Five years ago, Yangdup Lama and his business partner launched Sidecar in New Delhi; last year, the two-story neighborhood bar and speakeasy was named India’s best bar and came in at No. 67 in an annual ranking of the world’s best cocktail bars (and No. 18 in Asia) – the only establishment in India to make the global list . Meanwhile, Lama was named Travel + Leisure Asia’s 2022 Mixologist of the Year.
Not bad for an accidental bartender, as Lama likes to describe himself. Last week, the energetically elfin, 27-year industry vet purposely found himself in North Texas, where he’d been drafted to design the cocktail program at Sanjh, the posh, highly anticipated Indian restaurant recently opened in Irving.
At a pop-up event at Sanjh in Irving, Yangdup Lama of New Delhi’s Sidecar stirs up his namesake Old Fashioned.
For a long time, he says, bartenders in India looked to the West for inspiration as they crafted basic martinis and Manhattans in New Delhi’s fledgling cocktail scene. But with people around the globe increasingly warming to Indian flavors, Lama and others have proudly embraced the chance to showcase the country’s richness of flavors and culture in their own land and beyond.
In North Texas, such flavors have gone woefully underutilized in cocktails, which is why what Lama aims to do at Sanjh is so exciting.
From ‘accidental bartender’ to national industry icon
Lama, from the hill district of Darjeeling, joined Delhi’s Hyatt Regency in the 1990s with others who’d worked banquets and restaurants; having joined later than most of his colleagues, he said, he was assigned to the Hyatt’s chic Polo Lounge, where he had zero experience.
“I had no clue what I was doing,” he said. “But I started to enjoy the space. I realized you could be casual and build relationships with guests.”
He embraced the challenge. In short time, Lama was named India’s bartender of the year. Since then he’s won bartending competitions, worked as a brand ambassador, authored a cocktail book, started a bartending school and trained bartenders throughout India and beyond.
Lama’s Tea Tonic, built around a Darjeeling-tea-infused sweet vermouth, reflects his enthusiasm for featuring the flavors of his native India.
Pop-up showcases creations for Irving restaurant
Last week, Lama hosted a pop-up event in Sanjh’s second-floor lounge to showcase some of his creations for the restaurant, including a gimlet tinged with a Himalayan cherry tincture brought from India and a tea tonic boldly anchored by a Darjeeling-tea-infused sweet vermouth.
“Whenever I make a menu, there’s always one tea element,” he said.
His Jaam E Aam, featuring roasted cumin liqueur blended with gin, mango puree and chili tincture, is refreshingly lush while leaning on a rarely mined taste profile.
Then there’s the Chaat, named for the Indian street food typically laced with flavors spanning the spectrum of sweet, spicy, savory and salty with a bit of crunch. “It’s Hindi for ‘to lick,’” Lama said. “There’s something for everyone in a chaat.”
Yangdup Lama pours a pair of Jaam E Aams, featuring a roasted cumin liqueur with gin, mango puree and a chili tincture.
Lama built his eponymous cocktail on a base of tequila, lime and a syrup made from chaat masala, a spice mix whose range of variable ingredients can include amchoor, coriander, cumin, asefetida, ginger and chili powder. The silky, boldly flavorful drink was topped with a pepper-cilantro foam.
Lama said he hoped to not only tap the range of Indian food and culture but to inspire nostalgia as well, and he may have nailed it mostly with his Yang’s Old Fashioned. He mixed Buffalo Trace bourbon and Angostura bitters with a syrup made from betel nut.
“Every Indian at some point will have an experience with this,” he said, proffering a betel leaf, typically rolled with ground areca nut and slaked lime and chewed as a mouth freshener or snack. “For a lot of people it’s a habit. You can bite on it any time of day.”
Vijay Patel, at rear, a retired businessman attending the pop-up from Austin, waxed nostalgic over the betel nut flavor in Lama’s Yang’s Old Fashioned. “Dude,” he said. “That’s paan.”
Vijay Patel, a retired businessman visiting from Austin, was captivated from the first sip.
“Dude. This is paan,” Patel said, citing the name given the mixture throughout South Asia. “People snack on it in the afternoon. It’s like putting on a shirt, dude. It’s no big deal.”
Patel’s reaction infused the visiting bartender with no small amount of joy.
“The idea is to translate some of it, what people have done at home,” Lama smiled.
One of Lama’s spur-of-the-moment creations.
Sanjh, 5250 N. O’Connor Blvd., Ste. 146, Irving. Cocktails are priced at $16.
The Italian bitter liqueur known as fernet is wildly popular in Argentina, where the earthy amaro is mixed with Coca-Cola to create what’s become known as the country’s national drink, the simply named Fernet and Coke.
Fernet is also wildly popular with Dallas bartender James Slater, who over the years has made a habit of incorporating the unabashedly bitter amaro into some of his more memorable cocktails. “It’s kind of my taste,” the Panamanian-born barman says.
Guardian Angel, Dallas’ James Slater’s tribute to fernet, an Italian bitter liqueur.
