearns for home from his aerie in the Casbah of Algiers. Rififi (1955), perhaps the definitive heist film. Une si jolie petite plage (Such a Pretty Little Beach, aka Riptide, 1949) the wild card of the bunch, a bleak, elliptical story of a mysterious young man who haunts an off-season resort village with a memorable lead performance by Gérard Philipe, France’s James Dean. And finally, one of my personal favorites, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Quai des Orfévres or Jenny Lamour, a saucy tour of the demimonde of Paris music halls. This movie has everything: sex, love, suspense, humor, and an inspired ending. It was the perfect way to ring down the curtain. To have some small part in bringing this peerless gem to a new audience was an honor. But honestly, I don’t understand how Muller does this night in and night out. Rosemarie and I were exhausted at the end of our tour of duty, and we were sharing the workload. Still, we’d do it again.

Austin, you’re up next. Get ready.

Cocktail of the Week: The Blood and Sand

They’re not many in number, Scotch cocktails, and understandably so. Scotch whisky, whether smoky or peaty, is a lonely, Brontë-esque figure on the moors, demanding to be savored in solitude. The one or two drinks I’ve spotlighted using this spirit don’t stray far from the Manhattan. But the cocktail that shows Scotch to its best advantage moves in a completely different direction, and is in my personal pantheon. Naysayers who don’t believe Scotch mixes well be warned: no less an authority than Ted Haigh, in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, calls the drink “revelatory.”

Blood and Sand began as a 1908 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. The tale of a young bullfighter undone by success, it would be brought to the screen by the author himself in 1916. Six years later, a Paramount Pictures adaptation would cement the fame of Rudolph Valentino; the actor later identified the role as his favorite and the performance as his best. A 1941 remake starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth was also a hit. As for the 1989 Spanish-made version inexplicably starring Sharon Stone, this much can be said: it exists. Both the 1922 and 1941 films spawned comic send-ups by name talents, first Stan Laurel’s “Mud and Sand” (in which he plays Rhubarb Vaselino) then the Three Stooges’ immortal “What’s The Matador?”

Valentino’s triumph also gave rise to the cocktail. Its exact origin is unknown, but the recipe first appeared in Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book (1930). The inspiration carries over to the ingredients, with orange juice representing the sand and the rich red of Cherry Heering serving as sanguinary element. Springing for a bottle of this extraordinarily flavorful brandy has allowed me at last to make this drink at home.

The Blood and Sand was initially an equally parts cocktail, and many bartenders still prepare it this way; A.J. Rathbun in Dark Spirits cleverly suggests making it as a punch. The redoubtable gaz regan ups the OJ ante and serves it as a brunch highball. I prefer it with an emphasis on the whisky, leading to the question of which brand to use. You’ll want a light single-malt or a blended. Famous Grouse is the default choice at the bars where I regularly order it, but following a run on the product at my local liquor store I sent Bank Note Blended (containing a higher than usual 40% single malt yet at a price that won’t gore you) into the ring in its suit of lights and it brought the crowd to its feet waving white handkerchiefs. A sterling replacement.

The Blood and Sand

1 ½ oz. Scotch
¾ oz. orange juice
½ oz. Cherry Heering
½ oz. sweet vermouth

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

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 Queens

Years after leaving the city, I still identify myself as a New Yorker. My latent municipal pride extends to highlighting drinks named for the Big Apple’s boroughs. I’ve covered the Manhattan. I’ve showcased the Bronx in its bitters-blessed form, the Income Tax. I paid homage to an array of Brooklyn-inspired cocktails until I was finally able to feature the original.

Yet I’d never honored the borough of my birth. (Sorry, Staten Island. You’re on your own.) Queens is the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. Think of it as an EPCOT Center with two airports and a baseball team to which I remain inexplicably devoted. The lapse wasn’t caused by neglect but ignorance; I didn’t even know there was a Queens cocktail. Then I discovered there was, and didn’t want to try it.

