These cocktail bars. They’re all over Dallas. But odds are you’ve never hit six of them in one night. What if there was… a cocktail tour bus? Why doesn’t somebody make one of those?
Well, now someone has. The enrichment gets rolling at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 22, and for that you can thank general manager Alex Fletcher of The People’s Last Stand. “Cocktail culture has grown here at such a rapid pace,” he says. “We’ve all solidified our businesses, we have extremely high-end ingredients…. It’s time to show that off a little bit.”
In addition to the Mockingbird Station second-floor lounge, the estimated six-hour, “chartered bus tour of some serious libations” will make stops at nearby Central 214, Uptown’s Standard Pour and Tate’s, and further south, The Cedars Social and Black Swan Saloon.
Price is $60 and includes a cocktail at each stop, which despite the lack of cookies is a deal not even DART can beat. It’s also a chance to get people out of their cocktail comfort zones, both culinarily and geographically speaking. “A lot of people who come (to People’s Last Stand) never go to Black Swan, and vice versa,” Fletcher says. “And a lot of people probably haven’t been to all six of them, so why not get a handful and take everybody out for a night?”
Capacity will be limited to 40, because who wants to be the bus that shows up to a bar on Thursday night with 100 people all wanting drinks at the same time? No, you don’t want to be that bus. “We’re trying not to throw anybody in the weeds,” Fletcher says.
Good call.
To reserve your seat or for more information, call 263-5380 or email plsdallas@gmail.com.
Bartender Rocco Milano and the underground-garage system that once powered his cocktails on tap at the late P/S.
The Museum Tower mess still hasn’t abated, West Nile virus is on the loose again, and yet what everybody really wants to know is: What is Rocco Milano going to do now?
“That’s a popular question,” he says.
The former chief barman at the recently shuttered P/S, formerly Private|Social, is something of a geeky wizard behind the stick, the sort of gent who’d lead workshops about homemade infusions and bitters and then show up with a kiddie wagon full of exotic herbs and roots. At one point during the restaurant’s nearly two-year run, Rocco toyed with idea of adding a deconstructed Margarita to his alchemy, but now it is P/S that is suddenly deconstructed, its modern interior lifeless and marked by disarray.
Remnants of his apothecary dot the premises. Plastic containers of Grand Marnier “dust,” lemongrass syrup, jars of infusions, even the basement garage system that once powered his pioneering cocktails on tap. What’s going to become of it all? “Fuck if I know,” he says.
Some of Rocco’s stash of jarred infusions at last year’s Craft Cocktails TX festival.
One of the city’s finest craft-cocktail geniuses, the Santa Cruz-born redhead will not hurt for opportunity; nearly a dozen job offers were dangled, he says, the very day (July 20) an online item appeared offering rumor of P/S’ demise that night. Mostly, he says, he was concerned for his team, the U2 to his bartending Bono and the collective engine that made the restaurant’s top-notch bar program go. But the place never really recovered from the change in identity that followed chef Tiffany Derry’s departure.
“For better or worse, people had an idea what P/S was,” he says. “And for some people, when Tiffany left, P/S stopped being P/S.“
I’m sad to say that I was among that crowd. Though I didn’t go back to P/S as often afterward, Rocco’s legerdemain with liquor never ceased to amaze, and he was just as eager to share cocktail backstories as he was to turn the uninitiated on to something new.
Rocco looking things over before his bitters/infusions session at CCTX 2012.
So what will he do now? The possibilities range. What does he want to do? “I love educating people about drinks and cocktails,” he says. Whether that’s behind the bar, or as a spirits representative, or in some corporate role – well, that remains to be seen.
But he’s a brand new father now, so as far as what he really wants to do, it’s to spend time with his newborn son. All those clichés, he says, about how much you love the little being who has suddenly and fantastically graced your life – yeah, he’s living them now. Being unemployed has its benefits.
Heading forward, it will be the first time in five years that he won’t be working with P/S sous chef (and one-time bartender) Matt Medling, who was a pastry chef at The Mansion at Turtle Creek when Rocco tended bar there. “He was a great resource,” Rocco says. “Most important, he did not stop me from grabbing cookies.”