So maybe it was destiny that Slater would be tapped to run the bar at Chimichurri, the Argentinian bistro that Jesus Carmona opened last fall in Dallas’ Bishop Arts District, where images of legendary Argentinian figures preside over bustling tables flowing with grilled meats and breaded milanesa — and where Slater serves up the requisite Fernet-and-Coke in a hollowed-out Coca-Cola can.
But Slater, who has helmed the bar at Dallas places such as Oak, Knife and the late Five Sixty, has taken his fernet fandom even further: Presented with the proper atmosphere, he’s now started making his own. The small-batch run he calls Guardian Angel can now be enjoyed at Chimichurri or taken home in sample 2-ounce bottles, each of which bears the image of an winged angel watching over a pair of innocents.
“Living in a pandemic in this world, many people have felt alone and forget that we have a guardian angel who, without our realizing it, has helped us many times,” he says. “We sometimes forget that, so that’s how I was inspired to name this amaro.”
Slater, at Chimichurri, which opened last fall in Dallas’ Bishop Arts District. Argentina is the world’s largest consumer of fernet.
If you’ve never tried fernet, you might be hard pressed to associate its taste with anything spiritual: It belongs to a family of Italian bitter liqueurs, or amari, whose levels of sweetness span a spectrum that can range from friendly to non-existent. Montenegro leans toward the former, with boldly red Campari somewhere in between; fernet — the mostly popular brand of which is the ubiquitous Fernet-Branca — embraces the latter.
A digestif traditionally served neat, it’s made by macerating and then aging a wide-ranging mix of herbs, spices and roots that typically includes saffron, cardamom and myrrh. One’s baptism into the fold is like meeting someone you never forget — the eccentric who announces her presence at the party, the nonconformist whose swagger carries no whiff of diplomacy. Fernet definitely makes an impression.
It’s said that Argentina consumes 75 percent of the world’s fernet, but a good portion of the rest likely goes to craft bartenders, who have been known to trade shots of it with each other so often that the drink became known as “the bartender’s handshake.”
At Chimichurri, the Fernet and Coke — Argentina’s unofficial national drink — is served in a hollowed Coca-Cola can.
Slater has a knack for crafting drinks that temper fernet’s earthy bitterness with adroit hints of sweetness: At now-defunct Spoon, his Blue Moon cocktail blended it with blueberry preserves and a second Italian bitter, Averna; at Network Bar in Trinity Groves, he’d subbed blackberries for blue and replaced Averna with a ginger liqueur to create the bodacious Malta.
He loves the feat of taking an ingredient that people find challenging and countering it with others that both complement and build on it.
“People who taste it for the first time say it tastes like medicine, or they try to figure out the flavors,” he says. “That’s the cool thing, to watch people’s faces when they try it, then to make something unique and different. And making fernet is like — a process, like science. You build it and see it develop until you get the profile you want.”
Just before the restaurant’s fall opening, Slater took inventory of some of the 28 ingredients — from saffron to South American cedron — that he would use to craft his fernet blend.
A few days before Chimichurri opened in November, Slater unloaded from his vehicle a box loaded with herbs, spices and roots that would comprise his 28-ingredient recipe. They ranged from rosemary, thyme, turmeric, dried galangal and orris root to South American influences such as purple corn, yerba mate and the herbs cedron and carqueja powder, both known for aiding digestion.
“I had to get some of these on Amazon,” he said. “But I wanted to make something really unique, something with Latin roots.”
The finished product, which had to sit for a couple of months before being unveiled, starts out like Averna with hints of sweet caramel before descending into fernet’s characteristically spice-and-root-soaked depths. The two-ounce bottles sell for $12 apiece.
Slater is pleased with his first run but is already pondering the sequel.
Not surprisingly, he says: “I think it needs to be more bitter.”
Slater, who always makes sure to include a cocktail featuring fernet on his menus, pours a taste of his bitter elixir at Chimichurri’s bar.
Ever since leaving their native Peru to come to Dallas 15 years ago, bartenders Armando and Daniel Guillen have never stopped paying tribute to their motherland – or their mother. Recalling the struggles she overcame as a divorced single mom to see them prosper in adulthood helps put the strain of the pandemic in perspective.
“She taught us to fight, to go on,” said Armando, who along with older brother Daniel ultimately rose to become part of the forefront of Dallas’ craft-cocktail scene over the last decade. “Anytime I thought about how bad we had it…. She had it 10 times worse.”
Over the last two weeks, the Guillens have devoted their energies to Rosario, which besides being their mother’s name is also the name of the speakeasy-style South American pop-up they’ve created at Bourbon and Banter, in downtown’s Statler Hotel. In the process, they’ve briefly infused life and Latin verve into the subterranean cocktail lounge, which has been closed since the shutdown began.
Forgiveness Before Permission: The mezcal- based cocktail, featuring passion fruit and aji amarillo –a Peruvian yellow pepper — is among a half-dozen South-American-influenced drinks on the pop-up menu.
The brothers had mere days to design their theme and menu, which they hammered out in typically heated fashion, or what Armando describes “the usual dynamic arguments between Peruvian A and Peruvian B.”
But the biggest battle, he said, was what to call the pop-up. The two considered Peruvian heroes or other South American figures, but none of the names seemed right (“It’s like naming your son,” Armando says) until Armando finally stepped back and said to Daniel: Well, why not Rosario?
