Category Archives: Seasonal

Bummer, Deep Ellum, Plano, Seasonal, The Cedars, Uptown, West Dallas

Fall is here, but it still feels like summer. Here are some cocktails to help with that.

Yes, it might be fall, but summer don’t care. It’s decided to linger around North Texas and deliver one last beatdown, with temps in the mid-90s until early next week.

You don’t have to sit there and take it. Because when life hands you lemons, you make Sidecars, and when it hands you unbearably hot weather, you’re going to fight back with cool, refreshing cocktails.

Here are six drinks you should enjoy before autumn finally sets in.

BIG STICK MOJITO, The Theodore, NorthPark Center

Hugo Osorio, The Theodore
At The Theodore, Hugo Osorio’s Big Stick Mojito is nothing to speak softly about.

First of all, just look at this. This is a gorgeous drink. And the Big Stick Mojito – the “big stick” a reference to the famous “speak softly” quote from the president this NorthPark Center restaurant is named for – is as fun and delicious as it appears, a visual feast of green, white and red from bartender Hugo Osorio.

This mojito sweetened with tropical pineapple features a brilliant raspberry coulis that rests at the bottom of the glass, perfect for slurping through a straw while simultaneously offering balance in taste and texture.

“We wanted this cocktail to be super approachable,” says Kyle Hilla, bar director for Turn The Tables Hospitality, the group behind The Theodore as well as Bolsa, Smoke and other restaurants. “And on top of that, we wanted something incredibly stunning to look at.”

Mission accomplished, sirs.

RASPBERRY-WATERMELON FREEZE, Fat Chicken, Trinity Groves

Stephen Halpin, Fat Chicken
When it’s hot outside, your body naturally craves snow cones. It’s science.

You’re probably not surprised to see a snow cone on the list. When it’s hot out, your body naturally craves snow cones. It’s science.

However, you may be surprised to know this snow cone comes from Fat Chicken, the fried chicken joint at Trinity Groves. One of a trio of frozen drinks designed by Stephen Halpin, global mixologist for Patron tequila, the Raspberry-Watermelon Freeze is summery and fruity with a bit of DIY mischief: The mix of Patron silver, watermelon and lemon juices and muddled raspberries is presented in a small carafe that you get to pour into the heaping glass of Hawaiian shaved ice presented alongside. (Though I’d recommend first using your straw to dig out a shaft into which the liquid can descend so it doesn’t end up all over your table.)

“I wasn’t sure when I got here if people would want to drink their drinks out of a snow cone,” says manager Christopher Garrison. “But they love it.”

MEET YOUR MATCHA, Yayoi, Plano

Lyndsy Rausch, Yayoi, Plano
Shochu: It’s big in Japan.

When Lyndsy Rausch took over the bar program at Yayoi in Plano, shochu – the featured spirit at Japanese izakayas – was a natural starting point. “Adding matcha to it was really the first thing that came to mind,” she said, “because I wanted something earthy to match the complex flavors in shochu.”

A low-proof liquor distilled from rice, barley or sweet potatoes, shochu likewise is earthy; Rausch paired Iwai barley-based shochu with matcha powder, added citrus-y yuzu and mint to cut the bitterness, and topped it off with club soda. The result is radiantly green and highly drinkable, a liquid hammock to lay your thirst in when temperatures climb.

FROZEN GIN AND TONIC, Harlowe, Deep Ellum

Harlowe, Deep Ellum
This is probably why Billy Joel wrote the lyric “makin’ love to his tonic and gin.”

It’s got gin.

It’s got tonic.

And it’s frozen.

There’s much to like about Deep Ellum newcomer Harlowe, including the brunch-time lobster waffle and an expansive rooftop bar, but the simplicity of the Frozen Gin and Tonic is nothing short of genius on a 90-degree day. With nothing but a bit of star anise stranded atop the blindingly bright tundra of its surface, it’s a stone-cold certain way to punk that nasty summer-like warmth.

