Results tagged “cocktails”

In looking for good autumnal cocktails to feature, we came across this delicious ginger concoction from DOSA on Fillmore, which has been doing great stuff with pairing cocktails to their food. The Ginger Ante cocktail, created by bartender Usman Chaudhary, would be perfect as an opener for Thanksgiving dinner, particularly with some roasted pumpkin seeds to nibble on, or this stuffed snow pea appetizer that Brock likes so much.

COCKTAIL PARTY: Wow, we're intrigued. Bold Italic presents 1939. Tog to the Bricks!, a decadent cocktail party from the 1930s, celebrating the opening of the World's Fair. The organizers promise "a raucous good time while the gin and absinthe flow, photographers roam, the piano keys are plunked." Cocktails and food by St. George Spirits, Distillery No. 209, Aidells, Cheese Plus and Pacific Puffs are all included in the cover charge. Attire is 1930s inspired, of course, and the best dressed will get gift certificates to Decades of Fashion and tickets to Long Now's Rick Prelinger Lost Landscapes screening.

We made mention earlier this week of the imminent opening of brand new Hayes Valley Tiki bar, Smuggler's Cove. Assuming you absolutely can not wait to try some of the rummy, tropical deliciousness that will be served up there beside the indoor water features, we went straight to the source, bar manager/owner Martin Cate, for a recipe. Here's what he gave us:

Martin Cate, the man behind Smuggler's Cove, has announced that the long awaited grand opening of his Hayes Valley Tiki experience will be December 8. The bar's going to feature cocktail recipes from all the great Tiki bars, and will likely have more of an updated spin on things than the much beloved Tonga Room, which may or may not survive a developer's wrecking ball.

As we noted last week in the New School Cocktail Glossary, the bar program over at Camino in Oakland, just like the food, is focused entirely on local, seasonal, sustainable, organic ingredients and spirits -- so that means if there's a point in time when there are no local limes available, all the drinks will be made without limes, and all the drinks are made with local liquors. Camino was opened last year by Chez Panisse alum Russell Moore, and the bar manager Alex Phillips sent us this recipe for a Mezcal concoction that fits perfectly with the fall season. From Alex:

A couple months back we attended a panel discussion that included local cocktail blogger and booze aficionado Camper English (he of Alcademics fame), and as a hand-out Camper prepared a locally-based glossary, if you will, of cocktail style varieties which included Bay Area venues where one might sample examples of these styles.

Today's culinary cocktail tour of SF takes us to the far reaches of the Presidio (and Brock's favorite restaurant) Spruce, where bar manager Brandon Clements has created a dual-sided cocktail menu that highlights several classics -- The Aviation, Blood & Sand, The Last Word -- and a number of delicious house concoctions like the Violet Beauregard (Beefeater 24 gin, blueberries, lemongrass, lemon, soda, violet, lavender) and the eponymous drink, The Spruce Goose.

With his book Artisanal Cocktails, local startender Scott Beattie established himself as a leading figure of West Coast-style, farmers-market-driven cocktail creation. And as the drink specialist at Healdsburg's Cyrus, Scott championed the building of a high-end cocktail menu to match a high-end food establishment. Today's multi-step recipe is, clearly, not for the unambitious.

We're still pretty broken up about this week's demise of ultimate food-porn mag Gourmet, and while some like Cook's Illustrated's Chris Kimball might be quick to blame the internet, Gawker is quick to blame Condé Nast.

A new local fave for it's hip-casual vibe, tasty drinks and lively crowd, Pisco Latin Lounge was founded by James Schenk, chef-owner of next-door "nuevo Latino" restaurant Destino. It won recognition as a new nightlife destination in Zagat, and this week Pisco celebrates it's one-year anniversary with drink and appetizer specials.

Though we've certainly not completed our cocktail tour of San Francisco, our Friday drink column is coming full circle after inaugurating itself back in March with Cantina's Laughing Buddha. We return to Cantina this warm and sunny Friday, and to one our favorite startenders about town Duggan McDonnell, for another house favorite recipe there, which combines the fresh, summery flavors of the tropics with just a hint of Chinese spice. As Duggan puts it, "A true San Francisco cocktail, and a nod to the fact that Chinatown is just a few blocks down from Cantina."

In opening a new bar in the space of the former Expansion (and, briefly, The Metro, 2124 Market Street), owner Shawn Vergara wanted to create an unpretentious neighborhood hangout that nonetheless served good cocktails. Blackbird transformed the previously dark space into a bright and hip lounge, and it fills a need in the Church/Castro area for a mellow, mixed bar where you wouldn't be ashamed to bring your mom.

The cocktail menu at Conduit, designed by bar manager (and recently elected President of the U.S. Bartending Guild) Reza Esmaili, tends toward seasonally appropriate and well-balanced flavors that pair well with food. The following drink, conceived for the Urban BBQ event at the SF. Chefs. Food. Wine. event last month, is all about that peak-of-summer fruit, the peach. From Reza:

One of our current and rather popular numbers at the bar is the Promissory Note, which was conceived at a very late hour for a Domaine de Canton ginger cognac liqueur competition. All of our original cocktails at the Alembic are fairly classically styled, most are indeed based on some old school concoction. I broke with that mold for this one and really set out to layer some flavors in a gentle manner, which worked out surprisingly well. Starting with a little Canton and dry vermouth, which I love as a combination, I started fleshing it out with a dash of this, a spoon of that. Sort of a new approach for me, but one I intend on exploring more.

The current wave of cocktail nerd-dom has reached such great heights that there's a whole cottage industry of cocktail bloggers out there and a whole annual conference (Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans each July) devoted to the mixologists' blogosphere. If you're a beer-and-shot kind of person, you'll probably want to stop reading and click away now. But for those of you who want to geek out on things like flavored bitters, vintage gin drinks, and making your own falernum, here's a roundup of cocktail blogs to beef up your booze knowledge and satisfy your cocktail curiosities.

This week's cocktail recipe comes to us from H. Joseph Ehrmann, the bar manager at Elixir and director of Cocktail Ambassadors. Elixir is currently offering a Happy Hour punch deal -- $8 for two cups of a different punch each week between 4 and 7 p.m. Now, from H's mixologist notes:

I came across a recipe for the Algonquin Cocktail, a classic from the early 1900s, in the book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails and thought it might be a fun drink to do a spin on. I had been wanting to figure out a recipe using the Zirbenz stone pine schnapps for quite some time and thought that rye would mix well with it. At the time one of my fellow bartenders told me that pineapple was a relative of the pine cone so that was an obvious next step. (After researching this I figured out he was wrong and it is not related, but the flavor still works.) I substituted Drambuie for the dry vermouth (a spiced honey liqueur made from malted whiskey), and after a couple go rounds it was obvious that it needed a little more acid so I added the lemon juice. I named the drink The Vicious Circle, which was what Dorothy Parker used to call the group of writers otherwise known as The Algonquin Round Table.

This week's drink comes to us from Steven Liles (a.k.a. The Reverend) at Boulevard, who created this recipe using Galliano Authentico to be featured on Boulevard's cocktail menu for the upcoming Cocktail Week celebration in May.

by Tiffany Maleshefski

by Tiffany Maleshefski

(By Eyleen Tavy)