Tag Archives: Mike Martensen

Barmoire, Cocktail Nation

Denver’s craft cocktail pioneers have the right altitude

Colt & Gray's Cinco de Cuatro: Tequila, Del Maguey Albarradas mezcal, lime, Drambuie
Colt & Gray’s Cinco de Cuatro: Tequila, Del Maguey Albarradas mezcal, lime, Drambuie

DENVER – Whenever I travel to a new city, I like to immerse myself in the customs and culture of the local inhabitants, and by that of course you know I am talking cocktails. I’ve endured the ennui of countless connecting flights at Denver’s airport through the years, but it wasn’t until early this month, prompted by friends, that I visited the actual city for the first time and found that, if you head into Denver’s growing cocktail scene in search of a guy named Brian Smith, you can’t go wrong.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find in Denver besides, possibly, the head of John Elway carved into the side of a mountain, so I was mildly surprised to discover the modest buffet of fine libations thriving in this scenic, famously Mile High City. With its progressive atmosphere, outdoorsy vibe and beautiful setting, it recalled grunge-era Seattle — my former home — before the city was overrun with nouveau riche. The best part is that the half-dozen or so craft cocktail sites I visited were within a couple miles of each other: Downtown Denver and its nearby vibrant, hipster ‘hoods are highly walkable, or at least within reach of a quick cab ride – one foundation of a prime imbibing culture.

In downtown’s hotspot LoDo neighborhood, artisanal-beer-focused Euclid Hall offered a short list of quality beer cocktails – including the excellent Montezuma, in which Peach Street bourbon, Leopold’s orange liqueur and Campari played gracious hosts for Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale. Not far away, dark and thinly veiled behind a basement-level pie shop, Green Russell mined a strict speakeasy vibe, though I found its cleverly named drinks overly complex. The cool thing, though, was they actually had great pie.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign: The house rules at Green Russell.
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign: The house rules at Green Russell.

Farther away, in trendy Highland, the bar crew at acclaimed restaurant Old Major (“seafood, swine and wine”) kept the throngs awaiting dinner tables ably supplied with solid drinks — including a top-notch Negroni, honestly one of the best I’ve ever had.

A friend and I enjoyed some lamb chops and octopus while awaiting entry to Williams & Graham, another popular speakeasy-style bar down the street. Concealed behind a moving bookcase, W&G’s formidable leather-bound menu had a welcome twist I hadn’t seen before: The pages following its basic house cocktail list not only named its spirits by type (gin, rum, agave, etc.) but offered lively, impressively pedigreed descriptions and a few classic cocktails built around each. For example, W&G’s list of Cognac, Brandy and Eau de Vie was preceded by a backgrounder penned by Esquire’s David Wondrich, then followed by related classic cocktails that a curious and/or inspired drinker might consider ordering – the Brandy Crusta, the Pisco Sour, the applejack-driven Jack Rose. In short, a nifty way to be enlightened and linked to cocktail history while sipping a tasty drink.

The shadowy interior of Williams & Graham.
The shadowy interior of Williams & Graham.

Retro-themed restaurant Squeaky Bean may have been my favorite of the bunch. There we found Brian Smith No. 1, the bar manager whose fanciful menu included a trio of cocktails prepared liquid-nitrogen style – a century-old cold-freeze technique that has recently caught some heat – but with some method to his madness.

Smith, who took over Squeaky Bean’s bar program in August, uses liquid nitrogen to plunge the temperature of the glass to a point where even alcohol freezes once poured in. At 40 degrees below zero, the liquid nitrogen boils and evaporates, priming the glass for Smith’s pre-made concoctions, which turn ice-solid before gradually thawing.

“It’s not exactly a slushy,” he says. “It’s not alcohol with little chunks of ice in it. It’s literally crystallized. It’s frozen.”

Liquid nitrogen goes into the glass, then boils away.
Liquid nitrogen goes into the glass, then boils away.

He ‘s not just making any drinks: Smith purposely chose cocktails he says were corrupted from their original form by being turned into frozen slushes over the years: The Hurricane, the Daiquiri and the Margarita. (Though Smith has modified and renamed them Gypsy, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, after characters from the show Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

Smith’s liquid-nitrogen process allows the imbiber to essentially have two cocktails in one: A frozen one – and the original, once the drink has thawed.

At Denver's Squeaky Bean, Brian Smith No. 2's Rocky Mountain alchemy.
The pre-made cocktail is poured in….

Drinking actual liquid nitrogen, by the way, would be an error. Hence the outcry that arose last year when a British bartender failed to remove the substance from a cocktail he served to a young woman celebrating her 18th birthday; she was rushed to the hospital with a perforated stomach. Smith properly ensures all the liquid nitrogen has boiled away, or pours out the residue, before adding the cocktail to the glass. It’s a matter of caution, he says – the same caution he’d take when adding a flamed element to a drink.

The cocktails he pours in are ready to drink as-is. “A good strawberry daiquiri is still a good strawberry daiquiri,” he says. “The cerebral part for me it to turn it, literally, into a frozen cocktail… It’s sort of being playful and saying: ‘This is both.’ It starts as liquid but then freezes into the bastard son of what it originally was.”

... and then freezes solid, before turning to slush.
… and then freezes solid, before turning to slush.

The next day brought brunch at Linger, a globally themed “eatuary” with a sweet view of downtown. The site was once Olinger Mortuary; after its extreme makeover, the new owners lopped the “O” off the huge sign atop the place and then proceeded to pour amazing coconut gin fizzes.

Linger's coconut gin fizz: Starting your weekend morning off right.
Linger’s coconut gin fizz: Starting your weekend morning off right.

