True oyster lovers know there’s no better way to enjoy nature’s briny gift to humankind than to slurp them right out of the half-shell. Well, not unless you’re at Driftwood, the Oak Cliff seafood oasis that has possibly invented the perfect way to love our luscious little friends – slurped right out of the half-shell and then followed by excellent half-shell shots.
Imagine yourself sitting at Driftwood’s newly expanded absinthe bar. Imagine it’s Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, because those are currently the only days when this is available. Suddenly – because you’ve ordered the oyster shell shooter special – four delicious Blue Point oysters appear in front of you, gleaming in their little half-shell boats. Of course you’re ready to pounce, but wait: Here come four glorious bottles, a beckoning backdrop to your bivalve bonanza.
Um, this.
Now, then: You may proceed. Oyster No. 1, down the hatch. Your friendly bartender raises the first bottle – mild, sweet La Guita Manzanilla sherry – and fills your still-briny oyster shell with a mini shot. You drink. Above you, clouds part and a sunbeam envelops you in a heavenly glow. (Your mileage may vary.) Each bottle gets its turn in a half-shell as you finish off oysters two through four: Del Maguey Vida mezcal. Laphroig single malt whiskey. And finally, sweet licorice-y Pernod.
The order is deliberate, explains Dallas bar man extraordinaire Michael Martensen, who hatched the concept in collaboration with UrbanDaddy Dallas editor Kevin Gray. (Gray had been eating oysters in New York once when he was suddenly inspired to have the barkeep top off one of nature’s cups with Laphroig.) “The sherry is soft,” says Martensen, co-founder of Misery Loves Co., which owns and operates Driftwood. “The mezcal is the next softest, but introduces smokiness. The Laphroig has a burn; it’s a smoke bomb in your face. And the Pernod is a whole other flavor – it’s got a dessert quality, so you want to finish with it.”
And it goes a little something like this.
For those who haven’t ventured beyond more basic spirits, the four liquids might present a challenge, as several are generally acquired tastes. It’s a fine way to measure a companion’s taste for derring-do. But look, if you’re willing to put a raw oyster in your mouth, it’s not that much of a leap to consider accenting it with an intriguing alcoholic beverage, right?
The whole experience runs a reasonable 20 bucks. And just in time for National Oyster Day.
The 86 Co. spirits line, shown here at New Orleans’ Gravier Street Social.
Perhaps you are accustomed to your wine and beer dinners being proper, stately affairs. Perhaps you are given to gatherings punctuated with string quartets and at which your only words to a total stranger might be “Check, please.”
Then perhaps you are not quite prepared for Aug. 18’s “86 & Noise” dinner that aims to infuse Dallas’ LARK on the Park with an experience that head barman Matt Orth calls “edgy, fun and sexy.”
Imagine realigned tables and a revamped sound system. “It’s going to be as brash as possible,” Orth says. “But in a good way. We want you guys to mingle and jump around.”
And, possibly, to jump up and get down.
The four-course dinner will highlight The 86 Co., the celebrated spirits line launched in late 2012 by a trio of fine gentlemen including Austin-by-way-of-Dallas-resident Jason Kosmas. Kosmas, co-founder of legendary New York craft-cocktail bar Employees Only, will host the dinner along with Orth and 86 Co. Texas brand ambassador Omar YeeFoon.
“It’s not going to be like your normal wine-tasting dinner,” YeeFoon says. “We’re gonna try to make it very communal. We’re going to try to get people who don’t know each other to sit together.”
LARK on the Park’s Matt Orth, who not only knows how to make a good drink but how to enjoy one too.
In other words, wear deodorant. But mostly, prime your palate for a 6 p.m. cocktail hour with cocktails and tastings of The 86 Co.’s signature spirits: Tequila Cabeza, Ford’s Gin, Aylesbury Duck & Weave Vodka and Cana Brava Rum.
Dinner – which will include grilled shrimp, steak tartare and grilled jerk chicken – will start at 7 p.m., with each 86 Co. spirit having its turn in a Matt Orth-designed cocktail to accompany each course.
“The whole idea behind it is to just be fun,” YeeFoon says.