The Queens is made with pineapple, the fruit that is, of course, synonymous with the borough. Queens is lousy with them. The impossibly fragrant ones of Bayside, the hearty stripe grown in Jackson Heights, the dense, almost smoky variety found only in darkest Maspeth. For generations pineapples were accepted as currency from Astoria to Flushing. Legend has it that before the epochal Game Six of the 1986 World Series, a towering effigy of Boston Red Sox closer Calvin Schiraldi made entirely of pineapples was erected in the barren auto yards of Willets Point and set ablaze, to be consumed by hordes of Mets fans – rinds, fronds, and all. Neither I nor my gastroenterologist will vouch for this story.

What is known is that the Queens cocktail, like the Bronx, is a perfect martini with fruit juice. It has long been assumed that some uppity barkeep on the wrong side of the East River decided the neighborhood needed a libation of its own and simply swapped the Bronx’s orange for pineapple. Or so said the few articles on this neglected drink.

I consulted Harry Craddock’s Savoy Cocktail Book and made an alarming discovery. A drink with the same ingredients (calling for a slice of crushed pineapple instead of the juice) does appear in its pages – where it’s listed as the Queen’s Cocktail. As in possessive. As in belonging to Her Majesty. Such is the way of history; first you lose your apostrophes, then your empire. Being affiliated with royalty still doesn’t explain why pineapple is involved. I can only assume Captain James Cook presented one of the fruits at court and when asked what should be done with it replied, “Beats me. Soak it in gin and serve it to the old broad?” (For the purposes of this historical reenactment, Captain Cook is a graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School.)

So the drink in all likelihood has nothing to do with my old stomping grounds, and the combination of pineapple and dry vermouth calls to mind the Algonquin, of which I am not a fan. But something, perhaps this recent article on the evolution of the store where I used to buy my comic books, compelled me to sample the Queens anyway.

While some recipes suggest equal parts, I chose proportions closer to those of the Bronx. Your mileage will most definitely vary, considering the potency of pineapple’s flavor. My immediate reaction was to say if I wanted fruit in my perfect Martini I’d rather have a Bronx, and even then I’d still prefer a Manhattan. It’s not a bad drink; its taste grew on me as it settled. But it wouldn’t occur to me to order one, and I’m from Queens. I could see tinkering with the balance, though, out of perverse loyalty to my birthplace.

Shame about Staten Island not having a drink, though. Did you know the borough was originally called Richmond?

Wait, there’s a Richmond cocktail? Hmm ...

The Queens, or The Queen’s, or The Fuhgeddaboudit

1 ½ oz. gin
1 oz. pineapple juice
¾ oz. sweet vermouth
¾ oz. dry vermouth

Shake. Strain. No garnish.

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 Frisco

As a child, I was addicted to Encyclopedia Brown-style mysteries. At the end of each story you’d be instructed to flip to another page or turn the book upside down for the solution, which typically involved some verbal miscue by the guilty party. Favorites included Michael Avallone’s Five-Minute Mysteries and the Two-Minute Mysteries series by Encyclopedia Brown creator Donald J. Sobol. (About the titles: what can I say? Even in my youth I was extremely conscious of time management.)

In one of those books, a crime was committed on a West Coast-bound train with the culprit eventually revealed as a counterfeit conductor. How did the phony tip his hand? By referring to San Francisco as “Frisco,” which no railroad professional would ever do. The moral never left me: only reprobates used that diminutive. Yet there’s a drink called that, and a damn good one. It gets the spotlight this week because I’m just back from San Francisco, where the Noir City Film Festival is having its closing weekend.

