 
 "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
The Downtown Los Angeles Sub-District Cocktail Competition. (Wow, that's a mouthful.) Cocktail competitions are fun -- sometimes they're only ways for the spirits company sponsoring them to get their brand out there, but a lot of the time it's a great way for a bartender to get a little recognition and maybe even win a prize. Marcos Tello of The Edison is organizing a new one not for a spirits company, but for our own fair city. What we hope to get out of it in a month's time is seventeen new signature drinks for Los Angeles. Let's have him tell y'all about it:
The Arts District Cocktail, incidentally, contains rye, Bénédictine and Cynar, although I'm unsure of the proportions. I can guess how I'd make a drink using those ingredients, but I want to get it right, so I'll publish it when I find out the exact amounts from either Marcos or Leo. I know this is kind of closing the barn door after the bandersnatch has run away, but the deadline for entries was yesterday. (Glerp. Sorry.) Eligibility is bartenders who reside in the Los Angeles area, or who are L.A. natives but now tend bar elsewhere, and also serious non-professional enthsiasts and cocktail nerds. We might have picked up three or two more of yas from the readership here, but oh well. The Rules: A stirred cocktail using a base spirit, modifying vermouth, liqueur (i.e. énédictine, Curaçao, etc.) or sweetening agent, and some type of bitter. No citrus. (Citrus is plentiful in L.A. and it's too easy; we don't want a whole bunch of sours either.) Also, ingredients have to be readily available, meaning no homemade ingredients or extremely, obscure hard to find ingredients. We want to be able to make these on a regular basis and promote making them around the city, so they should be somewhat approachable. Entrants are encouraged to do some research on the history of the district they're aiming for, to help the drink reflect both the past and present in that district. The competition will be on the first Sunday of February. If we can coax him into town for the weekend from his until-April out-of-town gig, we hope Dr. Cocktail himself will be judging. (I'm sure Marcos has a Plan B just in case.) I decided to go for the Toy District, bordered by 3rd Street on the north and 5th Street on the south, Los Angeles Street on the west and San Pedro Street on the east. It's filled with myriad shops for inexpensive toys, trinkets, and you-name-it. It's also pretty bustling, at least during the day. For years one of my best friends lived in a loft in the Toy District, and there we did lots of eating, drinking and carrying on. (Good, good times.) Besides the personal inspiration, I did a bit of digging and found out some interesting things about the neighborhood. Before the wave of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and elsewhere in Asia arrived to make the Toy District into what we know it to be today, the neighborhood was "filled with the colorful sights and fragrant smells of old Greece", according to the Los Angeles Times, and was known as Greek Town. The city's first Greek restaurant was on 4th Street, with Kalamata olive oil importers a few doors down. There were 65 Greek businesses clustered in the area, although few remain today and all but two of the original buildings have been razed. I chose one of my base spirits, Metaxa, to reflect the flavors of the community in old Greek Town, augmenting it with rye whiskey to give it balance, a sturdier backbone and to reflect my love of the downtown drinking scene (I like to drink whiskey in downtown bars). The bitter component is Amaro Ramazzotti, complementing the floral notes of the Metaxa with bitter orange and fragrant spice (plus, the Romans had pretty much all the same gods as the Greeks). Lillet is there to help bring the flavors together, and to reflect the presence of fabulous French dip sandwiches a few blocks away. A muddled slice of ginger, as well as the ginger garnish, reflects the current Asian population of the Toy District and gives the drink a bit of brightness and zing. Okay, I'm being silly with some of the symbolism there, but I wanted a Greek spirit and thought it'd taste good with the Italian amaro (wonderful stuff, which I want to use more often), and the other ingredients were chosen solely for taste and balance. I worked on this for about three days, and Wes and I drank most of the not-quites. (Hence, we were fairly shitfaced on Friday and Saturday and stayed home.) I'm pretty happy with the result. If you've a mind to, give it a shot and tell me what you think.