“I thought, ‘If you gonna fight me over your mother’s name, I’m gonna punch you,’” he said.
And so, Rosario the pop-up was born. The event is into its final three days, but it’s proved so popular that an extension may be imminent.
Five years have passed since the brothers first slung drinks together behind a bar – that was at a Jameson Black Barrel event at Uptown’s Standard Pour, in 2015 – and it’s great to see them practicing their cocktail handicraft again. Even at that event, their mother played a role, with Daniel’s DeRosario cocktail rounding out its Irish whiskey base with sweet vermouth and a pair of Italian bitter liqueurs.
The Chicha Tu Madre’s sangria-like vibrancy comes from its namesake chicha morada, a beverage made from Peruvian purple corn.
Their ongoing pop-up is into its third week, and among its standout drinks is the luscious Chicha Tu Madre, whose name mischievously plays off a Spanish-language insult but actually references the housemade chicha morada within.
Slightly sweet with the spice of mulled wine, chicha morada – made from Peruvian purple corn – is among the bottled or jarred products the Guillens now offer as part of their just-launched product line, under the brand name El Cantinero. (Yes, they’ve kept themselves busy in spite of the shutdown.)
The cocktail is built on a base of Maker’s Mark bourbon, along with pineapple, lime and barrenwort (otherwise known as horny goat weed). A garnish of salted canchita – a corn-nut like snack made from chulpe corn – lounges on a banana-leaf carpet. “It has very humble roots,” Armando says. “Bourbon and chicha are both made from corn, so this is trying to form that bonding bridge between North and South America.”
The Buenos Aires Menyul – a phonetic spelling of a South American Spanish speaker’s pronunciation of “mint julep” — is another gem, playing off Argentina’s obsession with the Italian bitter Fernet. “They love Fernet and Coke in Argentina,” Armando notes. “They love bitter.”
Don’t cry for me: The Buenos Aires Menyul is a brilliantly bitter bit of cultural cocktail homage.
The foundation of this delicious julep is Cynar, an Italian bitter less aggressive than Fernet, along with the Guillens’ own grapefruit cordial and Peruvian chuncho bitters.
Along with bar bites like grilled octopus and an aged steak with chimichurri sauce, the Guillens have outfitted Bourbon and Banter with South American touches and a Latin music soundtrack. “It’s fun to work with your brother for a night,” Daniel quipped. “But to be in close (quarters) for nearly a month…” He play-rolled his eyes and then was off into the speakeasy darkness, to whip up another drink.
It’s clear that the brothers’ current effort comes from the heart. No doubt Mom would be proud.
“We have to give a little bit of ourselves in everything we do,” Armando said. “So why not just give it our all?”
Mustache seesaws. Vodka ice cream. A magical wall through which seemingly disembodied hands offer cocktails for the taking. It might sound like something out of an Alice in Wonderland fantasyland, but that’s what you’ll find on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 13, at Deep Ellum’s Harlowe MXM and its adjoining sister bar, Trick Pony.
The event is the 8thannual Ultimate Cocktail Experience, which in its previous seven years has raised nearly $1 million total for Dallas-based Trigger’s Toys, a non-profit organization aiding hospitalized kids and their families.
2018’s Ultimate Cocktail Experience took place at The Bomb Factory. Image from video footage produced for the event.
“It’s one of those days when everybody comes together,” said Naomi Ayala, president of the U.S Bartenders Guild’s Dallas chapter, at a recent group workshop. “It’s for the kids.”
Originally known as the Fantasy Bar Draft and then Cocktails for a Cause, the Ultimate Cocktail Event has snowballed since its initial runs at The Standard Pour in Uptown and Henry’s Majestic in Knox-Henderson, held more recently at massive venues like the Bomb Factory and Klyde Warren Park. This year’s move to Harlowe/Trick Pony takes the party back to its roots while maintaining its spirit and spectacle.
“We’re toning it back down,” says Brian McCullough, among the event’s
original organizers. “Everyone will feel the whole thing a little more.”
The Ultimate Cocktail Experience, now in its 8th year, has raised nearly $1 million for Trigger’s Toys.
The Ultimate Cocktail Event runs from 6 to 11 p.m. and capitalizes on the Harlowe/Trick Pony complex’s two-story design – a perfect setting for the gala’s traditional five-way battle of pop-up bars staffed by more than a hundred bar industry pros from DFW and beyond.
Every year, five teams of bartenders conceive an imaginary bar and spend time developing the drinks, concept and clever marketing campaigns in pursuit of the coveted people’s choice prize. This year’s event is an all-star reunion, bringing together each of the last five year’s winners for a bid at the ultimate crown.
“We’re even bringing back Ampersand and Ampersand,” says Stephen Halpin, Dallas-based manager of trade education for Patron Tequila, referring to the cheeky name of 2014’s champ.
But as Ayala said, it’s all about the kids. It was Bryan Townsend, vice president of global sales for spirits producer The 86 Co., who launched Trigger’s Toys 11 years ago after witnessing the positive effect that his dog, Trigger, had on an antisocial child at a local care facility.
This year’s move to Harlowe MXM/Trick Pony takes the annual benefit back to its bar roots. Image from video footage produced for the event.