The Frisco first appeared in World Drinks and How to Mix Them (1930) by William Boothby. Before being elected to the California State Assembly “Cocktail Bill” tended bar at several San Francisco hotels, which likely explains the drink’s name. Boothby’s recipe couldn’t have been simpler: three-quarters “whiskey” and one-quarter Bénédictine, the French liqueur. For decades the first ingredient was taken to mean bourbon, although of late rye has become the preference. Over time some bartenders began adding lemon juice in equal proportion to the Bénédictine, turning the drink into a sophisticated gloss on the whiskey sour. I find the citrus a necessary bulwark against Bénédictine’s aggressive sweetness ... and then I throw in a lemon twist on top of that, because I’m a showman at heart. Balance remains key with this drink; depending on the brand of rye, you may opt for half an ounce less. (The ratio below uses Rittenhouse Bonded.)

The Frisco is the cocktail that brought home the impact of double-straining to me. For years when I made drinks at home I’d strain them once, through a Hawthorne or Julep strainer. But at the Swig Well Academy Bartending 101 course I took taught by Anu Apte of Seattle’s Rob Roy, it was impressed on me that pouring a drink through a second, finer mesh removes ice shards and excess pulp. That’s a fancy trick for your industry types, I figured. The thought didn’t stop me from ordering a tea strainer anyway. The Frisco was one of the first drinks I prepared once it arrived, and the difference was immediate. The technique eliminated some of the lemon’s sourness while leaving its tartness intact, improving the taste markedly. This how-to video features Erik Hakkinen of the Zig Zag Cafe, who will be tending the bar at Noir City tonight in Frisco San Francisco.

The Frisco

2 oz. rye
½ oz. Bénédictine
½ oz. lemon juice

Shake. Double-strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

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.

Noir City: The Streets of San Francisco

Film noir is an organic American cinematic movement, but its DNA contains elements from elsewhere: the visual motifs of German Expressionism, the fatalistic viewpoint of artists fleeing the war in Europe. It’s only fitting, then, that the twelfth annual Noir City Film Festival cast its net wide and showcased noir from around the globe. Programmer, master of ceremonies and impresario extraordinaire Eddie Muller has assembled an amazing line-up including several films that have never screened theatrically in the United States before. Rosemarie and I attended the opening weekend in San Francisco.

The festivities kicked off with international intrigue in a duo of films dominated by Orson Welles even though he didn’t direct either one. Journey Into Fear (1943) would mark the end of Welles’ sojourn at RKO. Norman Foster is credited as the director but Welles’ fingerprints are everywhere, starting with the cast of familiar faces. Joseph Cotten is the munitions engineer passing through Turkey at the start of World War II. Cotten puts his patrician bearing to excellent use playing one of those WASPish Americans overly concerned with propriety, which becomes an impediment when he’s targeted by Nazi agents and must flee the country by boat. A truncated 68 minute running time owing to a troubled production nonetheless preserves the leisurely, almost comedy of manners feel of the Eric Ambler novel. Minor but engaging. Welles plays a Turkish cop. His hat earned a round of applause from a packed Castro Theatre.

What can I say about The Third Man (1949), other than this movie directed by Carol Reed and scripted by Graham Greene is one of the few perfect things in this world? The Ferris wheel scene is its best-known moment, but on this viewing (I couldn’t guess how many times I’ve seen the film) I was mesmerized by what came just before it, as Holly Martins (Cotten) sees his friend Harry Lime (Welles) approaching from a distance. Welles moves with uncanny brio; Harry, like Welles himself, is a star in the world of post-war Vienna. Rosemarie’s succinct analysis: “At the start of the movie Cotten bounds off the train an American, full of purpose. At the end he’s slumped against a broken down cart, smoking, wishing for something he knows will never happen to happen. He’s become European.”

