Here’s one of many fantastic drinks I had during my first evening at Cure back home in New Orleans, finally getting there about four months after they opened.

Cynar is but one of many amaros I saw on the shelf behind the bar, Cure’s wonderful wall of booze. They had all my favorites, most of the ones readily available in the States, in fact, and then I spotted one that I’ve been having a hard time finding. Nobody in L.A. seems to have Amaro Nardini, which is produced by a maker of grappas and grappa-based liqueurs. Amaro Nardini is a grappa-based amaro too, with a flavor profile that (according to what I’d read) featured bitter orange, gentian and a bit of peppermint. I told Kirk I’d been wanting to try that one, so he poured me a taste. I tasted all that, plus a bit of nutmeg and clove, cinnamon, anise, a hint of coffee and a little candy sweetness, almost like toffee. Hoo, yum! Then Kirk smiled and asked if he could make me a cocktail with it. That’s a silly question. He then proceeded to apply a 2×4 to the side of my head … again, in the gentlest and best possible way.

NARDINI FLIP
(by Kirk Estopinal, Cure, New Orleans)

2-1/2 ounces Amaro Nardini.
1/4 – 1/2 ounces simple syrup (to taste).
1 whole egg.

Dry shake the egg for at least 20 seconds, then add the other ingredients with ice and shake hard. Strain into an Old Fashioned glass and add a single large ice cube.

A flip, containing nothing else but simple and amaro. I’d never thought of it, and I’m not entirely sure but I think Kirk made it up on the spot. It was fantastic — creamy and rich and spicy and sweet … there’s a magic, an alchemy that happens when an egg yolk goes into a cocktail, as Maks and Kirk talk about in their book when they show you two whole egg-bearing drinks, one of which I’ve had and the other I haven’t. The Coffee Cocktail (port, brandy, whole egg, simple and Angostura) is named for its color rather than its flavor, and the Chocolate Cocktail #2 (ruby port, yellow Chartreuse and whole egg), which apparently tastes something like chocolate (“a mindfuck cocktail,” they call it). Whole eggs in cocktails, folks. It’s a good thing. Drink more flips!

Here’s one of many fantastic drinks I had during my first evening at Cure back home in New Orleans, finally getting there about four months after they opened.

Next came the drink that wins the award for the longest cocktail name I’ve ever encountered, which we had difficulty remembering even while sober. Maks apologized for the length of the name but very pointedly did not offer to change it.

GROWING OLD AND DYING HAPPY IS A HOPE,
NOT AN INEVITABILITY
(by Maks Pazuniak, Cure, New Orleans)

2 ounces Cynar.
1 ounce Rittenhouse 100 proof rye whiskey.
Pinch of salt.
2 pieces of lemon peel.
Herbsaint.

Combine the Cynar, rye and salt in a mixing glass and stir briefly to dissolve the salt. Express the oil from the lemon peels and drop into the mixing glass. Add ice and stir, then strain into an Herbsaint-rinsed cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon peel.

That said, he did admit that they tend to refer to it as “Growing Old” for short. This is sort of an inverse-Manhattan in which Cynar (“chee-NAHR,” an Italian bitters based on artichokes, in case you’re not familiar with it) is substituted for both the sweet vermouth and the bitters, with a really nice savory element added by the salt, which enhances the flavor of the amaro and gives it more balance. If you try this one at home, make sure you only use the barest pinch — you don’t want to make it taste salty, you want to make it taste seasoned. Both the salt and the lemon oil, as Maks reminded me later, help bring out the “artichokiness” of the flavors in the drink.

Here’s one of many fantastic drinks I had during my first evening at Cure back home in New Orleans, finally getting there about four months after they opened.

We started off the evening with the wonderful Angostura Sour, which taught us that aromatic cocktail bitters could actually be the base spirit for a cocktail. Now, thinking that it is indeed possible to make a drink in which the only base spirit is a high-alcohol, supposedly non-potable aromatic bitters, how would they give it a local twist? Well, Peychaud’s bitters, of course, and giving it “the Pimm’s Cup treatment.” May I present their creation (to our mutual amazement)?

THE GUNSHOP FIZZ
(by Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak, Cure, New Orleans)

2 ounces Peychaud’s bitters.
1 ounce lemon juice.
1 ounce simple syrup.
2 strawberries.
3 cucumber slices.
3 swaths of orange peel.
3 swaths of grapefruit peel.
Sanbittèr.