Here's hoping I win my district! Making Fernet easier to swallow. As Eric Felten writes in the WSJ, small amounts in cocktails are the way to go, substituting it for aromatic bitters like Angostura. He writes of the Fanciulli Cockrtail, basically a 2:1 Bourbon Manhattan swapping 1/4 ounce Fernet Branca for the 2 dashes of bitters, up or on the rocks. (I'd garnish that sucker with a big oily twist of orange, me.) We've done this with rye, but didn't know the Bourbon version had a name. I'll give it a shot this way, but I've become an insane amaro lover and will even drink the stuff on its own, which apparently impresses Felten: "Though some of the herbs, roots and barks that go into it are common enough in bitter drafts -- cinchona, orris, gentian -- the flavors are so powerfully concentrated that the stuff is almost impossible to choke down straight, which is why it has been used as a morning-after shock to the system." Sheesh, I've never had any in the morning. I'm more of a Brandy Milk Punch kinda guy in the morning ... The bacon that says "baa." Ooh, this looks tasty.
That Lamb BLT looks great. The article is New York-centric -- anyone know of anyplace serving this in Los Angeles or New Orleans? Food Nazi moms? I recently came across this article about a divorced mom who's going to court to rescind her ex-husband's joint custody of their kids because she discovered that he had committed the horribly abusive crime of packing the kids a non-organic lunch featuring sandwiches on white bread (oh, the horror) and ... *gasp* ... Cheetos! The author of the article, mouth agape with astonishment (which the irate mom mistook as support for her view) was unable to compose herself at that moment to say this in reply:
I've seen the same thing, many times. Sheesh. My sister is feeding wholesome, fresh food to my nephew (the niece is still on the bottle and baby food) but he also gets French fries on occasion, and undoubtedly there'll be the fast food stops now and then. It's not going to kill him, he's not going to grow up gorging on the stuff, and he's already expressing preferences for good stuff. The tiny sips of wine she lets him take now will also help him learn how not to be a binge drinker when he goes to college. That woman in the article is a piece of work. Wonder how her kids will turn out. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. Wes was in the mood for rye and Cointreau, plugged those ingredients into CocktailDB and came up with this -- simple and delicious.
We wanted a slightly larger quantity, so he upped the rye and Dubonnet to 1-1/2 ounces each and the Cointreau to 3/4, and an extra dash of bitters. Yum. I want to know what history tasted like. So says my friend Paul Clarke, who's the subject of a nice profile in his hometown paper, which is current making him blush. Nice way of putting our obsession with classic and historical drinks, too -- "I know what the 1800s tasted like." Mmm, Improved Holland Gin Cocktail ... Truffles, get yer truffles, cheap! I suppose one "benefit" of the rotten economic times we find ourselves in is that if you care to spend money (frivilously, some might say) on luxury food items, the previously hyper-expensive Italian white truffles are now a much better deal.
I can't think in numbers that high. Even Surfas doesn't have the white ones at the moment, but at that price above you're at $36.35 per gram, or $1,030.52 per ounce. The black ones are in stock now at Surfasfor a mere $98 per ounce, a comparative bargain. [ Link to today's entries ]
Beery New Year! And Happy New Year too! We had a great time with our beer tasting last night, which included several from Stone Brewing Co., including their new Twelfth Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, 11th Anniversary India Black Ale, 10th Anniversary IPA plus several others, including Chicago's Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, which is aged in used Bourbon whiskey barrels, and the very strange Samuel Adams Triple Bock. (That stuff sure was interesting, but I'm not entirely sure it's beer anymore.) It was the first time we toasted the New Year with beer, and at the chime of midnight we all grabbed musical instruments -- xylophones, tin whistles, fiddle, harp and whatever else was lying around -- to bring a little noise and cacophony to all the fireworks and Mexican music that echoed through the little Highland Park valley where we were. That, plus lots of charcuterie and cheese, plus blackeyed peas and cabbage for luck and money, was not a bad way to ring in the new year. Oh, speaking of charcuterie ... 
This spread was from Schriener's Fine Sausages in Montrose (north Glendale). I forget all the descriptions, but it's teawurst on the left, German salami, a couple of others, a beautiful, delicate French-style hog's head cheese, another salami, some blood-and-tongue roll that was mild and delicious, and in the center ... oh my ... 