Saturday afternoon brought forth a pair of unsung films from Mexico. 1951’s En la palma de tu mano (In the Palm of Your Hand) features one of my favorite noir tropes: the bogus psychic. “Professor” Karin relies on his beautician wife to acquire information about the upper crust which he then deploys to his advantage. When he deduces an industrialist was murdered by his spouse, he horns in on the scheme – only to become enmeshed in the newly rich widow’s plot to eliminate her lover. Featuring glossy, high-toned storytelling that wouldn’t be out of place in a studio film of the era shot through with a brooding Catholic sensibility that is distinctly Mexican. Up next, a screening of the only subtitled print of the astonishing Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951) in the U.S. Starring “The Golden Venus” Ninón Sevilla, it’s an example of the rumberas or nightclub film and compresses an entire telenovela into ninety unhinged minutes with time to spare for some of the sexiest dancing ever before a movie camera (Exhibit A and Exhibit B). A piñata that never empties, Victims communicated directly with the audience’s reptile brain. We didn’t care about motivation or coherence. We only wanted, craved, demanded MORE. These two movies, produced when the Production Code still held sway over Hollywood, demonstrated the freedom filmmakers elsewhere had when addressing adult subject matter. A scene in Palm has a married couple in the standard separate beds of the 1950s only to have the husband slip in beside his wife, while Victims is breathtakingly forthright about prostitution.

Me ruining a perfectly good book.

A personal milestone came on Saturday evening. The sixth Noir City Annual, collecting work published in the 2013 editions of the Film Noir Foundation’s magazine, debuted, and a host of contributors including yours truly were invited to a gala signing. It was a pleasure to be seated alongside ace designer Michael Kronenberg – the man responsible for the gorgeous cover of Down The Hatch – and talented writers like Steve Kronenberg, Imogen Sara Smith, Dan Akira Nishimura, Anne Hockens and Carl Steward among others. The annual will be sold at other Noir City festivals and soon through Amazon; please note that my signature on a copy of the book actually makes it worth less.

For the last few years Eddie has been keeping festgoers apprised of the status of the FNF’s latest project, a restoration of the independently made 1949 film noir Too Late For Tears. The new 35mm print, financed in part by a contribution from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s trust, was unveiled on Friday night. Having seen it, I should just toss the two public domain DVDs I own. Roy Huggins’ casually diabolical script prefigures A Simple Plan as young L.A. marrieds Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy accidentally come into possession of a hefty extortion payoff. As Scott’s avaricious tendencies get the better of her, the blackmailer (Dan Duryea) comes calling. It’s unquestionably Liz Scott’s finest hour, but good luck taking your eyes off Duryea who saunters onto the screen all rancid insouciance and ends up timid and broken before La Scott. How successful was Saturday’s screening? People were turned away from a theater that seats over 1400 people.

Our gaze shifted to the Far East on Sunday with a twin bill from Japanese master Akira Kurosawa. The Drunken Angel of the 1948 film’s title is Takashi Shimura’s doctor, toiling amongst the poor of occupied Japan. He patches a bullet wound for brash yakuza Toshirô Mifune and insinuates himself into the younger man’s life, a relationship that becomes more critical once Mifune’s callous boss is spring from prison. A masterwork of humanism made more impressive when followed by Stray Dog (1949), with the same actors reteamed as Tokyo cops pursuing a stolen police gun through a sweltering summer. Maestro Muller, never missing an opportunity, arranged for culturally appropriate libations to be poured throughout the festival. On this night we enjoyed sake served up by Beau Timken, owner of San Francisco’s True Sake and author of Sake: A Modern Guide. A second round came courtesy of the woman Eddie dubbed “the ichiban of noir,” our very good friend Etsuko Tamazawa. The impossibly stylish Etsuko has a film noir blog in Japanese, and beautifully provided Eddie’s introductions in her native tongue.

Alas, that was it for us, but Noir City Seattle starts in only two weeks. Not every title that screened in San Francisco will play in the Northwest; the Mexican films we saw won’t make the trip, for instance, and neither will The Black Vampire, a 1953 Argentine remake of Fritz Lang’s M unspooling at the Castro on Friday.

Miss Noir City 2014 Evie Lovelle. Also pictured: me.