Add all ingredients but the Sanbittèr to a mixing tin. Muddle thoroughly and let stand for 2 minutes for the flavors to blend. Shake hard with ice, and double strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Top with Sanbittèr and garnish with a cucumber slice.

Wow.

This drink is incredibly light and refreshing, with a bitter edge that kicks in a while after the initial finish, and slaps your palate in the best possible way. The cherry, anise and spice flavors of the Peychaud’s harmonize beautifully with everything else, and one extra little edge of bitterness from the Sanbittèr on top. (In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a San Pellegrino product, a bright red soda sold in 50ml bottles that’s like a non-alcoholic Campari and soda.) And look at that color! It’s a bit labor-intensive (try to avoid ordering six of these on a night when they’re three-deep at the bar), but very much worth the effort. Bravo, y’all.

And the name? Antoine Amadie Peychaud’s pharmacy where he made his family bitters recipe was at 437 Royal Street in the French Quarter, which is currently occupied by James M. Cohen’s antique gun and sword shop.

If you’re going to drink a tall, bright red drink in New Orleans, this is the serious one.

Cure itself is in a reclaimed firehouse, elegantly designed, a nice long bar plus tables and a few booths, and one bit of intensely New Orleanian décor that I’m not sure too many other food-and-drink establishments have had the stones to hang in the bar.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the national bird of New Orleans, Periplaneta americana, the American cockroach. I don’t know about y’all’s, but the ones in New Orleans fly. They tend to like to aim for your face. Guaranteed to make a grown man scream like a girl.  Or at least this one.  (*shudder*)

Okay, back to the drinks …

I think I’ll now have a new routine every time I go back to New Orleans. That routine will be to head to the corner of Upperline and Freret every Sunday evening I’m in town, arriving a bit after 5pm, and spend the next several hours at Cure, which recently became one of my favorite bars in the city (and anywhere, for that matter). New Orleans has needed a place like this for a long, long time.

If you’ve been following along here you’ve seen a couple of posts about Cure, opened by Neal Bodenheimer (formerly of The Delachaise and Bar Tonique, its “ancestors,” if you will) earlier this year. As I didn’t go home for Jazzfest I didn’t get to make it to Cure until Tales. I’m torn between saying it was worth the wait (it was) and goddammit why couldn’t I get there sooner.

I had met Maksym Pazuniak, one of their bartenders, via my friend Mary when she was dining at Rambla last Christmas. That was Maks’ gig at the time, and she figured we might want to get to know each other. She was right, and two gigs later I finally got to sit at the bar again while Maks was behind the stick.

I should pause here to mention that Maks and another Cure bartender, Kirk Estopinal (a NOLA native but who had worked in NYC and at The Violet Hour in Chicago) have recently self-published a book called Rogue Cocktails, featuring a 40 mostly-original “outside the box” cocktail recipes and a few classics worth revisiting. [UPDATE: Unfortunately they had to pull their book after a cease-and-desist from the folks at Rogue Ale. Look for an expanded and renamed edition in the summer of 2010. Check their blog beta cocktails for further updates.]

In addition to a provocative manifesto for bartending, Kirk and Maks wanted to come up with a book that didn’t have the same recipes over and over again or one that required exotic produce and specially-made syrups and tinctures. They wanted a book for a bartender who works at a well-stocked bar that challenges them to think about some of their ingredients differently. The book got some nice coverage in da local papuh, and you can order the book via their Rogue Cocktails website.

Their outside-the-box thinking is typified by their version of a drink found in Charles Baker’s Gentlemen’s Companion from the 1930s, a fizz in which the only base spirit is 90-proof Angostura bitters. Um … but we add bitters to cocktails by the dash. Aren’t they supposed to be “non-potable” by government definition? Supposedly, yes … but it seems they’re quite potable if you know how to handle them.

Here’s Kirk’s adaptation of that fizz, turned into a sour. It’s become very popular among our more daring bartenders, who seem to have had great success serving it to our more daring imbibers. Do give this a try — considering, as Kirk and Maks say in the book, that “it’s the cocktail equivalent of eating a tablespoon of salt,” I think you’ll find it much more pleasant than that, surprisingly so.