DUE SOUTH, Parliament, Uptown

Jeremy Koeninger, Parliament
If you’re wondering how to cool off in Uptown, I will point you Due South. (Photo by SungJoon Bruce Koo)

Another way to beat the heat is to fight fire with fire. At Parliament, bartender Jeremy Koeninger’s Due South puts a Texas spin on the tropical Painkiller, adding jalapeno to the tiki staples of rum, coconut and pineapple with a dash of orange and nutmeg.  “Being from Texas, I like the combination of spicy and sweet,” he says.

Presented with a jalapeno coin atop the foam, Due South is a terrific hot-weather refresher, showcasing creamy pineapple, cool citrus, peppery heat and a nutty finish. (I’m always surprised at how well coconut and jalapeno pair up, which is probably the one reason I never get tired of watching Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Lost In Translation.)

The name of the drink, Koeninger says, refers partly to the happy coincidence that any south-of the-border spirit – except for cachaca – works in the drink; pisco, in particular, is excellent.

ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER, The Cedars Social, The Cedars

The Cedars Social
If you’re both in need of refreshment and absinthe-minded, this drink is for you.

It might be hard to imagine absinthe as the basis of a soothing refresher, because unlike shochu, it’s notoriously anything but low proof. The Cedars Social’s Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder is a drink to ease the pain of a sweltering summer night, or a starry starry night, or in this case, an autumn night that still feels like summer.

Copper & Kings’ 130-proof absinthe is the star of this show, backed by a remarkable pecan-based orgeat and a chorus of soda. A fortifying fusion of licorice and pecan, it’ll almost make you wish the hot weather would linger a while longer. Almost.

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Cocktail Nation, Community, Downtown, Drinks around the world, For A Good Cause, Pop-Up Bars, Seasonal

Massive charity pop-up back for sixth time to help hospitalized kids

The Ultimate Cocktail Experience, coming soon to a Klyde Warren Park near you. (Photo by Don Mamone)

Oh, Cocktails for a Cause. My, how you’ve grown.

Four years ago, the annual, bar-industry-driven fundraiser for Triggers’s Toys was a modest Christmas-season party at The Standard Pour, with 50 bartenders in Santa hats raining cocktails upon their mirthful elf minions. These days… well, look at it: Repositioned in the expansive savanna of Klyde Warren Park, this benefit behemoth, now dubbed the Ultimate Cocktail Experience, last year raised more than $200,000 and aims to exceed that this time around. Naturally.

The 2017 version of the Ultimate Cocktail Experience is set to go down on Saturday, Sept. 30, from 6:30 to 10 p.m.  There will be food trucks and a charity casino area. Tickets, which range from $65 to $125 for VIP status, are available here. Or you can get your tickets for $80 at the door.

This big boy pop-up is the brainchild of Bryan Townsend, vice president and sales director for spirits producer The 86 Co., who a decade ago was a corporate wonk who didn’t like his job very much. In 2008, he left his job and began to focus on other things – including his dog, Trigger.

One day he was a Grapevine hospital with his newly trained dog when he met a nurse distressed about a young girl who’d been in therapy for a year, unable to socialize with others. Townsend suggested that maybe the girl would like to give Trigger a treat.

The girl did, and Townsend wondered if she might follow the dog through one of the hospital’s children’s ward play tunnels. Then that happened too. The nurse retrieved the girl’s mother. “It was the first time she’d ever crawled,” Townsend remembered.

Inspired by the experience, Townsend launched Trigger’s Toys, a nonprofit that provides toys, therapy aids and financial assistance to hospitalized kids and their families. That’s the organization at the heart of the revelry that now includes bartenders, brand reps and spirits distributors from Texas and beyond who come to lend their shaking, stirring hands.

A scene from 2016’s Ultimate Cocktail Experience at Klyde Warren Park. (Photo by Don Mamone)

Recast as a global throwdown, the Ultimate Cocktail Experience puts forward six unique bar “concepts,” each representing a different part of the world with drinks to match. This year’s showcased locales are Mexico City, London, New Orleans, Hong Kong, Havana and Casablanca, and each station’s drink lineup will include a classic drink and a non-alcoholic selection.