Tickets are $75 plus tax and gratuity. I’d make reservations if I were you.
LARK ON THE PARK, 2015 Woodall Rodgers Fwy, Dallas. 214-855-5275.
Thirst rides a bar stool: Hit the Windmill for the good, the badass and the linguini.
“I’m just a simple man of God.”
“Well, it’s time we unsimplify you, Reverend.”
The mysterious man rode in from the West, and before long the townsfolk would be looking to him to save their wretched lives. But that’s what happens when you’re packing whiskey, and Chris Furtado, Texas state manager for Utah-based High West Distillery, rose to the occasion.
On Monday, Furtado pardnered up with Dallas’ Windmill Lounge to present Spaghetti + Western Night, a “pasta and pistols” event they hope to make a regular occurrence. For $10 – barely a fistful of dollars, let’s face it – you’ll score a plate of pasta and an accompanying High West spirit-based cocktail to go along with the night’s chosen Western flick.
This week’s inaugural outing featured “High Plains Drifter,” the 1973 Clint Eastwood classic with dialogue like the above and a frontierswoman disparaging Eastwood’s character with the line: “From a distance you’d almost pass for a man.” The hearty, homey pasta was bowtie, the cocktail a theme-conscious, bitter and refreshing “Sergio” made with High West’s Double Rye whiskey, Ramazotti amaro and sparkling cider. The Windmill’s Charlie Papaceno even wore an apron. “This is a real Texas pasta because it’s got beans in it,” he said in his best Lee Van Cleef scowl.
If you want to ride in and hitch your horse for the next showing, “The Outlaw Josey Wales (another Eastwood vehicle) will hit the screen at 8 p.m. Monday, May 5. You might even run into a few of your favorite bartenders.
WINDMILL LOUNGE, 5320 Maple Ave., Dallas. 214-443-7818.
Pisco: More versatile than you might think. Wednesday’s dinner at Barter will now demonstrate.
UPDATE, April 30: Barter has postponed its pisco dinner until late May. Stay tuned for updates.
Posted April 29: Hump Day is coming and the pantry is empty. What’s a person to do? A pair of drink-paired dinners on the schedule might help you make your decision.
First up, in Lower Greenville, is the Libertine Bar’s monthly beer dinner, which this month showcases the brews of Central Texas. The five-course menu features items like Texas sturgeon and venison blood sausage, complemented by a beer lineup that includes Adelbert’s Flying Monk (Austin) and Rogness Rook (Pflugerville). Price is $60 and the full menu is available here.
If Peruvian brandy is more your thing, Barter in Uptown is offering a three-course meal paired with cocktails featuring Pisco Porton, which thanks to a big marketing push seems to be everywhere these days. For $30, you’ll start with a welcome punch before noshing on drink-supplemented goodies like tuna crudo and banana-ginger empanadas.
Bar manager Rocco Milano knows the first thing — and probably the only thing — people think of when they hear pisco is a Pisco Sour and so he promises a Pisco-Sour-free drink lineup. “It’s a fun spirit that has totally been pigeonholed,” he says.
Reservations are required for both events.
LIBERTINE BAR, 2101 Greenville Ave., Dallas. 214-824-7900.
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.
Plays well with food: Last month’s whiskey-paired dinner at Plano’s Whiskey Cake.
More than three years later, the memories linger. Five courses at one of the city’s best restaurants, each paired with cocktails made by five of the city’s best bartenders, and all featuring Maker’s Mark whiskey.
The scene was Seattle’s Spur Gastropub, and the chefs were rocking it as usual. (Example: sous vide pork belly with sunchokes and Bing cherries – whut whut?) The all-star bartender lineup cranked out an assembly line of original cocktails like the Pine Box, with its grilled-pineapple garnish. There was even some Maker’s 46, which was about to hit the market in summer 2010. We were a happy bunch.
I moved to Dallas soon afterward, and since then I’ve been to barely a handful of spirit or cocktail-themed dinners, though not for lack of want. Last month some friends and I hit a Hudson Whiskey-themed dinner at Whiskey Cake in Plano. And as I do every time I go to one of these events, I wondered: Why doesn’t this happen more often?