ANGOSTURA SOUR

1-1/2 ounces Angostura bitters.
1 ounce simple syrup.
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 egg white.

Dry shake the egg white with the lime juice for half a minute. Add the bitters and syrup plus ice and shake hard. Strain into a cocktail coupe.

We served this to our friend Devin when he was visiting. He loved it, and couldn’t wait to go back home and try it out on our friend Chris, with whom he imbibes on many occasions. “Taste this!” he said, after making one for Chris and exhorting him to guess what was in it. “I incorrectly guessed Fernet Branca and nutmeg and then Gammel Dansk and saffron. It was really interesting.” It’s really good. Try one.

And just you wait. It gets better …

It was a tough decision which Spirited Dinner to go to this year — so many menus looked great, we were teetering between Wolfe’s in the Warehouse and Iris and we thought long and hard about trying someplace new to us — but in the end it was kind of a shoo-in. Jeff “Beachbum” Berry was mixing for another dinner this year, and last year he and Wayne Curtis made fantastic drinks to accompany Chef Chris DeBarr’s “Modern Tiki Cuisine” for one of the best meals I’d ever had … well, as much of it as I remember.

Bum and Wayne’s drinks contained a total of 7-1/2 ounces of rum during that three-hour meal, and it didn’t help that earlier in the day I’d had tastes of six Scotches, ten gins, eight brandies plus the Cocktail Hour event (inexplicably and invariably scheduled right before the Spirited Dinners). Once I finally decided that I wanted the Bum’s drink pairings again, especially since this year he teamed up with Martin Cate, formerly of Forbidden Island and soon to be proprietor of Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco, I knew some preparation was in order. I decided I’d better take it easy during this year’s Tales Thursday so that this meal wouldn’t completely liquefy me — no taking three seminars in a row that involve copious amounts of spirits tasting in which Chuck fails to make use of the spit buckets.

Rick, giving friend that he is, helped out by adding an additional rule to his previous list of ten: “Chuck is not allowed to drink before the Spirited Dinner.” Despite that, I did manage to make it to the Cocktail Hour event, which 1) should be in the Presbytere every year, as it was a beautiful location for the event, and 2) should never again be scheduled before the Spirited Dinners unless they’re willing to provide buckets for us to be poured into. Fortunately the gods were looking out for me at Cocktail Hour by causing my favorite bartenders to all run out of cups by the time I got to them.

A short walk from the Presbytere took us to GW Fins, one of the city’s newer restaurants (i.e., opened during the 21st Century rather than the 19th or early 20th) and a renowned destination for seafood. Theirs was one of the two or three most exciting looking menus on the Tales site, plus we knew a ton of people who were going to this one too, all elements for a great evening. Wes and I sat with several of our friends from Seattle and Portland, and we toasted each other with the welcoming cocktail, first of six for the evening.

THE CRESCENT CITY BLOSSOM
(by Martin Cate)

2-1/2 ounces Moët & Chandon White Star Champagne
1 ounce Plymouth Gin
1 ounce St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
1/4 ounce Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters

Combine gin, St. Germain, and bitters in an ice-filled mixing glass. Stir until well chilled and strain into a Champagne glass. Top with Moët & Chandon. Garnish with a thin, 8-inch orange peel spiral.

Finally, after we had settled in and begun enjoying our aperitivo, our intrepid mixologists, Beachbum Berry and Martin Cate, arrived (along with GW Fins’ chef de cuisine) to welcome us and talk a little bit about what was to come, and how quickly their ideas for perfect cocktail pairings came to them as soon as they saw the proposed menu.

Some will argue that cocktail pairings are even better than wine pairings, as you can tailor the drink to the food very precisely. Whether you believe that or not, I’ll say that this particular meal featured some of the best food-beverage pairings I’ve ever had.

And now … dinner is served!

We started with a Chilled Melon Soup, in the center of which was a huge scoop of jumbo lump crabmeat topped with cilantro sprouts. Mixed into the soup were little balls of watermelon plus cantaloupe and honeydew melons, plus cubes of lime gelée, which provided a delightful little burst of tartness and change of texture every few bites or so. The soup was bright, cool, refreshing and delicious — the lightness of the dish was welcome to those of us who’d been having hollandaise-napped egg dishes for breakfast or huge piles of fried seafood for lunch. And, oh my Gawd, that crabmeat … I’ll eat pretty much anything that has a scoop of jumbo lump crabmeat in the middle.