Now, in addition to providing financial support for kids and their families facing long-term hospital care, Trigger’s Toys every year buys holiday-season gifts for them and their families and funds therapeutic care for kids with autism, cerebral palsy and other conditions through an organization called Bryan’s House.
“It has just evolved and evolved,” Townsend says.
Joining “& and &,” helmed by the Statler Hotel’s Kyle Hilla, will be 2018 champ Elevate, captained by Megan McClinton and Jason Pollard of The Usual in Fort Worth; 2017 champ Cuba, led by Nicholas Grammer of The Mitchell; 2016 winner American Carnival, headed by Andrew Stofko of Te Deseo; and 2015 champ Zoom Zoom, led by Zach Smigiel of Billy Can Can.
NOTE: A previous version of this post stated that Ravinder Singh of Sloane’s Corner would be leading team Cuba; Nicholas Grammer has since stepped in to take his place.
Jettison’s George Kaito positions a spoonful of bitter liqueur “caviar” atop a cocktail at the bar’s spring omakase experience.
The bartender comes bearing flowers, a certain sign of spring – and depending on your choice of bloom, a harbinger of the drink you are about to receive. Presented in a tall glass with tiny spoonful of what looks like caviar resting atop an ice cube, the mix of mezcal, tequila and house-made grenadine is a feast for the senses – and a playfully constructed nod to the season.
It’s one of six cocktails that, along with a closing shot, form Jettison’s Spring Omakase Cocktail Experience, a multicourse cocktail event happening at the West Dallas bar on April 28. The drink above, called Pick Your Antidote, is a variation on the Tequila Sunrise – and with a sunrise a symbol of renewal, yet another nod to the springtime theme. The “caviar” atop the spoon is actually one of three bitter liqueurs chemically gelled into tiny spheres, to be consumed separately or dropped into the drink.
This Tequila Sunrise variation is among the cocktails featured at Jettison’s omakase event.
Behold, the cocktail renaissance is complete: Having pulled alongside wine as a featured complement to prix fixe dinners, drinks are now earning star billing, with bars like San Francisco’s Wilson & Wilson, The Aviary in New York and NOBU in Newport Beach offering experiences of three to five cocktails, and maybe some nibbles, for a set price.
Jettison’s omakase event creatively taps into that trend while embracing the bar’s Japanese influence and barman George Kaiho’s heritage. (Omakase translates to “I will leave it up to you,” most often applied to chef-driven sushi experiences.) It’s the third seasonal offering from Jettison, which adjoins coffee joint Houndstooth in the neighborhood’s Sylvan Thirty complex.
Influenced by the season itself and science-driven concepts like molecular gastronomy, the event features artistically conceived cocktails that would be impractical to put on the bar menu. “It’s stuff that at 10 p.m. on a Friday night we’re not going to have time to do,” bartender Andrew Kelly said at a recent media preview of the event. “There’s rapid infusions, dry ice, spherification. The degree of difficulty is a little more intense.”
Breaking the Ice, a cocktail encased inside an ice egg, is also on the slate.
For instance: The slate’s first cocktail, Breaking the Ice, is a tart and funky play on the classic Champs-Elysees. Featuring shochu, Japan’s national spirit, along with Green Chartreuse, lime, simple syrup and edible flowers, the name refers not just to the drink’s place in the order but also to spring’s emergence from winter – and the fact that the drink is presented in an egg of ice that, with the thwack of a mallet, hatches into the glass along with its botanical components.
“I love the way the ice ball traps the aromatics and then releases them once you break it,” says Jettison’s owner, Sean Henry. “It’s so fragrant.”
Spring also means that herbs and plants feature heavily into the experience. The rose-petal-enhanced Eternal and Fleeting gives the bar a chance to showcase its recently acquired magnetic stirring machine, a lab instrument that swirls liquids by way of a rapidly spinning metal pellet dropped into the vessel and powered by a rotating magnetic field in the platform underneath. (“It’s amazing what you can find on Amazon for 30 bucks,” Kelly says.)
Guests snack on popcorn and watch as red petals whirl like sprites in dry Manzanilla sherry, gradually infusing the fortified wine with their essence. “The agitation helps with the infusion,” Kaiho says. “Sherry is delicate and low-alcohol, so it more easily adopts the flavor.”
The strained sherry is then mixed with peach brandy, Benedictine and bitters flavored with black tea, yerba mate, hazelnut and vanilla, sweetness lifting the dryness.
Kelly and Kaito team up for a riff on the classic Brown Derby cocktail. They hope to make these events a seasonal occurrence.
The event encompasses about two hours, and Kaiho and Kelly hope to offer a fresh omakase experience each season. Two seatings are available on the 28th, and in keeping with the bar’s intimate setting, Jettison will limit each to 10 participants apiece. Cost is $90 and reservations can be made here.
Spring represents the beginning of the cycle of life, Kaiho says, and with this experience, “it’s about taking the cycle of life into the cocktails.”
With the proper skull set, you can do most anything.
My brother Michael, for all of his unreadable stoicism, has a knack for giving Christmas gifts with staying power. So when he gave me a set of skull-shaped ice molds this last holiday season, I was pretty sure they’d be conscripted into duty eventually.