There are so many people to thank for our experience at the festival, which continues through Sunday. First and foremost is Muller. The other big piece of news out of Noir City is that Eddie will be joining Turner Classic Movies as a regular on-air host. Eddie’s knowledge and above all his passion for film makes him the perfect addition to America’s repertory theater. This year’s Miss Noir City is burlesque performer and long-time friend of the festival Evie Lovelle, who performed her duties with aplomb and her usual drop-dead flair. There’s also the utterly essential Daryl Sparks and the army of volunteers who make Noir City a one of a kind event.

Cocktail notes ... on this trip I finally made it to the highly touted Rickhouse, where I enjoyed a Fort Point (bourbon, grapefruit, tart cherry, falernum) and a Rye Smile with rye, lemon and mint. I’d heard nothing but raves for the drinks at Nopa so I ventured there for brunch with David Corbett. I can thus sing the praises of the California perfect Sunshine Fix (aperol, gin, lemon and Angostura bitters). If you’re dining around the corner from the Castro at Poesia – and you should – order yourself a La Dolce Vita made with Jack Daniel’s and Amaretto. My primary contribution to this year’s Noir City will come on Friday night when, naturally, I won’t be there. Cocktails at the Castro that evening will be made with Giffard liqueurs and by Erik Hakkinen, the Giffard rep in the U.S. whose secret identity is bartender at my haunt the Zig Zag Café. Should you find yourself at the theater, be sure to sample his handiwork – then tell him to get back up here and make me a drink.

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 Brooklyn

It’s one of the great ironies of the classic cocktail renaissance that the drink best showcasing the movement’s ingenuity does so because of how often it can’t be made.

Once upon a time the Brooklyn might have given the Manhattan, named for a neighboring borough of New York City, a run for its money in terms of popularity. The cocktail allegedly devised at Kings County’s Hotel St. George riffed on its better-known predecessor, adding maraschino to the mix of rye and dry vermouth. One curiosity regarding that last ingredient: PDT’s Jim Meehan cites Jack’s Manual, a 1910 book by Jacob A. Grohusko, as the earliest appearance of the Brooklyn. But the recipe as it appears in Grohusko’s guide calls for equal parts rye and Italian (sweet) vermouth, pushing the formula even closer to that of the Manhattan. The vermouth was listed as the now-standard French variety in 1930’s Savoy Cocktail Book, playing second fiddle to the whiskey (Canadian Club in the Savoy, but trust me, you’ll want rye). When this change occurred is a mystery to me.

It’s what replaces the Manhattan’s bitters that is the Brooklyn’s elusive element. Amer Picon is a dense orange liqueur created by France’s Gaéton Picon in 1837. Picon (the amer, not the Frenchman) wasn’t all that easy to acquire back in the Brooklyn’s heyday and has not been exported to the United States in some time; as I have recounted, it can be difficult to put your hands on a bottle in la belle France. The stuff was scarce enough in 1948 for David Embury to suggest in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks substituting Angostura bitters – which would mean you were making a dry Manhattan with a whisper of maraschino. Further complicating matters was the reformulation of Amer Picon in the 1970s, reducing the alcohol content and altering the flavor.

Bartenders rose to the challenge by improvising. Some deployed Torani Amer syrup seasoned with orange bitters. Seattle’s own Jamie Boudreau concocted his own version based on the amaro Ramazzotti. But the greatest flowering of creativity came simply by working around Picon’s absence. The previous decade spawned a host of Brooklyn-inspired drinks christened after the borough’s neighborhoods, among them the Greenpoint and my all-time favorite cocktail the Red Hook. You can even head across the river for an applejack variation in the Newark, provided of course you can clear the George Washington Bridge.