Accompanying the watermelon soup was our first cocktail, the Menehune Gonzalez, made with blanco tequila, a great white agricole rum from Martinique, green Chartreuse and a housemade hibiscus tincture, a bottle of which being provided to each table so that each guest could add some to his or her individual serving as they pleased. Lovely drink, and the flavors of both the base spirits and the Chartreuse played off one another quite nicely. The hibiscus gave it some color affinity as well as a bit of extra tartness, along the lines of the lime gele in the soup. We were off to a grand start.

MENEHUNE GONZALEZ
(by Martin Cate)

1 ounce El Tesoro Blanco tequila
1 ounce Rhum Clément Première Canne rum
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce orgeat
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse
Half an egg white

Shake vigorously and strain into a small ice-filled old fashioned glass.

Top with 3 to 4 drops hibiscus tincture.

To make a hibiscus tincture, take an ounce of dried hibiscus flowers (jamaica) and steep in about 5 ounces of alcohol (vodka or overproof white rum) for a couple of days, then strain and bottle.

Quick on the heels of this great opening to the meal was our second (well, technically our third, but second course) cocktail, Captain Vadrna’s Grog — Old New Orleans Cajun Spiced Rum, lime and grapefruit juices and demerara syrup. Nice big aromatic cinnamon stick as garnish, and … a pirate flag! Almost immediately, my friend Rocky and I broke into a chorus of “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me” (assisted by some quick Googling on Rocky’s phone, as we both ran out of lyrics after the first verse). Pretty quickly a fair swath of the restaruant was singing along, undoubtedly to the bewilderment of the guests who were there for the restaurant’s regular menu and not for the Spirited Dinner.

CAPTAIN VADRNA’S GROG
(by Jeff Berry)

2-1/2 ounces Old New Orleans Cajun Spiced rum
1/2 ounce white grapefruit juice
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
3/4 ounce Demerara sugar syrup (1:1)
Dash Angostura bitters

Shake well with plenty of ice, then pour unstrained into a double old-fashioned glass. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and vanilla bean both speared to a lime wedge, floated in drink.

Word trickled back from the bar that once Bum and Martin heard that they said they knew the party had finally started … either that or had already gotten out of hand, I forget which.

Before we got too far ahead of ourselves, the 2nd course arrived: Prosciutto-Wrapped Figs with mâche, cinnamon mascarpone and candied pistachios. I’d almost eat this as a dessert — fruit stuffed with spiced cheese and wrapped in pig. It’s many of my favorite things, on a plate! Oh, and greens to make it officially salady, but … the sweetness and nuttiness of the mche went beautifully with the spiced rum in that cocktail. So did the cinnamon-spiced mascarpone, which caught the cinnamon and nutmeg notes of the rum. The lettuce was gorgeous with the pistachios too, and the candied crunch of the nuts was balanced by the tart citrus juices. Salads are notoriously difficult to pair with wines, but this one, even with its balsamic drizzle, was superb with this drink, and the drink was superb with the dish.

Third cocktail! Oh my, this is a big one. Served in a pilsner glass — we’re not messing around. This was the Hedgehog’s Dilemma — caramelized mango, lemon juice, Noilly Prat dry vermouth, passion fruit syrup, Myers’s Platinum rum and Angostura bitters. A fantastic drink, and on its own I’d be more than happy to order it again from any tiki bar’s menu.

HEDGEHOG’S DILEMMA
(by Martin Cate)

Half of a fresh mango
Teaspoon of raw sugar

1 ounce Noilly Prat dry vermouth
1/2 ounce passion fruit syrup (equal parts 2:1 simple syrup and Funkin Passion Fruit Purée)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup (optional – to taste)
1-1/2 ounces Myers’s Platinum Rum
Dash Angostura bitters

Dice half of a mango into 3/4. cubes. Toss with 1 teaspoon of raw sugar. Saut in a non-stick skillet over medium heat until the mango chunks are browned on all sides. Remove from heat and let cool.

In a mixing glass, add the mango chunks and dry vermouth and muddle. Add the remaining ingredients and shake with cracked ice. Double strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with mango chunks and a lemon twist on a skewer.