Wine and beer dinners have long been a thing, but bartenders like J.W. Tate – formerly of Tate’s Dallas – at first faced resistance to the notion of making a one-stop night of cocktails and food. That’s starting to change as DFW’s cocktail culture comes of age – a welcome and logical step in the scene’s continuing evolution.
Tate’s offered two spirits-paired dinners before J.W. left Dallas earlier this year to head up a company venture in Winston-Salem, N.C., and places like Dallas’ Libertine Bar and La Duni have experimented with the idea too. “People are trying it,” says Libertine’s Mate Hartai. “It’s just going to take a while for the wheels to hit the ground.”
Among a cocktail dinner’s challenges: Quickly producing drinks en masse. At Seattle’s Spur, an assembly line of bartenders churn out pairings for a Maker’s Mark dinner.
One reason for the slow going is that these dinners — which generally run from $35 to $100 — aren’t easy to pull off. Cocktails are time-intensive and demand smaller groups; achieving drink consistency can be difficult when produced in a bunch. And the kind of patron who embraces the idea of a cocktail dinner isn’t going to tolerate pre-batched drinks.
On the other hand, the ever-broadening assortment of quality spirits, cordials and apertifs give bartenders a grand palette to work from.
“It’s rewarding when you do it right,” Hartai says. “But it’s much more difficult than people think.”
***
The glasses are set, pretty orbs in a row, when a legion of Sazeracs appear in our midst. The classic cocktail is the evening’s first volley at last month’s Hudson-themed dinner at Whiskey Cake. The Plano restaurant’s dinner showcased the Hudson line’s various incarnations, from its New York Corn Whiskey, well paired with chef Brent Hammer’s charred octopus; and Four Grain Bourbon, solidly supporting an extraordinary, In-N-Out-inspired dry-aged-sirloin burger; and more.
Whiskey Cake’s Hudson dinner kicked off with a classic Sazerac.
Sean Conner, Whiskey Cake’s beverage director, tackles pairings the way he does cocktails, dissecting courses’ flavor profiles to match. “Certain things go with blackberry or cinnamon or basil,” he says. “It takes six weeks to plan out four or five different cocktails and make them really special.”
Pairing cocktails with food offers some of the same challenges that went into creating, say, sweet-and-sour chicken, with its mix of sweet and savory. “You try to figure out how someone else solved that puzzle,” says Libertine’s Hartai. “To me, that’s really fun. It takes a lot of out-of-the-box thinking.”
Last year, when Tate’s offered a cocktail-paired dinner with chef DAT (David Anthony Temple), “DAT sent over a menu, and I riffed on that,” Tate says. “We talked a bit, and I threw out a cocktail menu, and we each made changes as it got closer…. It’s a lot like making music, with two people jamming – you throw something out there and the other person runs with it, and five weeks later you’ve got something.”
When Temple said he was doing garlic soup, Tate immediately thought of Campari and came up with a drink called the Italian Resistance. On its own, the drink’s various elements struggled to mingle, but fared much better as a pairing. Similarly, a chanterelle-and-pink-peppercorn-infused vodka drink went nicely with Temple’s speck and arugula salad but its savory character made it less pleasurable as a stand-alone cocktail.
The bar’s whiskey-themed dinner in April was a treat, pairing peppery Buffalo Trace Single Oak Barrel whiskey, for instance, with corn soup with fried pig ear, parsley crème fraiche and house-made hot sauce.
J.W. Tate, formerly of Tate’s Dallas, which was among spirit-paired dinners’ early adopters.
And last year, at Libertine’s whiskey-and-beer-paired dinner featuring three Scotches and two hefty beers, Hartai wanted to echo the flavors of Lagavulin. “I sat down with the chef and said, `I need smoke, earth and some kind of heat.’ He did a mushroom compote with this awesome smoked-pork thing and some vinegary thing for a kick. It took the whiskey apart into its larger flavor components.”
More recently he did what he called an Italian dinner, but by dinner’s end he had unveiled it more precisely as a vermouth-paired dinner. “The whole point was to change people’s minds about vermouth,” he says. “By the end, people were drinking straight glasses of vermouth and saying, `This is great!’ Well, yeah, it is.”