He says one of P/S’ fans put it best just after the closure was announced on Medling’s Facebook page, saying the test of any good establishment was what endured in its wake. Because it was at Private/Social that Rocco met girlfriend Jessica Pech, who was a manager at the restaurant: What they now have together will reflect its legacy for years to come.
Little did I know this cucumber gimlet would be my last drink at Private/Social.
Sad news, homies: There is one less cocktail oasis in Dallas.
Private/Social apparently marked its last night Saturday, and the place where I enjoyed many a first cocktail experience is apparently no more. The news came in a tweet from chef Najat Kaanache Sunday morning: “Last Night At Private/Social Was The Last service We Closed ready for New Adventures within Food Thanks To My Great Team.”
Rocco Milano, among the best barmen in Dallas, confirmed the closure to me later that morning. The restaurant had struggled to reinvent itself after chef Tiffany Derry’s departure early this year, but with Rocco at the helm, P/S remained one of the more adventurous cocktail spots around: He had spirits on tap (including my beloved Hum botanical spirit, to which Rocco introduced me) soon after the restaurant opened in late 2011; his Fall Into A Glass was my favorite cocktail discovery of 2012; and most recently he’d unveiled a lineup of a half-dozen tap cocktails.
Sitting at the bar, I could always depend on a pleasant experience. It was the kind of place you could share secrets, kindle romance, celebrate birthdays and wind down even as you expanded your cocktail horizons. One mark of a great bar is its consistency, and Milano’s staff — including Matt Medling, Creighton Brown, E.J. Wall and Pro Contreras — was always a well-oiled machine. No doubt they’ll find new stages on which to showcase their craft, but it was always fun to be a guinea pig in Rocco’s lab. On Friday — not realizing it was Private/Social’s penultimate day — a friend and I took in one of his most recent and typically improbable off-menu experiments: A riot of rye whiskey, Cointreau, peach and maraschino liqueurs and Hum botanical spirit (swoon) that he called I’ll Have One Of Those.
Are these bartenders ready to represent or what? Some of the Bar Smyth staff headed to New Orleans.
Another big coup for Dallas on the national cocktail front: Bar Smyth has been chosen to compete in this year’s bar-versus-bar-versus bar cage match at next month’s annual Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans.
Smyth’s selection to the so-called Bare Knuckle Bar Fight gives the months-old lounge another dose of national publicity in the short time since it opened earlier this year in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood. In March, Vogue magazine cited the new venture from Michael Martensen and Brian Williams – co-owners of The Cedars Social – as a factor in naming Dallas one of the four “buzziest cultural capitals” in the world alongside Lisbon, Toronto and Istanbul.
Smyth will go up against six other competitors: Polite Provisions (San Diego), Sweat Leaf (Queens, NY), Broken Shaker (Miami), The Daily (New York City), Barrel House Flat (Chicago) and Citizen Pub (Boston).
This year’s bar battle royale is unusual in the sense that the establishments chosen to compete are typically seasoned entities with some mileage under their tires. It’s part of a new focus on new and upcoming bars, a philosophy espoused by the event’s new host, The 86 Co., which launched a new line of spirits earlier this year.
Surely it helped that Dallas bartender extraordinaire Jason Kosmas is among The 86 Co.’s ringleaders, putting Smyth and its smooth 1970s vibe that much closer to the national radar. “It’s usually the biggest and best that get the acclaim,” Kosmas said. “But (this year’s contestants) will be the ones that get no acclaim.”
Bar Smyth, about to prove itself on the national stage despite opening just three months ago.
But Smyth’s bartenders – including Omar Yeefoon, Josh Hendrix, Trina Nishimura and Mate Hartai – are among the best in Dallas’ come-of-age craft-cocktail culture. They’ll help Smyth represent at the annual event, which in essence is a massive wall-to-wall party of 1,000 people with competing bar staffs scattered throughout a gi-normous space, judged for character, quality, originality and speed in a frenzied atmosphere.
“They’re going up against some real talent,” Kosmas said. And this year’s focus will be riffs on the classics, daring each bar staff to not adhere too closely nor to venture too far from the original formula. “It was, like, these events have to outdo themselves every year,” he said. “We figured, let’s just go back to the basics.”
Bars are also expected to recreate in some small form the character of their actual establishment. Last year, for instance, Seattle’s Rob Roy brought along its signature deer-hoof lamp.