Not that I really needed ice molds – as a longtime cocktail enthusiast, my freezer is well stocked with cube molds large and small, including a set of Buffalo Trace-branded ones with protruding buffalo images on one side. But ice in the actual shape of skulls – that was a fresh addition to the collection. And since I had also given Michael a skull-shaped shot glass at the same Christmas exchange, it turned out to be a heady coincidence. I let them the ice molds sit until the right idea took hold.
I’m nine years older than Michael, who we called changuito – Spanish for “little monkey” – when he was little for his boundless, off-the-wall energy, cheery smile and his love for Curious George, the famous cartoon monkey. (No doubt he would be mortified to know I was sharing this fact.) He and I were also both into monster movies and science fiction, and I remember taking him to see Star Wars for the first time when it was re-released for the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. That was on my mind when I recently realized that I had never actually gotten around to seeing Kong: Skull Island, the lauded 2017 semi-reboot of the classic giant gorilla franchise.
Inspired, I searched for it in my Netflix and Amazon Primate – I mean, Prime – libraries, but the cheapskate in me was put off by the rental price when there were so many free movies awaiting in my watch queue. I picked one of those for the time being, but still let the inspiration ride: If I couldn’t actually watch Skull Island, I figured, I would come up with a drink using one of those skull ice cubes instead.
My Skull Island cocktail is basically a tropical Old Fashioned, packed with nods to the whole Kong vibe – gorillas, jungles, exotic islands. Naturally, I built it on Monkey Shoulder blended malt Scotch – not just for its fruity, buttery notes but its malt brawn, which would go toe-to-toe with the tropical sweetness that would come: First, a roar of banana liqueur, then a dash of tiki bitters. And finally, I poured the whole mixture over that toothsome skull ice cube… which offered one last creepy grin before tilting wayward in the Scotchy surf.
Skulls are spineless and cannot stay upright in liquid. Otherwise, the Skull Island is not monkeying around.
While I haven’t yet gotten around to seeing that movie, here’s a drink in the meantime that, while deliciously tropical sweet, will still put hair on your chest.
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass, add ice and stir. Pour into an Old Fashioned or short rocks glass over one large ice cube, ideally one shaped like a skull. Sip and periodically pound chest.
In the south of Mexico, people have been making mezcal – the smoky, agave-based forebear of tequila – for generations. But only on special occasions, like weddings or quinceaneras, would a mezcalero break out one of his rare pechuga mezcals – which unlike traditionally twice-distilled mezcal are distilled a third time, with a protein, typically a chicken or turkey breast, suspended within the heated still. (“Pechuga” means breast in Spanish.)
The pechuga mezcal made by Gracias a Dios for Dallas’ Las Almas Rotas using Texas smoked brisket. Both the bar and spirits purveyor Bar & Garden will hold launch events Saturday.
As the mix cooks, the meat drippings impart more of a savory quality to the finished product than actual meat flavor. “People get this idea that you’re going to taste the meat, and you really don’t,” says Shad Kvetko, co-owner of Dallas mezcaleria Las Almas Rotas. “It’s more of an umami mouthfeel. The flavors that come through are more the fruits and spices you put into it; I’ve had some made with green mole, and that you can really taste.”
With mezcal’s popularity booming, more pechugas are on the market than ever before. Late last spring, as Kvetko and his bar staff chatted with mezcal producer Xaime Niembro about the idea of visiting Oaxaca to see the production process firsthand, Niembro suggested making a pechuga while the group was there. Naturally, the conversation turned to what meat to use.
The brisket pechuga-style mezcal made by Gracias a Dios for Dallas’ Las Almas Rotas was flavored with Texas smoked brisket, prickly pear, chilies, corn and other local ingredients. (Photo by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
“We said, let’s do a smoked brisket,” Kvetko said. “You know, make it kind of a statement.”
OK, this is the kind of Tex-Mex I can get behind.
Has a more Texas-style pechuga ever hit the market before? Doubtful. And from 6 p.m. until close Saturday, Las Almas Rotas will celebrate its one-of-a-kind creation, made in collaboration with label Gracias a Dios, at a launch party featuring Niembro and brisket tacos by Oak Cliff’s Brandon Mohon.
It was Mohon who smoked the brisket used to flavor the small, 80-liter batch, and the special-edition bottle’s stylish design, featuring a Dia-de-los-Muertos-style cow head, belies the effort it took to bring it to life: Before it could happen, the brisket first had to be smuggled into Mexico.
Gracias a Dios mezcalero Oscar Hernandez hands the medley of ingredients, including smoked brisket, that will flavor the pechuga mezcal to Las Almas Rotas co-owner Shad Kvetko to place inside the still. (Photo taken October 2018 by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
Mohon used a smaller-than-normal cut rubbed simply with salt and pepper, making it slightly underdone knowing it would be further cooked in the still. “I wanted to give it some nice color so it would look like Texas brisket when it arrived,” he said.
Mohon vacuum-sealed the brisket, froze it and delivered it to Kvetko, who packed it in ice and squirreled it away in his Mexico-bound luggage. Luckily, he said, no one made a fuss about it.