In the mix this year are bartenders Ash Hauserman of New York’s Havana-themed Blacktail, named Best New American Bar at this summer’s Tales of the Cocktail festival, and Iain Griffiths of London’s Dandelyan, which won the honor of the world’s best cocktail bar.

This year’s teams, classic drinks and team captains are as follows:

  • Casablanca (Mule): captain Andrew Stofko (Hot Joy, Uptown)
  • Havana (Daiquiri): captain Ravinder Singh (Rapscallion, Lower Greenville)
  • Hong Kong (Rob Roy): captain Robbie Call (most recently of Filament, Deep Ellum)
  • London (Gin & Tonic): captain Omar Yeefon (Shoals Sound & Service, Deep Ellum)
  • Mexico City (Margarita): captains Brad Hensarling (The Usual, Fort Worth) and Megan McClinton (Thompson’s, Fort Worth)
  • New Orleans (Sazerac): captain Keisha Cooper (Shoals Sound & Service, Deep Ellum)

For more information about Trigger’s Toys or to donate, visit www.triggerstoys.org.

Bars, Cocktails, Downtown, Fancydranks, Seasonal, Tiki

What you should be drinking now: Midnight Rambler’s magnificent tiki mashup

 

Chad Solomon, Midnight Rambler
The Tiger Style is a blast of creamy orange spice, among a stellar lineup described as “gritty tiki.”

Ever since it burst onto the scene nearly two years ago, Midnight Rambler has regularly offered up one of the more ambitious cocktail rotations in Dallas. That can be largely credited to co-owner Chad Solomon, the New York City-trained bartender – and veteran of such places as the famed Milk & Honey and Pegu Club – whose bold and borderline geeky creations are always thoughtfully composed, conceived and curated.

Rambler’s glorious setting, in the lower level of the Joule Hotel, is stunning, and while I wasn’t blown away by the bar’s inaugural drink menu, Solomon’s lineups have proved increasingly sublime with each seasonal reboot.

Chad Solomon, Midnight Rambler
Despite its delicate looks, the Neon Lilikoi is a passionfruit thundercat waiting to pounce.

The current summer lineup is his best yet: It lassoes the ongoing tiki trend and wrenches it into dark and adventurous places, infusing the genre’s cheery Asian South Sea island vibe with hard edges and soulful energy tracing the global Ring of Fire and beyond.

“It’s a gritty tiki,” Solomon says. “We wanted to do something more global, with tropical regions around the world touched by colonialism, man-eating animals and African rhythms.”

In other words, this ain’t your daddy’s Mai Tai. This is dark spice and jungle heat fueled by a soundtrack of steel drums and surf guitars. Take the Samoan War Club, a mix of aged spiced Jamaican rum, agricole rum, West Indian bay leaf, lime sugar oil and the lime-almond influence of falernum, sweetened up with a rich syrup made from gula jawa. Made from coconut sap, it’s one of the world’s oldest sugars, Solomon says, with “sort of a meaty umami-ness.” The drink is also the menu’s most “woodsy,” making up for the absence of any whiskey cocktail in the lineup.

Chad Solomon, Midnight Rambler
The lingering taste of poblano puts a hellfire finish on the Purgatory Lost.

The Purgatory Lost is another standout, incorporating poblano for an appropriately hot finish; so, too is the Neon Lilikoi, a radiantly presented blended-Scotch beaut whose passionfruit rush is held in check with a hint of black cardamom tincture. While Asian flavors — criminally underused in cocktails — are prominent, as in the Savory Hunter, which incorporates lemongrass, cilantro and Thai chili, there are also nods to South America, Africa and the coffee-growing regions of Hawaii.

Make the rich Grasshopper-inspired Komodo Dragon your last drink of the night; its traditional mix of minty Fernet Menta and cacao is supplemented not with heavy cream but with coconut milk and a syrup made from tantalizingly sweet Southeast Asian pandan leaf.

But my favorite of the bunch is the Tiger Style, built on a platform of Batavia Arrack, a rum-like, sugar-cane-based spirit from Southeast Asia. Featuring calamansi (an acidic blend of citrus and kumquat), rich palm sugar, Indonesian black pepper tincture, egg white and earthy cassia spritzed atop a dehydrated lime, it’s a triumph of creamy orange spice dashed with a hint of Fireball cologne.