That's called "stuffed bacon." It's got pork belly around the edge (i.e., bacon), pork loin in the center (i.e. Canadian bacon) and with some kind of sausage stuffed in the middle. (*omnomnomnomnom*) Time for some punch. As disappointing as the Los Angeles Times has gotten over the past couple of years, they still do a pretty good job covering local food, wine and cocktails (I hope Zell doesn't screw that up too). Yesterday's Food Section featured a great bit on our friend Marcos Tello, resident mixologist and bartender extraordinaire at The Edison, who reminds us -- in case we've forgotten over the last 150 years -- the joys of the communal punch bowl. Remember, punch is a real drink, the precursor to most if not all of the cocktails we drink today. It's serious stuff to be treated seriously -- it ain't dumping some fruit juice and 7UP into a bowl. Take a little care and follow the guidelines (sweet, sour, strong, weak, spice) and you'll get something mighty fine. The secret, as you'll see demonstrated here, is to muddle the lemon peels with the sugar. Here's Marcos' offering:
Don't forget the other two recipes, for Mother's Ruin Punch by Phil Ward of Death & Co. in New York, and Champagne Punch by Julie Reiner of The Clover Club, also in NYC. Also, if you pick up the December 2008 issue of Saveur magazine while it's still on the newsstands, Dave Wondrich has an excellent article on punches (a precursor to his much anticipated next book, Punches, or the Delights and Dangers of the Flowing Bowl, to be published in 2010) which includes three recipes. Each of these makes 3 quarts, or about 24 four-ounce servings.
Good lord, that last one looks fantastic. December Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
Holiday wrap-up: Food and cocktails from New Orleans. Yes, I've been a lazy bastard. I must confess to not really wanting to do a lot of blogging during my week back home in New Orleans, and that does have something to do with the fact that all this hand-coding of this site gets to be a huge pain in the ass. One of my New Year's Resolutions is going to be to convert this blog to WordPress as soon as possible. Given my complete and utter lack of facility with such things, I'm going to need some help. I think I have a likely candidate, but otherwise I'll probably be putting out a call next week. (I'm also going to want an iPhone-optimized version of the main gumbopages.com home page, and I have absolutely no clue as to how to do that.) But in the meantime ... there was lots of eating and drinking over the last week to talk about! I spent most of Christmas Eve day shopping, as given current Draconian baggage restrictions it wasn't practical to schlep presents over on the plane. (Plus I was planning to do 90% of my Christmas shopping at Martin Wine Cellar anyway.) The best part of the day, though, was seeing my old frends David and Jennifer for the first time in (as we realized incredulously) nine years. I finally got to meet their gorgeous girls, and as they were all headed to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park that afternoon, a lunch option near Bayou St. John was called for. None of us had been to Liuzza's by the Track in ages, so off we went. 
Chicken and sausage gumbo to start. Oh, yum. That's a "cup," by the way. 
Next was their "Breath Taking Beef", featuring what Gourmet magazine once called "nostril searing horseradish." (It was good, but my nostrils emerged unscathed.) 
I thought I'd be remiss in talking about food this trip without including Christmas dinner at Uncle Joe and Aunt Cassie's. Let's see, starting at 12 noon, it's rice 'n gravy, macaroni 'n cheese, cornbread and giblet dressing, oyster dressing, sweet potatoes, leg of lamb, turkey, corn pudding, creamed spinach and a cheese-laden variant of greenbean casserole in the middle. That's not counting French bread, cranberries and various desserts, plus wine and cocktails (Rusty Nails were what I was making) ... urp. 
My favorite dessert of all gets its own due -- my grandmother's chocolate brownies, which I've loved since I was a kid (and they're very popular in the family too). Granny doesn't make them herself anymore (she's 91), but Mom does 'em just as well. Now, time for some more goin' out ... Boxing Day began with lunch with my folks at Johnny & Joyce in Mandeville, a completely unassuming, atmosphere-free li'l joint that concentrates on one thing -- great, inexpensive food, mostly fried seafood. Johnny and Joyce, as I recall, had a place in Chalmette for years which washed away in Katrina, and reopened a few years ago on the Northshore. The shrimp and oysters were plump, plentiful and perfectly fried, and I had a gorgeous cup of shrimp gumbo to start. Then, as Parkway Bakery was closed for the holidays and I didn't think I'd be making it to Gene's, I got a hot sausage po-boy with cheese, part of what I'd want my last meal to be (along with red beans and rice and French fries, to name two more components). Not the best I'd ever had, but perfectly good. (The best hot sausage po-boy I'd ever had on the Northshore was at Bunny Matthews' now lamentably closed Vic 'n Nat'ly's in Covington.) The evening's rounds began with a visit to the Swizzle Stick Bar at Café Adelaide to see our bartender friends Lu and Michael, and to sample the latest delights from their cocktail menu, one of the best in town. Louise began with an original by Chris Hannah of Arnaud's French 75 Bar. He's one of the best in town, and he's been cranking out some amazing creations lately. The Swizzle redid their menu and now has a back page featuring drinks by friends of theirs, which is very cool. This is one of 'em -- get it here or go see Chris himself at Arnaud's.