Once in Oaxaca, Kvetko hit a local mercado and loaded up on other ingredients like prickly pear, corn, squash blossoms, Mexican stone fruit and a bunch of chilies. In they went, along with the brisket, into a cognac-style Charentais still – it looks a bit like a giant onion – that Gracias a Dios was using for the first time.
Kvetko got a tattoo of an agave plant to commemorate the making of the brisket pechuga mezcal. (Photo taken October 2018 by Emmy Hernandez Jimenez)
The initial release of barely 75 or so bottles – a little more than two-thirds of the batch – was snatched up by spirits purveyor Bar & Garden on Ross Avenue, which sold out of nearly all of its supply through pre-orders within 24 hours. This weekend, the store will raffle off chances to buy the remaining few bottles at an event featuring Niembro from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday.
The $80 price tag is well worth it: The finished product, sweet and citrus-y on the nose, is complex and robust, best taken in small sips that deliver smoky spice and citrusy sweetness with a dark, warm undercurrent of savoriness.
“The nose I get is salt-water taffy,” says Bar & Garden’s Victoria Garcia. “It’s candy-esque, incredibly smooth.”
The rest of the batch will be stored in glass vessels for a while, to be released later this year or early next, and while Kvetko is excited to showcase the one-of-a-kind product, it’s the larger context represented in the bottle that warms his heart.
“It’s a symbol of cooperation and friendship between two nations,” Kvetko says. “And any show of friendship right now is great. We love these people. We love Mexico.”
Saturday, Feb. 2
Brisket pechuga launch at Bar & Garden, 3314 Ross Ave., Ste. 150, 1 to 3 p.m.
Pechuga Pachanga at Las Almas Rotas, 3615 Parry Ave. 6 p.m. until 2 a.m.
In Deep Ellum, Hide’s Green Tara may drink crisp and refreshing, but a little bit of buzz button changes everything.
At Hide in Deep Ellum, the Green Tara is a lovely, lemonade-hued cocktail, dressed with dehydrated citrus and an eye-catching yellow bud that looks like a little knit gumdrop.
The drink – a vodka-based number flaunting pear, jasmine green tea, vanilla bean, lime and lemon – is tart, crisp and refreshing, with soft, herbal notes. But take a crunch of that fuzzy little bud and within seconds, your mouth lights up like a state fair midway.
And, notes bar director Scott Jenkins, “it totally changes the dynamics of the drink.”
The Brazilian jambu goes by many names, but here in the U.S., it’s most commonly known as the buzz button. The flowering part of an herb known as Acmella oleracea, it’s less known for its looks than its effects on the palate, caused by the release of a natural chemical compound called spilanthol.
“It’s like putting a nine-volt battery on your tongue,” says bartender Spencer Shelton of Ruins in Deep Ellum, which uses buzz buttons – referred to on the menu as “Brazilian bud” – in Armando Guillen’s appropriately named Cojones! My Tongue! “It’s kind of Pop-Rock-y.”
At Ruins in Deep Ellum, Armando Guillen’s Cojones! My Tongue! features rum, soursop syrup and lime, but it’s the buzz button that gives the drink its exclamatory name.
The bud’s initial taste is grassy, almost straw-like, before the electricity kicks in – a hint of sour as it prompts salivation, then a prolonged carbonated tingling on the tip of your tongue. The sensation is almost numbing. “There’s a slight analgesic quality to it,” Hide’s Jenkins says.
And it’s one more way to perk up the cocktail experience. The first time I ever encountered one was in 2012 in Las Vegas, where a buzz button graced an Asian-influenced Margarita variation at The Chandelier Bar at The Cosmopolitan. Guests were urged to drink half the cocktail before eating the bud to experience the drink’s altered state: The tingle on the tongue lent a jolt of effervescence.
At Hide, the Green Tara starts with a burst of green tea and citrus, followed by the soft sweetness of pear. A bite of buzz button bumps up the drink’s floral components, sweetens the citrus and creates a bubbly sensation as you drink.
I also saved a bite of buzz button to try with Hide’s tequila-based Yellow Belly, which features yellow bell pepper, Yellow Chartreuse, lemongrass and coriander; it beautifully boosted the pepper’s sweet, vegetal brightness.
In a way, the buzz button experience is a micro version of the flavor tripping parties that were trendy a decade ago, where people gathered to chomp on miracle fruit berries and then marvel at how Tabasco suddenly tasted like doughnut glaze or cheap tequila like, well, really awesome tequila.
Bartenders say jambu’s sensation works best with citrus and clear spirits like gin, vodka and tequila, “really any kind of patio drink,” Ruins’ Shelton says. “It’s mouthwatering and refreshing. It just begs you to drink more.”
A sampling of Brazilian jambu, also known as buzz button, from Dallas’ Mulcahy Farms in a shot from 2014. (photo courtesy of Mulcahy Farms)
Several years ago, when Shelton worked at Bolsa, near Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts District, he and then-bar manager Kyle Hilla were researching herbs when they came across jambu.
Curious, they turned to Cynthia Mulcahy of Mulcahy Farms, who’s grown herbs and edible flowers for Bolsa for years. “She was pretty much our personal botanist,” Shelton says.