Co-owner, Midnight Rambler
Solomon on a rare night of bar duty, pouring Tiger Style.

“It was, like, how do we put Indonesia and the Philippines into a glass?” Solomon says. “The more you drink it, the more your lips tingle.”

It’s a hefty, not dainty, drink, a psychedelic Snickerdoodle – or at least that’s what my quivering fingers wrote as I pearl-dove into the cocktail’s delicious depths.

“It takes you into the exotic,” Solomon says, “and intentionally so.”

Wild things, you make my heart sing.

Bartenders, Charity, Cocktails are everywhere, Garden to bar, Most excellent ideas, People, Seasonal, You gotta eat

Saturday’s Off to the FARM: Cultivating cocktails and cuisine for a good cause

Caledonia Spirits
Farm-fresh-minded Amber West, in her days at Central 214, will be back behind the bar at Saturday’s benefit event.

It’s been way too long since the vivacious Amber West has loosed her earthy mixology mettle upon the world, but that’s all going to change on Saturday with Off To The FARM, an epicurean event benefitting Project Transformation, an education-oriented agency serving low-income kids throughout North Texas.

There will be goats. And aquaponics. And hors d’oeuvres from chefs like Hibiscus’ Graham Dodds, Garden Café’s Mark Wootten and Adam West of The Porch. And of course, drinks from Amber West, whose talents once shone behind the bar at Central 214 (where Dodds was chef) before she took a job as Texas rep for Vermont-based Caledonia Spirits.

Off to the FARM runs from 2 to 6 pm Saturday at 314 W. Belt Line in Desoto, just outside of Oak Cliff. The farm facility houses both FARM (Farmers Assisting Returning Military) and Eat The Yard.

Project Transformation, a non-profit education organization offering after-school and summer programs to low-income youth, is putting on the event in partnership with FARM. Participating chefs will create their hors d’oeuvres using the farm’s locally grown produce, and it’s a fair bet that Amber’s cocktails will include some of that fresh stuff, too: As bar manager at Central 214, she had a particular knack – and an undeniable passion – for highlighting seasonal fruits of the land in her cocktails. But then Caledonia stole her away, and then she became even busier still, taking time off to have her second daughter, Sage.

“I’ve supported Project Transformation for the last three years,” she says. “Being a mom, my heart just went out to these kids who don’t have anywhere to go after school. This really saves them from being on the streets.”

This drink at Central 214 benefits literacy programs. Get over there immediately and order one.
Some of West’s previous handiwork, this one for a 2013 Derby Day event.

And with part of Project Transformation’s curriculum including cooking and gardening workshops, she was sold.

West’s cocktails will celebrate springtime and complement the event’s Southern-style menu. And of course, they’ll feature Caledonia’s honey-kissed Barr Hill Gin. And probably herbs and honeysuckle too.

All proceeds will benefit Project Transformation. Tickets for the all-inclusive event are $35 in advance or $40 at the door and can be purchased here. More information is available here.

Alchemy, Barmoire, Fancydranks, Most excellent ideas, Seasonal

Leave it to Barter: A lineup of libations to wrap your holiday noggin around

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Barter eggnog flight
Barter’s Juli Naida applying the torch to one of her nog-out drinks.

If you’re like me, the sight of retailers setting out their Christmas merchandise two weeks before Thanksgiving makes you want to gouge out your eyes. But go figure: The folks at Barter in Uptown have figured out a way to break through my grumpy bah-humbuggery, and they’ve done it by highlighting the best thing about holiday season: The eggnog.

A few weeks ago, Barter bar manager Rocco Milano approached bartender Juli Naida with a peculiar notion. The results are even more than he’d hoped for. “This is all her,” he says.

And what is this? An eggnog flight, my friends. A set of mini-drinks evoking the festive holiday beverage. It’s a pre-Christmas miracle!