I went for a classic, one of my old favorites and a regular feature on the Swizzle's menu. I just love being able to order this in a bar and not get a quizzical look from the bartender. "Gin, lemon and chocolate," Michael said as he put it in front of me. "Who'd'a thought?"
Next up was a visit to a new place -- not only new to me, but brand new to the city too, having opened at the beginning of October. Rambla is a Basque-influenced Spanish tapas restaurant at the International House hotel in the 200 block of Camp Street. It's owned by the same folks who own Cuvée on St. Charles and Dakota on the Northshore, so it's already off to a good start. Mary had been in Rambla a few weeks ago, checking them out for inclusion in Frommer's I imagine, and put me in touch with their bartender Max Pazuniak, who's a really nice guy, a graduate of B.A.R. and really cares about quality cocktails. Max and his cohorts are doing a great job with the cocktail menu there, with several really tasty-looking offerings: Spanish 75, a variation on the local penchant for making French 75s with brandy instead of gin, with Max's version done with LePanto brandy de Jerez, fresh lemon juice and Cava. The Sardinia combines Tanqueray gin, fresh lemon, housemade rosemary syrup and a splash of Campari, and a Pecan Hot Toddy warms dark rum and sweetens it with a housemade spiced pecan syrup. Max offered to make this one for me, a holiday-themed variation on an Old Fashioned and one of his own creations. I'm approximating the proportions from having watched him make it, but if you want it done exactly right, go see him at Rambla and tell him hi for me.
I don't think St. Nick would mind being left one of these. (We always just left milk, cookies and whiskey.) Next up was a trip to Lüke, one of my very favorite places in the city. Not just mine -- when my friend Rocky in Seattle saw my update that I was eating there, he sent back, "I hate you with a deep and burning passion. From Hell's Heart I stab at thee!" (Envious, a little? Heh. Aah, he knows that I'd have teleported him there in a second if I had the technology.) As is my wont, when I go to Lüke I frequently drink an Ojen Frappé: 
Ojen (OH-hen) is an anisette formerly made in the village of Ojén in Spain, with the last remaining version of it being made by Manuel Fernandez in Jerez. Turns out that the people in Spain, and even the people in Ojen, got out of the habit of drinking it and there was really only one place in the world where it was still being consumed at all -- New Orleans, where it's been popular for Unfortunately we weren't enough to keep an entire distillery going, and they decided to close. Aghast at the prospect of losing one of our traditional beverages, New Orleans bought all remaining stock, and I read in an article by one Ned Hémard that the owners of Martin Wine Cellar actually commissioned a huge final run of the stuff before the distillery shuttered. Lüke apparently bought a big chunk of the remaining stock so that they could offer the cocktail on their regular menu, and it's one of the last bars in the world where you can get one. (Commander's and, I think, a few other places still offer it regularly.) The liqueur itself is still pretty easy to find -- Martin and Dorignac's regularly stock it, and Michael tells me that Vieux Carré Wine & Spirits always has it too. That, plus this, is what set Rocky off: 
Choucroute garni, or "dressed sauerkraut," is a classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut and onions cooked in pork stock, white wine (usually Riesling or Gewürzraminer) and spices (usually juniper berries, cloves, black pepper and more), along with pork products of various kinds. At Lüke the choucroute comes with housemade spicy pork sausage, Berkshire pork belly and pig knuckles. It was absolutely heavenly. To round out our evening we headed to the Renaissance Père Marquette Hotel to visit the dean of New Orleans bartenders, Chris McMillian. He now holds court at The Bar Uncommon, a bit of a pun on the hotel's location on Common Street near Baronne Street. (I love me a good pun.) Chris is a gracious and extremely knowledgeable host, and at his bar you're always certain to be served something wonderful. Now that Plymouth has finally begun releasing their magnificent sloe gin in the U.S. (albeit in maddeningly small quantities), we're finally able to begin exploring what a wonderful liqueur it is, and how it's really the only sloe gin you should be using, at least until Stephan Berg is able to get his new Bitter Truth Sloeberry Blue Gin into the States without us having to pay €51 a bottle with shipping from Germany. Until then, stick with the Plymouth and avoid any American-made product, which is more likely to taste like Robitussin than sloe gin. Here's a wonderful Negroni variation he made us, with sloe gin sitting in for the sweet vermouth:
(I'd swear in court that I heard Chris say it was orange juice, but Michael says Chris said grapefruit and has made it that way for him three times. I must be losing my mind.) Next up was a lovely Old Fashioned variation of Chris' that he's currently calling "New Orleans is Drowning," adding that "I gotta come up with a better name for this." The bitters represent our Caribbean heritage, the Cognac is for the French, the rye for the Americans and the Campari rinse is for the Italians. (The Spanish, Afrcans, Irish and Germans get short shrift in this drink, but frankly adding three more ingredients would tend to get things a little crowded. Maybe we can come up with a No. 2 version to honor those other parts of New Orleans' mix.) In the meantime ... 
I'm hoping I remembered the details correctly on this one. I was getting a little fuzzy in the memory department by this point. The final drink of the evening was something Chris called a Jane Deaux, and I'm afraid I don't remember much about it other than it was gin muddled with fresh ginger and some lemon juice, and something else, and it was really good. I did manage a picture, though. 
Family, good friends, good food, good cocktails ... and a good visit home. Doesn't get much better than that. I'm back in L.A. now, having made the year's final visit to Seven Grand for yet more cocktail cheer, where Dave took mighty good care of us. I managed to pick up a dose of sniffles and coughing while I was back home, so Dr. Dave first served up something that cures what ails ya:
Next up was a tall drink Dave whipped up, also medicinal, with fresh grated ginger and rye. He asked me which rye I wanted and I wanted one with a punch (well, it's medicinal after all), so we went with the new release of Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, which I love. It's powerful, coming in at 127.5 proof, and it screams "RYE!" at you, big and spicy and fruity. I felt it could stand up to all the other ingredients and still be assertive, and that it was. (Given the way I'm still coughing as I write this, I should go upstairs and make another one right now.)  (Yeah, crappy iPhone pic, but what're ya gonna do?)
Next I wanted an Old Fashioned but with a whiskey I had never had before. Dave immediately recommended the 2008 release of William Larue Weller Bourbon, the fifth member of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection which had somehow eluded me all this time. It's undoubtedly my obsession with the Sazerac 18 year rye and the Handy Rye, plus the "haz-mat" George T. Stagg and the lovely Eagle Rare 17 that had kept me distracted. I'm sorry I waited, although I had read later that previous years' releases of WLW were somewhat weak. Not this one. This is a gorgeous whiskey, not as punchy as a rye (it's wheated, as I recall) but it gets a lot from the wood -- vanilla, caramel and holiday spices like cinnamon. It's also beautifully smooth, with no alcohol burn despite its high proof (125.3). I'm gonna have to dig some of this up if I can (limited availability and all), as if I haven't already spent a fortune on whiskey the last couple of weeks ...  (Another crappy iPhone pic) And here I am, having a lazy day, getting ready for our New Year's Eve celebration tonight. We're headed to Gregg and Mike's for a Stone Brewery (makers of Arrogant Bastard) beer tasting, including some of their special release from years past. Yum! I'm also going to bring along a couple of traditional New Year's dishes -- Black-eyed Peas for luck, and smothered cabbage for money: 
Yep, it's smothered in bacon fat.
That's your New Year's Day menu, although we're getting a head start on ours tonight. Have a happy and safe New Year's, and may 2009 please be better than 2008. Peace and love, y'all. [ Link to today's entries ]
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