“We’re flattered,” said Smyth’s Martensen. “Our brains are already working. Do we show up with vinyl records?”
The team will no doubt have some tricks up its sleeve, and perhaps one surprising advantage: Bar Smyth is the only one of the seven competing bars that doesn’t have a Web site. Added Martensen: “Now that our wheels are spinning, now that we know who we’re competing against…. We can see what they do. ”
“We’re excited,” Yeefoon added. “Bring it.”
Tales of the Cocktail’s annual competition: Not for the faint of bar
At Bowl & Barrel, the Manhattans go right from the bottle into your glass.
I’m the kind of guy who goes into a place and sits at the bar. I appreciate the interaction with the bartender, seeing the way he or she practices the craft, knowing that the drink I’ve ordered is being made just for me. That personal attention, and the work that goes into it, is part of the experience.
That’s why I’ve been reluctant to embrace the idea of bottled cocktails, and Francisco Terrazas, who manages the bar program at Austin’s Fino, knows my pain. The idea of pre-made batches of drinks theoretically annoyed him, even though he knew it was a trend — one that actually dates to the early 1900s — that would come sooner or later as Austin bartenders began looking for innovations.
Terrazas grappled with the idea until one day he began to see it in a new light. He’s how he puts it: When you buy clothes, you generally don’t expect to have the fit exactly right or know who made your outfit; you just grab something off the rack. If you want it just so, you go to a tailor.
Bartenders are the tailors of the drinking world. “If someone really wants a drink tailored to their specifications, they’re going to go sit at the bar,” he says. “Meanwhile, people on the dinner floor might want a good drink, but they’re willing to sacrifice a bit of the experience.”
And though it’s not something he’s tried yet, he realizes that for bartenders, it’s a good way to produce quality drinks more efficiently.
Two of the bottled cocktails at The People’s Last Stand: A Time Bomb and a Harvey Wallbanger.
That’s the idea at The People’s Last Stand in Dallas, where bartender Chris Dempsey says the three cocktails produced daily have been selling well.
By the time I and a friend showed up late Saturday, the bottled Dark and Stormy’s were already sold out. Instead we tried the Harvey Wallbanger and something called a Time Bomb: Each was $7 and came in an old-fashioned-style soda bottle; drinking it reminded me of drinking fruity pop as a kid. Though I missed the ice shards that lusciously grace the first sips of a freshly made drink, each went down smooth, maybe too much so.
“I’m partial to this,” my friend said, indicating the Harvey Wallbanger (vodka, Galliano and OJ). “But I think it could be dangerous. It kinda reminds me of a wine cooler.”
But People’s thinks it’s on to something. “The fact that they sell out every day says something,” bartender Anthony Polo said.
I protested, citing my desire to know a bartender had made something just for me.
“But in a sense, I did,” Polo said.
The practice of bottling cocktails dates to the early 1900s.
Meanwhile, over at Bowl & Barrel, Ian Reilly is offering Manhattans and other cocktails in barrel-aged-and-bottled form.
It’s something the bar, owned by Free Range Concepts, plans to make a staple in coming months. As Reilly tells it, Josh Sepkowitz of Free Range Concepts, which owns Bowl & Barrel, called him over one day to see what he knew about barrel-aged cocktails, a practice that has gained steam over the last couple of years. (As far as I know, it was Sean Conner, of Plano’s Whiskey Cake, who first tried it around here, and since then several others have given it a whirl, pre-batching Negronis and Tridents and more.)
Barrel-aging cocktails can alter their character by infusing oak and/or other flavors into the drink; the process can also soften the sting of strong flavors; the barrel-aged Negroni I had at Whiskey Cake had a mellowness that enhanced the drink without reducing its charm.
As it turned out, Reilly did know a thing or two about barrel-aging, and he knew that not only could the practice affect taste, it could also promote efficiency on crowded bar nights. He was also able to get his hands on some stylin’ clear bottles, as well as someone able to etch them with the Bowl & Barrel logo. Everything fell into place.