As it turned out, Mulcahy was already familiar with the plant, having traveled to Brazil annually for 15 years. “It’s something you find in Rio de Janeiro and other places,” she says. “They have herb farms in the hills that ring the city. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It’s like the Italian countryside.”
Mulcahy started growing buzz buttons for Bolsa, where Shelton and Hill – now beverage director for the Statler Hotel – used them on drinks and randomly handed them out to unsuspecting patrons to see their reaction.
“Sometimes people freak out,” Shelton says. “Everything from curse words to just saying, ‘Ow!’ It’s one of a kind, and you don’t expect it. It’s just fun, that’s my favorite thing about it.”
It is said that the tradition dates back to the early 14th century, and its participants are known for something resembling cojones. The famed Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, held during the nine-day festival of Sanfermines, is the best known of such rituals, in which young, white-clad daredevils in red bandanas dash through the streets just ahead of six rampaging toros.
Of course you’ve thought about doing it. But maybe you’ve been unnerved by the airfares, or possibly it the fact that the event prohibits participation by anyone under the influence of alcohol.
My friends, Dallas has got you covered.
Imagine this on the streets of Dallas, except with roller derby girls and beer. (Image from TravelGenius.com)
Prepare to showcase your derring-do on Sunday, July 16, when the inaugural Cedars Running of the Bulls goes down with a three-venue trot just south of downtown. The event, dreamed up by Industry Alley proprietor Charlie Papaceno, kicks off with a pep rally from 4 to 6 p.m. at Lee Harvey’s.
There, intrepid imbibers will receive their customary red bandanas before the less-than-half-mile run gets underway, with Dallas’ own flat-track roller derby girls, the Derby Devils, playing the part of the minatory beasts. Mac’s Southside and Industry Alley, both on Lamar, are the final destinations. Expect the Easy Slider food truck and drink specials sponsored by Tullamore Dew, along with plenty of Topo Chico.
Charlie Papaceno of Industry Alley.
As its Facebook page puts it, the event is a way to “celebrate the spirit of our unique neighborhood,” carving out a niche in the same way that Oak Cliff has earned a claim to Bastille Day. Though reception to the idea was lukewarm at a Cedars merchant meeting, Papaceno said, he and managers of the other two bars decided to push forward with the idea on their own.
Sometimes, you just gotta take the bull by the horns.
Over the years, the Singapore Sling came to be known as a tropical drink like this one from Dallas barman Lucky Campbell. Its origins are nowhere as sweet — but arguably just as delicious.
The Singapore Sling is the Rashomon of cocktails: Everyone remembers it differently. Like a rumor that starts at one side of the table and wildly mutates by the time it comes back round again, it’s a tasty tale whose twists and turns vary depending on who’s doing the telling.
How is it still considered a classic?
Because despite its many tweaks – “The Singapore Sling has taken a lot of abuse over the years,” wrote tiki master Jeff Berry in his book Beachbum Berry Remixed – it’s managed to stay delicious no matter how it’s interpreted. Even gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson considered it a favorite.
But somewhere along the line, the century-old drink attributed to bartender Ngiam Tong Boon of Singapore’s Raffles Hotel lost sight of its simpler beginnings, becoming a tropical mishmash of seven ingredients or more – and a headache for bartenders, which may be why you rarely see it on bar menus. “I remember Sasha (Petraske, founder of the classic New York City bar Milk and Honey) was not a fan,” says Chad Solomon of Dallas’ Midnight Rambler, who worked with the late cocktail legend. “But people loved drinking it. He was, like, ‘It’s got too many damn ingredients!’ ”
It’s a misfit of a drink, a gin-powered cocktail that muscled its way into the tiki canon through luck and guile, disguising itself in pineapple and grenadine. But while its more dignified origins faded in the process, two Dallas bars – Industry Alley and Midnight Rambler – are breathing new life into the Sleeping Beauty that’s been there all along.
**
Imagine two actor brothers born in close succession. They look just enough alike, and their names are similar enough, that they’re often confused with each other. The older brother teaches the younger one all he knows, but the younger brother’s easier disposition makes him more likable than his rugged, reserved sibling. And when the younger’s career veers from drama into comedy, making him a star, the family name rises to fame with him.
That seems to be the story of the Singapore Sling, whose sweeter flavors and catchier name propelled it through the thick and thin of cocktail lineage rather than its older brother, the Straits Sling. A sling is a type of drink, at its base a simple mix of spirit, sweetener and water. As cocktails historian David Wondrich observed in his book Imbibe!, it’s “a simple drink in the same way a tripod is a simple device: Remove one leg and it cannot stand, set it up properly and it will hold the whole weight of the world.”
The Straits Sling, born sometime in the late 1800s, was just that: A mix of gin (spirit), sweetener (Benedictine, a honey-sweet herbal liqueuer) and carbonated soda (water), plus lemon and bitters. But its defining flavor was cherry – in the form of kirsch, a dry cherry brandy.
The original Singapore Sling – at least as well as anyone can figure out – was basically the same drink, except that it used sweet cherry brandy instead of dry and subbed lime as the citrus. That’s the Singapore Sling you’ll get if you order the classic drink at Midnight Rambler in downtown Dallas, and a few dashes of Angostura make all the difference, giving depth to what would otherwise taste like an off-kilter black cherry soda.