Best of all, they’re delicious, from the awesomely named Sweet Chai of Mine – which blends tequila, chai tea, honey and agave – to the creamy-rich If Elvis Nogged, an explosion of Irish whiskey, peanut butter, banana liqueur and vanilla pudding mix. Another is fashioned after lemon meringue pie, with a limoncello whipped-cream topping that Naida flames like a brulee. All either taste like eggnog or incorporate egg whites for a frothy eggnog texture.

Barter eggnog flight
The Nogaholic: Eggnog impersonator.

My favorite of the bunch is the Nogaholic, a dark martini-style drink that mirrors eggnog’s flavor with no egg or cream whatsoever. Instead there’s Cruzan Black Strap rum, simple syrup and a house-made tincture of vanilla, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. “I wanted something sweet,” Naida says. “You can hit the eggnog notes without using any egg.”

Under Milano’s tutelage, Naida has quickly and quietly grown into a real talent behind the bar, and while he provided her with background on some of the spirits she was considering – for instance, the Black Strap rum in the Nogalicious – the recipes are straight from her own noggin. “She has the vision to do stuff like that,” Milano says.

For inspiration, Naida looked around her – to fellow bartender Creighten Brown, for instance, whose favorite smoothie involves peanut butter and banana; and to a non-drinking friend who turned her on to chai. The lemon-meringue one came to her, um, in a dream. “That’s where I completely nerded out,” she says. “It’s embarrassing.”

The $15 flight is arranged from lighter to bolder flavors. The drinks are so rich that you might want to consider sharing them with a date. One may even be inspired, after sampling the flight, to order one as a full $12 cocktail. I’m just saying.

Events, Fort Worth, Seasonal, Spirits and liqueurs

The funnest way to help veterans grow organic produce involves pumpkins and cocktails

Caledonia Spirits
Sweet on you: Caledonia incorporates raw honey into its distillation process.

It’s pumpkin-carving season and as long as you’re going to handle a big knife, you may as well do it with cocktails – and for a good cause, besides.

Fort Worth’s Pacific Table is teaming up with Caledonia Spirits to host a Halloween-themed happy hour and pumpkin-carving contest to benefit veteran-based farming programs, including Dallas’ Eat The Yard, a veteran-owned urban farm that I profiled in The Dallas Morning News last year.

The Oct. 30 event runs from 5:30 to 7:30, with $6 Halloween-y libations from bartender Maria Ortiz showcasing Caledonia’s Barr Hill vodka, gin and barrel-aged gin – for instance, the Pumpkin On A Hill, with vodka and house-made pumpkin-spice syrup. Vermont-based Caledonia, which made its Texas debut six months ago, incorporates raw honey in its distillation process.

For $12, you’ll get a pumpkin and carving tools — with a cocktail included. Or bring your own pumpkin and pay just $6 to enter the contest. (Prizes include dinner for two at the Pacific Northwest-themed restaurant.) Not into carving? Just come and enjoy the spectacle along with $6 cocktails — and maybe drop a little donation in the “Cash-O-Lantern.” So many options: The world is your pumpkin.

Reservations and Halloween costumes are encouraged but not required.

Oak Cliff-based Eat the Yard is a veteran-run urban farm that uses commercial properties, residential properties, community gardens and the occasional rooftop to sustainably grow organic produce.

PACIFIC TABLE, 1600 S. University #601, Fort Worth. 817-887-9995.

Events, Seasonal, Tiki, You gotta eat

Standard Pork: Uptown cocktail bar celebrates spring with a roast-pig luau

The Standard Pour
The Standard Pour makes some tropic thunder this weekend. (Image courtesy of The Standard Pour)

Spring: A time of renewal, of singing birds and blooming flowers, of tiki drinks and roasting pigs.

Yes, it’s spring luau time, and if you need any more explanation than that, here’s Brian McCullough.

“We just wanted to do something fun and cook a pig,” said McCullough, co-founder of The Standard Pour in Uptown. “It’s springtime and we figured this would be fun.”

And there you have it.  The party begins at 6 pm Sunday, April 27. There will be $5 drink specials. If you need more encouragement than that, I can’t help you.

THE STANDARD POUR, 2900 McKinney Ave., Dallas. 214-935-1370.