He decided on the classic Manhattan as his first cocktail, one that would appease his Old-Fashioned-leaning customers with its mix of rye whiskey, bitters and sweet vermouth. (Cocktails without natural products that can go bad, like citrus, are preferable when barrel aging.) He then added two others – the white-whiskey-based Slow Hand and the Lucien Gaudin, a cocktail that Reilly named after a fencer when he himself worked at The People’s Last Stand; it features gin, Cointreau, Campari and dry vermouth. “It’s somewhere between a Boulevardier and a Martinez,” he says.
A fourth cocktail is on the way. So far Reilly has produced 31 liters worth of pre-batched cocktails, and he’s working on another 26. “We want to have the shelves lined with product ready to go,” he says.
Since launching a week ago, he’s sold nine or 10 bottles’ worth of cocktails in all. The mixtures have been bottled, sealed with wax and stored in the freezer behind the bar. Order a Manhattan and it’ll show up in a fluted martini glass. “You pour four ounces and put a maraschino cherry in there and you’re ready,” Reilly says. Speed.
Bowl and Barrel’s Manhattans. Bottled cocktails offer quick service for customers and efficiency for bartenders.
The drinks are $10 apiece, and a group can spring for a whole bottle at $75. Last week, I and some friends took the Manhattan plunge even if the hot June weather didn’t exactly make us pine for dark spirits. The verdict was largely positive, though the fluted glass took me by surprise; I also missed the feeling of knowing the bartender was behind the bar making a drink just for me.
Had I been there on a packed night, well into my evening with service markedly slowed, I would have had a much different reaction: happy to get my perfectly fine and chilled Manhattan while others around me growled and waited for their craft cocktails to be made, giving me the evil eye while I preened with Brad Pitt-celebrity satisfaction and — well, now I’m getting carried away.
Reilly, too, has gotten carried away, and for that you might be grateful. Share in the experiment: He’s got a fancy algorithm “that a much smarter friend” made for him, telling him how long each batch has to sit in each differently-sized barrel to achieve his desired result. A three-liter barrel might correctly age in a month, for instance, but a 10-liter one might take more than twice that long. He’ll test them along the way.
“It’s fun,” Reilly says. “I get to be the cellar master here. When I bottle everything, I’ll imagine I’m some guy in Cognac…. I don’t have millions of dollars for a still, so this is the next best thing.”
THE PEOPLE’S LAST STAND, 5319 E. Mockingbird Lane #210, Dallas. 214-370-8755
BOWL AND BARREL, 8084 Park Lane #145, Dallas. Phone: 214-363-2695
The Windmill’s Charlie Papaceno doing his thing — and getting a shout-out from Esquire magazine
Sometimes the little guys really do get the glory. While Dallas’ cocktail culture has gone from practically zero to 60 in a little over two years, a few enthusiastic souls were already out there revving up the engine before the whole thing even went into drive.
For the most part, those people are unsung pioneers. That’s why it was nice to see this month’s issue of Esquire packing a nice surprise for Charlie Papaceno and Louise Owens, owners of the veritable Windmill Lounge, the decidedly unfancy cocktail bar along a decidedly unfancy patch of Dallas’ Maple Avenue.
Some time earlier, someone at the magazine had asked the two to send a high-resolution photo of the place, and at most they figured (excitedly) that esteemed cocktail scribe David Wondrich was going to somehow slide in a brief mention of the Windmill in his column.
But when a patron came in and said that Wondrich had ranked the place as one of the best bars in America, Charlie and Louise were absolutely stunned.
The Esquire magazine article touts the Windmill’s “crusty regulars” and all-day $3 highballs.
Wondrich’s introductory article laments the loss of dive bars, the vanishing crop of juke joints low on pretension and high on quality drinks. The accompanying list cites bars that are, if not actually dives, at least those that Wondrich figures have a chance to become long-lasting institutions. Most are fairly new, and the two I’ve actually been to – Bellocq in New Orleans, and Cambridge’s Brick and Mortar – are far from divey; instead they’re polished and popular, with excellent drinks and food beyond your standard bar snacks. The vibe at Bellocq was sleek and effortlessly New York cool, and I especially loved Brick and Mortar’s Whale Song, a plaintive splash of Jamaican rum, Amaro Montenegro, spiced cranberry and lime..