Adam McDowell includes the mix in his entertaining and recently published Drinks: A User’s Guide, whose characterization is hard to argue with: “Here’s the correct recipe; ignore all other versions like the meaningless static they are.”
Ingredients
1 oz London dry gin
1 oz cherry brandy
1 oz Benedictine
1 oz lime
3 d Angostura bitters
Club soda
Instructions
Stir in a Collins glass. Garnish w/Maraschino cherries
You’ll also find the drink on the inaugural menu at Industry Alley just south of downtown, where owner Charlie Papaceno digs its less-is-more simplicity. “It’s like with French cooking: Here’s the mother sauce,” he says. “Here’s what we work from.”
But of course Papaceno had to tweak his version just a little. Rather than using equal parts, his recipe boosts the gin and tones down the liqueurs, with just a squeeze of lime. The drink is tart and a bit Scotchy thanks to its signature ingredient, Cherry Heering – not the summery cool pineapple drink the name usually calls to mind, but a leathery, autumn-ready gin-and-tonic.
“So, it’s like, to take it back,” Papaceno says. “Somehow it’s just gotten so tricked up.”
At Industry Alley, Charlie Papaceno’s slightly tweaked version of what’s believed to be the drink’s original recipe is suitable for colder weather.
Until Wondrich tracked down the recipe above in a 1913 Singapore newspaper, no one really knew what the standard was for sure. By the late 1920s and early 1930s the rumor was a good ways down the table and already starting to morph; even the Raffles Hotel itself touted an “original” recipe in the 1930s with pineapple and grenadine, flowery additions that nonetheless endeared it to the wave of tiki that was just starting to emerge.
Before long the drink with the catchy name became a game of eeny meeny miny mo, something everyone did but felt free to put their own spin on. “Of all the recipes published for this drink, I have never seen any two that were alike,” wrote David Embury in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948).
Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide (1947) included two versions; so did Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology (2003), listing the neglected Straits Sling recipe as “Singapore Sling #1” and offering a second that included triple sec.
“The Singapore Sling is a perfect example of the kind of drinks that came from outside the world of tiki establishments and took up residence on tiki menus everywhere,” wrote San Francisco bar owners Martin and Rebecca Cate in Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum and the Cult of Tiki (2016). The legendary Trader Vic, they wrote, included it on his first menu under the category, “Drinks I Have Gathered from the Four Corners of the Globe.”
Here’s a typically involved recipe, the one I favored for a while, from The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy (2011):
2 oz. pineapple
1 ½ oz gin
½ oz Cherry Heering
½ oz grenadine (I use pomegranate molasses)
¼ oz Cointreau
¼ oz Benedictine
¼ oz lime
Angostura bitters
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled Collins glass filled with ice. Garnish with a cherry and a slice of pineapple.
Yep, that’s a lot of moving parts for one drink. No wonder Wondrich once wrote: “The Singapore Sling is one of those complicated drinks that taste better when you don’t have to make them.”
Midnight Rambler’s play on the Straits Sling, the Solomon Sling, is served “Gonzo-style” with a shot of mezcal and a beer.
But, you might be saying, what about the Straits Sling? Isn’t it being neglected all over again?
Not anymore, thanks to Midnight Rambler, where mixmaster Solomon has revived his own version of the drink with a wry literary nod.
Even before he began learning the craft, Solomon had the Singapore Sling on his radar after reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in high school. “(Thompson) was describing sitting poolside at his hotel with a Singapore Sling, a side of mezcal and a beer chaser,” Solomon said. “I was, like — what’s a Singapore Sling?”
Then Solomon happened into the budding cocktail renaissance underway in New York City in the early years of the millennium, working at classic bars like Milk and Honey and the Pegu Club. In 2004, Ted Haigh gave a nod to the drier Straits Sling in his book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails – “but if you make it as Ted as written,” Solomon says, “it’s a terrible drink. Virtually undrinkable.”
Egged on by cocktails writer Martin Douderoff, one of his Pegu Club regulars, Solomon decided to see how he could improve on the drink while keeping its historical accuracy. By early 2006, he’d hit on a Benedictine-less version that used both dry and sweet cherry brandies – kirsch and Cherry Heering. It appeared on the Pegu Club menu later that year as the Solomon Sling.
Late this summer, as Solomon prepared Midnight Rambler’s fall menu, he knew he wanted to incorporate seasonal stone-fruit flavors, but not in an overly sweet way. When one of his bartenders suggested he reincarnate the Solomon Sling, he thought,“Okay. But let’s have some fun with it: Let’s serve it Hunter S. Thompson style and miniaturize it.’”
And that’s how you’ll find it on Rambler’s current menu – served “Gonzo-style” and slightly downsized with a side of mezcal and a Miller High Life pony. It’s a delicate drink, slightly sweet with a lush cherry finish – and did I mention it comes with a side of mezcal and a Miller High Life pony?
The sibling slings are finally having their day, and there’s little to fear or loathe about it.
Sling made: Gin, lime, Benedictine, Cherry Heering and a few dashes of bitters, topped with Topo Chico.
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