It’s so rare to get mango in a really good cocktail (those nasty mango-flavored rums and vodkas just don’t cut it) and this one, with tart passion fruit and tempered a bit by the vermouth, was probably the best mango-based cocktail I’d ever had (at least that I can remember). But when paired with this …

Wood-Grilled Louisiana Shrimp, with lemon and papaya relish. This is classic New Orleans cuisine, adding the consideration that New Orleans is the northernmost port in the Caribbean. Heads-on shrimp (which you can almost never get in a restaurant in places like California, lest wimpy, timid patrons run screaming from the dining room at the sight of the monster on their plate, still wearing its head . where so much of the flavor is!), perfectly seasoned, nice and peppery but not too much so, with the tropical flavor of the papaya in the glaze and the sauce that married so beautifully with the drink that I practically wanted to buy them a wedding present. This dish was such a synthesis of classic Creole and Caribbean flavors and techniques, with that drink sailing up to meet it, that it made me very happy.

Four pretty huge shrimp were both quite enough, considering we’d be having five courses, yet left me wanting more. Then entire pineapples were brought to the table.

It was our next drink! Applause and giggles greeted this one, as the pineapples had straws sticking out of them … we lifted the lid to find the whole fruit filled with a beverage, man! This was the Miehana — pineapple, orange and lime juices, Cruzan Estate dark rum, Cruzan Coconut Rum and Grand Marnier. Also very refreshing, and not as sweet as you’d think it might be.

MIEHANA
(by Jeff Berry)

1 ounce fresh lime juice
1 ounce orange juice
1 ounce unsweetened pineapple juice
1 ounce Grand Marnier
1 ounce Cruzan Estate Dark rum
1 ounce Cruzan Coconut rum

Shake well with ice cubes. Pour unstrained into a cored pineapple. If necessary, add more ice to fill.

It was another drink I’d be happy to have in any tiki bar, but in a tiki bar you’re generally not going to get anything like this:

Our 4th course was Pineapple Basil Glazed Mahimahi, with coconut-cashew rice, crispy plantains and lemongrass butter. This is the kind of dish people wished they could have gotten in the “Polynesian” restaurants in the 1950s and ’60s, because it epitomizes what that cuisine aspired to but rarely attained. Gorgeous tropical flavors, a perfectly grilled piece of fish, and all of the flavors of the dish and the cocktail working in harmony with each other. This dish actually made us all laugh — that’s how delightful it was. And lest you think it was overly sweet, it wasn’t. The acids in the cocktail helped cut through the sugars, the richness of the lemongrass beurre blanc added richness to balance the acids and sugars, the plantains added texture and starch and were decidedly not sweet but the flavors complemented everything else. That drink with this course is one of the best food-drink pairings I’ve ever had. Fun fun fun.

PUPULE
(by Jeff Berry)

1 ounce unsweetened pineapple juice
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/4 ounce Bols white crème de cacao
1/4 ounce Chambord
1 ounce Angostura 1919 rum

Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a small purple orchid.

Another cocktail arrived (good lord, was this really the sixth drink?), called the Pupule. Most certainly a dessert cocktail, but again, not overly sweet and well-balanced.

Our dessert was a Frozen Peach Soufflé, with a raspberry coulis and a few fresh raspberries. Simple, delicious and summery, and entirely appropriate given that it was roasting outside. The rum, with hints of chocolate plus more raspberry, were just the thing to have with this dessert. It’s such a pleasure to have a dessert cocktail that’s not filled with heavy cream or with enough liqueurs to make it as sweet as a candy bar.

We had a fantastic time, fantastic food, fantastic drinks (and Rocky realized that the Miehana came in the ultimate go-cup), but it wasn’t quite over yet. There were lovely parting gifts!

We were each presented with a bottled cocktail called the 60/40, a combination of 60% Averna amaro and 40% St. Germain elderflower liqueur, which went right into the back pocket. It was the perfect amount of liquor to last us until we could walk all the way to Arnaud’s French 75 Bar for nightcaps . right across the street. (Okay, the 60/40 survived intact until after we went home.)

Thanks again to GW Fins for a memorable meal, Martin and Jeff for the drinks, and to Jeff for providing the recipes and coring all those pineapples!