But now there’s another option that gets you closer to what Jack Grohusko would have whipped up prior to Prohibition. The amer China-China was cooked up by Felix and Louis Bigallet in 1875 at the family’s Lyon distillery. Like Amer Picon, it combines orange peels with cinchona, gentian and other spices. Unlike Amer Picon, it is being sold in the United States as of 2013. It’s also 80 proof, compared to the original Picon’s 78 proof formula. Think of it as a boozier, more viscous variety of present-day Picon with a more pronounced orange flavor. The ready availability of Bigallet’s China-China – I picked up my bottle at Whole Foods – means that a host of vintage libations that in recent years had been solely the province of craft cocktail bars can now be prepared at home. The Brooklyn is the ideal place to start.

The Brooklyn

2 oz. rye
¾ oz. dry vermouth
¼ oz. maraschino
¼ oz. Bigallet China-China amer (in place of Amer Picon)

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

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.

Miscellaneous: Youngman with a Horn

It’s a side effect of being obsessed with show business. Every time I meet someone who shares the same last name as somebody famous, I think, “Maybe they’re related!” Just a way to make my humdrum life more exciting. It never turns out to be true.

Until my first day in the video game business. I was introduced to the project’s lead designer Jim Youngman and thought, “Maybe he’s the grandson of Henny Youngman, the legendary comedian! The King of the One Liners! The featured attraction at the end of that spectacular tracking shot through the Copacabana in Goodfellas!” Not that I asked him about it. I knew how ridiculous the idea was.

But over the next few weeks, Jim would say things that kept me wondering. The clincher was when he mentioned that his father had edited The Horror of Party Beach, which had turned up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I did some research and came to our next meeting flabbergasted. “You are Henny Youngman’s grandson!”

Jim happily acknowledged the connection. “Not a lot of people my age know Henny,” he said. But Jim and his father Gary, an accomplished editor and documentarian, are trying to change that.

They’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to finish a documentary about one of the all-time great comics. Take My Life ... Please! features classic Henny Youngman performances, new interviews with contemporaries like Milton Berle, Jan Murray and Stiller & Meara, and exclusive footage of Henny shot late in the comedian’s life. I’m backing it. So is Mark Evanier, your one-stop shop for all things showbiz. And so should you.

The Good Stuff: 2013, Recapp’d

First, the year in me. Rosemarie and I moved to a deluxe apartment in the sky. We won an award. And I published a book. All in all, not a bad twelve months.

2013 was the least active year in the history of ye olde website, and most of the posts were about cocktails. But blogs are dead anyway, as Jason Kottke was the most recent to remind us. Still, I feel bad that I didn’t manage to rattle on about everything I watched, read, listened to or otherwise ingested. Hence, this rambling roster of recommendations, in the order consumed. It is by no means complete; there are highly touted titles I have yet to catch up with, others I’ve seen and am still chewing over. But such lists are always written in the sand, aren’t they? Consider this a snapshot of how I feel on New Year’s Eve. Come New Year’s Day I’ll be another person entirely. And so will you.

Drinking with Men, by Rosie Schaap. A heartfelt memoir about the pleasures and occasional perils of being a regular in a bar near you. My favorite book of the year.

Side Effects. New age noir, slyly updated for the era of prescription drugs. In the words of my friend Ray Banks, “classically sleazy.” And with that, Steven Soderbergh retires.

Noir City. A high point every year. Saw it in both Seattle and Portland this annum!

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, by Sara Gran. Miss Gran continues to toy with the conventions of the mystery novel even as she probes the deepest mystery. This entry in the best series going is, sadly, the only novel on this year’s list. It was a strange reading year for me.

Behind the Candelabra (HBO). And with that, Steven Soderbergh returns! (I never bought that retirement story for a minute.) Featuring a bravura performance by Michael Douglas as Liberace, it doesn’t stint on the dirt or the garish period details while proving to be a riveting portrait of a long-term relationship falling apart.

Pacific Rim. The movie I always wanted to see when I was eight years old made me feel eight years old again.

The Hitchcock 9. Seeing the Master of Suspense’s first directorial efforts, completely restored and with live musical accompaniment, was an event of the first order. Kudos to the British Film Institute – and to Seattle’s SIFF Cinema, for innovative musical choices and following the series with several days of Hitchcock’s early U.K. sound films.

Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, by Thomas Doherty. Engaging social history looking back at how the studios and the predominately Jewish moguls who ran them did and did not respond to the rise of Nazism in the years before World War II. Doherty has a thorough understanding of movies and of Hollywood as a business and a community. (Would that the same could be said for Ben Urwand. His shoddy and sensationalistic The Collaboration, which covers much of the same ground, is the worst book I read in 2013.)

Drug War. You can have your superheroes. Give me bad-ass cops. Johnnie To goes to mainland China and makes an epic thriller.

This Town, by Mark Leibovich. The one book that almost makes me say “The one book you have to read.” It serves up in clinical detail why American politics is broken – because once elected, the people who run this country essentially move to a separate realm, one without connection or consequence. Told with the gleeful abandon that only comes when an insider (Leibovich is a longtime political correspondent for the New York Times) decides to set the palace walls ablaze himself.

Blancanieves. A bewitching black-and-white silent film that retells the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1920s Spain. With bullfighting. I can’t believe it wasn’t more popular.

The Bling Ring. In a year of movies about the hollowing out of the American Dream, Sofia Coppola’s up-to-the-minute look at fame-obsessed teenagers turned bandits takes the prize. Also deserving of consideration in this category: Michael Bay’s underappreciated Pain & Gain.

Rush. Ron Howard returns to his Grand Theft Auto roots and makes the film of his career and my favorite of 2013. Peter Morgan’s script transforms the battle for the 1976 Formula One championship into the essential existential question: how do you live your life? Magnificently photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, with Daniel Brühl giving the performance of the year as Niki Lauda.

Captain Phillips. Harrowing all the way through, never more so than when the damage has been done; the closing scenes depicting shock are impossible to shake. Tom Hanks at his finest.

Frances Ha. The great dilemma of your twenties – finding your own music to dance to – put on screen in a truly unique way. Greta Gerwig beguiles even while she maddens. Thinking of the final shot puts a smile on my face even now.

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940, by Victoria Wilson. At times frustratingly thorough, the first of this two-volume biography gives our greatest movie actress the treatment she deserves.

Collision Low Crossers, by Nicholas Dawidoff. A confession: I didn’t watch a single snap of the 2013 NFL season after skipping January’s Super Bowl for the first time in years. One unpleasant story after another – too many deaths of former players with signs of serious brain trauma, the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, a rash of player suicides culminating in Jovan Belcher’s death by his own hand at the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice facility after he murdered his girlfriend – had drained all pleasure from football for me. Dawidoff’s book chronicling his 2011 season embedded with the New York Jets coaching staff thus came along at an interesting time. Beautifully written and packed with inside info, it perfectly captures football’s grind both on the field and off; George Will was not wrong when he said the sport combines the two worst aspects of American life, namely violence and committee meetings. Coaches and players alike acknowledge the risks inherent in the game and undertake them willingly, but don’t care to discuss them in depth. I feel better about football knowing that. I’m still not planning to watch the Super Bowl, even if the Seahawks are in it.

Six by Sondheim (HBO). A biography in the form of half a dozen songs, and one of the best treatments you’ll ever see of a writer writing.

Nebraska. Alexander Payne’s film (written by Seattle’s own Bob Nelson) is an elegy for a life and an entire way of life – as well as a reminder that time passes for the young as it does for the old. Will Forte should be getting more love for his performance here.

Inside Llewyn Davis. In many respects the evil twin of Frances Ha. Structured like a folk song, which is why it’s going around and round in my head. What happens when you’re good enough to make it – and you don’t make it? It’s also a meta, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-we self-portrait by Joel and Ethan Coen, two artists dogged by questions of likability who may only be able to create with a partner.

Here’s wishing all of you the best in 2014. Thanks for stopping by on occasion. I’ll leave the light on. Odds are I’ll still mostly be talking about cocktails, though.