Hartai likes to save a palate-testing curve ball for the last course. “I want to jar people, give them a reason to talk,” he says. “If you realize you’re putting together an experience aimed at creating lasting memories and challenging palates, you can make an awesome dinner.”
At Tate’s whiskey dinner, Buffalo Trace Single Oak Barrel was paired with this delicious corn soup with fried pig ear.Whiskey Cake’s dinner featured this tasty treat alongside Hudson’s Four Grain Bourbon.
Looking for a cocktail or spirits-themed dinner? Contact these spots and see what’s on the schedule, or follow them on Facebook.
WHISKEY CAKE KITCHEN AND BAR, 3601 Dallas Parkway, Plano. 972-993-2253. Offers quarterly alcohol-paired dinners.
LIBERTINE BAR, 2101 Greenville Ave., Dallas. 214-824-7900. Does dinners monthly, generally beer.
LA DUNI LATIN KITCHEN, four locations in Dallas/Fairview. Offers cocktail-paired, three-course dinners. Join the restaurant’s “inner circle” at one of its locations or at www.laduni.com to advance notice of such events.
Boulevardier’s Eddie Eakin knocking out Maker’s 46 cocktails at Chefs for Farmers 2013.
Hey, Chefs For Farmers: You can tell everybody this is your song, because last weekend I was reminded like a big slap in the face how wonderful life is when you’re in the world. Or in Dallas, anyway.
Yep: Four days later, I’m still recovering from the Elton-John-esque epicness that was Chefs For Farmers 2013, which brought more than a thousand of my fellow food and drink aficionados to Dallas’ Robert E. Lee Park to basically form obstacles between my appetite and all the tasty consumables that were there to be had.
Cafe Momentum’s smoked bison tamale with fig mole, among Sunday’s culinary bounty.
Not that it mattered. I realized that by the end of the all-afternoon event that I had partaken of cow, pig, bison, duck, rabbit and boar, not to mention a bit of chicken liver spread. (Thanks to a late dinner at Nora, I managed to add lamb to the day’s lineup, too.) As CraveDFW’s Steven Doyle put it, there were a lot of critters in my belly.
Little of the fare could be called average. Far more of it ranged from very good to outstanding, from Parigi’s wild boar Bolognese (my personal fave) to the short-rib soup from The Mansion At Turtle Creek (fab) to the euphoria-inducing maple-pecan-bacon ice cream (!!!) from Jack Perkins of Maple and Motor and Slow Bone BBQ. Dude, Sweet Chocolate’s drinking chocolate with carrot-lemon foam was a standout, too.
But there were drinks, too, which is what had initially drawn your intrepid cocktails scribe to the picnic-blanket-and-revelry-covered scene. Boulevardier’s Eddie Eakin, High West Distillery’s Chris Furtado and Ten Bells Tavern’s Greg Matthews cranked out Maker’s 46 magic – including Eakin’s Steep Buzz, which married the Kentucky bourbon with Earl Grey honey syrup, ginger liqueur, lemon and apple bitters. “I’ve never made a thousand cocktails at once before,” Eakin said, managing not to seem overwhelmed.
Ryan Sumner and Julian Pagan of Cedars Social, craftily engineering a good time for all.
The drinks poured forth from nearby fellow libationists, including Cedars Social’s Julian Pagan and Ryan Sumner, Central 214’s Amber West, Abacus’ Lucky Campbell and The People’s Last Stand’s Brad Bowden. I had to give my nod to the Autumn’s Apple cocktail from The Standard Pour’s Christian Armando and Brian McCullough, a spicy medley of Patron Reposado, cinnamon syrup, lemon, apple cider and Angostura bitters.
Until next year, Chefs For Farmers, when I’m counting on one of those excellent chefs to bring some goat to the party. Don’t go breakin’ my heart.
Chef David Anthony Temple got into the fun with attendee Sheila Abbott.
Christian Armando of Standard Pour doing double-duty.
CraveDFW’s Steven Doyle awards me my Maker’s Mark pin.
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