You would never find something called a Whale Song at the Windmill. What you will find are some of the best classic cocktails in town – solid Manhattans and fabulous Negronis, dished up by a pair of bartenders who have been at it for longer than most craft-cocktailers have been in DFW. You’ll also find, as Wondrich notes, a punk-heavy jukebox, crusty regulars and all-day $3 highball specials. Nothing fancy here, as I noted in a previous post on the city’s overall lack of pretension: No fuss, no frills, no fireworks (“The idea of fire in my bar scares me,” Papaceno says): Just your basic watering hole, a place to hang with your homies and drink the classics the way they were meant to be.
This is good timing for the Windmill, which tonight marks its 8th anniversary (has it been that long? seriously?) with a bash starting at 9:30 p.m., complete with DJ. Stop by, have a little rum or somesuch, and offer Charlie and Louise the congratulations they deserve. (Note: Parking will be tight, and surrounding lots are mostly off-limits: Papaceno suggests trying the Rio Grande Supermarket parking area.) You may find yourself tilting before long.
WINDMILL LOUNGE, 5320 Maple Ave., Dallas. 214-443-7818
Before entire music libraries and players fit in your hip pocket, there was the age of console stereo systems. Back then, you’d veg out to the vinyl crackle of REM or Pink Floyd in the darkness, the light of the receiver glowing from behind the frequencies on the AM/FM radio display.
That’s the feel you get at The Establishment, the long-anticipated cocktail lounge from Mike Martensen and Brian Williams in Dallas’ Knox-Henderson neighborhood.
It’s no accident, because if The Cedars Social, the James-Beard-nominated bar Martensen and Williams co-own south of downtown, is decidedly 70s retro, The Establishment is even more so — dark, cozy and swank, with sleek wood paneling creeping from the walls onto the ceiling above the bar.
Plush, U-shaped booths wallow in the murk. A shag-carpeted back room features vinyl-ornamented shelves. The whole scene is soul-ified by a soundtrack courtesy of Al Green, Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind and Fire and recalling a time of gold chains, leisure suits and bell bottoms.
“I feel like I could walk into that (back) room and hair would grow on my chest,” said Ian Reilly, who runs the bar at Dallas’ Bowl and Barrel.
The speakeasy atmosphere begins on Travis Street, where no obvious sign or entry marks The Establishment’s existence. An unlit hallway bends into the nightlight-dim lounge, where the bar glows in the darkness like the Yamaha tuner in your daddy’s man cave.
“I think this is what my dad thought his basement bar looked like,” said Charlie Papaceno, the stalwart behind Dallas’ Windmill Lounge, admiring The Establishment’s wood-paneled setup with a Manhattan in hand. “I’m sure when he looked at it, this is what he saw.”
In its purposefully quiet, early opening days, small numbers and familiar faces demonstrated the intimacy of the space, snug as a den. So far there are no stools at the bar and plenty of room to move around or melt into the shadows, as long as the numbers remain limited. And Martensen insists that’s the idea: A host will make sure attendance tops out at 48, which is why reservations may ultimately be recommended. “It’s never going to be crowded,” he says.
Not everything about the room is perfect: A prominent staircase, set off by a pair of stanchions, leads temptingly to nowhere but offices. But that’s a small trifle, and of course it’s the drinks we’re here for. There’s no menu, just a list of spirits, your own desires and the whims of the dapper wizards behind the bar. Name a poison, vote spirit-forward or not, claim a preference for bitter or sweet — whatever you fancy. Mezcal is how I dive in: bartender Mike Steele churns out the Slow Trombone, an apricot-tinged concoction he’s still perfecting. Later, Omar Yeefoon, The Establishment’s bar program manager, works magic with Hum, one of my preferred liqueurs.
“That’s the great thing about working here,” says Steele, exhibiting a sheet of note paper with scribbled ingredients and proportions on both sides. “All these drinks, I came up with last night.”
If hit-or-miss experimentation isn’t your thing, go safe with a classic; in the hands of these bartenders, you won’t go wrong.
And when Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” comes on, you’ll know you’ve officially crossed the Boogie Nights barrier.
Booze news and adventures in cocktailing, based In Dallas, Texas, USA. By Marc Ramirez, your humble scribe and boulevardier. All content and photos mine unless otherwise indicated. http://typewriterninja.com