Denver is also home to the original Savory Spice Shop, a bartenders’ favorite for its primo extracts such as lavender, vanilla and black walnut. Even Dallas’ Mike Martensen, of Cedars Social and Bar Smyth, swears by the place. “They make the best,” he says.

Denver-based Savory Spice Shop: Doing you a flavor.
Denver-based Savory Spice Shop: Doing you a flavor.

One more night, one more spot: Back in Highland, we had chile-rubbed quail at Colt & Gray – and then closed down the joint with Brian Smith No. 2, the restaurant’s bar manager who scored immediate points by, instead of kicking us out, bringing us a nicely blended Fernet and Campari: A Ferrari.  While his cocktails had made a mighty impression – including the Huge Mistake: W.L. Weller 107 bourbon, lemon, Strega, tiki bitters – it was his accommodating manner and generosity that won us over. The best touch of all: the NFL shirt, once I declared myself a longtime Seattle Seahawks fan, that lay hidden like a speakeasy beneath Brian Smith No. 2’s presentable attire – just one more thing that made me feel at home.

At Colt & Gray, Brian Smith No. 2: Underneath it all, a dude after my own heart.
Colt & Gray’s Brian Smith No. 2: Underneath it all, a 12th Man after my own heart.
Bars, Events, Tales of the Cocktail

Dallas’ Bar Smyth chosen to compete at national bar battle in New Orleans

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Are these bartenders ready to represent or what? Some of the Bar Smyth staff headed to New Orleans.
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.”

Dallas' Bar Smyth, about to prove itself on the national stage
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
Tales of the Cocktail’s annual competition: Not for the faint of bar
Bars, Knox-Henderson

Retro room: The Establishment is officially up and running

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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.

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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.

— Marc Ramirez, 3/8/13

 

Barmoire

Establish’d

Word from the man himself, Mike Martensen, is that The Establishment — the long-awaited, long-delayed, reservations-driven cocktail lounge in Knox-Henderson — is finally up and running.

Located at 4513 Travis Street, the ambitious, three-pronged magnum tipplus from Martensen and Brian Williams — the brains behind The Cedars Social south of downtown — will eventually feature an oyster bar along with its vinyl music tracks in the space once occupied by Trece.

Get over there and let me know what you think!

— Marc Ramirez, posted 3/5/13

Barmoire

Imbibe drinks our milkshake: National magazine highlights Texas cocktails

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Don’t look now, but Texas is having a national cocktail moment: No less than Imbibe magazine, the nation’s premiere publication devoted to all things drinkable, highlights the Lone Star State in its latest issue.

“It’s kind of surprising,” says John Garrett, who represents the spirits division for Texas distributor Virtuoso Selections. “They could have done any state. They picked Texas. They know this is a burgeoning area.”

Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio cocktails, beer and coffee are all featured. Getting deserving cocktail nods from Dallas are The Cedars Social, The Standard Pour, Private/Social, Tate’s and the Black Swan Saloon. More questionable recommendations are dining-centric Local, the fast fading Chesterfield and, most incredibly, the Establishment, described in great detail as an “experience for a Dallas night you won’t soon forget” even though the place has yet to actually open as of today. Way to go, Imbibe!

Nevertheless, the focus on Texas shows the state is finally emerging from behind the national curve when it comes to cocktails, and Lone Star luminaries such as Houston’s Alba Huerta and San Antonio’s Jeret Pena are prominently featured. There’s even a drink recipe from The Cedars Social’s Mike Martensen.

Things are only going to get better here.

— Marc Ramirez, 3/2/13

Barmoire

The Cedars Social earns a 2013 James Beard nod

Raise a toast for the hometown boys: Dallas’ The Cedars Social, which I recently highlighted in conjunction with the locally pioneering cocktail lounge’s second anniversary, is among the semi-finalists for best bar program in this year’s prestigious James Beard Foundation awards.

The 2013 semi-finalists, in 20 national and regional categories representing food, wine and drink, will be narrowed down to smaller lists of finalists by mid-March, with the winners announced at the foundation’s national awards event in May.

The Cedars Social, which Brian Williams and Mike Martensen opened in Dallas in February 2011, joins two dozen other bar-program nominees on the list, including Houston’s Anvil Bar & Refuge, New Orleans’ Cure, Portland’s Clyde Common, Seattle’s Canon and New York’s Pegu Club.

The raspberry-syrup-infused Quaker, one of The Cedars Social’s Prohibition-Era cocktails.

— Marc Ramirez, posted 2/19/13

Barmoire

Social imagineering

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The renaissance was going to reach Dallas eventually: The craft-cocktail tsunami washing inland from the coasts was too powerful for a city this big to ignore.

Dallas can be maddeningly set in its ways, but sooner or later someone was going to blaze the trail, and two years later, Mike Martensen and Brian Williams are still standing. And not just standing, but aiming to take the city’s rapidly maturing cocktail culture to a new level.

This month, The Cedars Social – their first joint project – quietly marked its two-year anniversary. If you’re looking for the place that truly stirred Dallas from its Crown Royal doldrums, this would be it.

This isn’t to ignore the bartenders who’d already been making a humble practice of honoring classic drinks and squeezing fresh juices, or the handful of restaurants and high-end hotels that had started toying with craft cocktails to mark the growing trend. But The Cedars Social was the first to say: This is what we do. This is who we are.

Someday — and hopefully someday soon — Martensen and Williams will open phase one of The Establishment, their ambitious trident of a cocktail-centered operation in Knox-Henderson. For some, the pair’s painstaking, indefinite efforts to ready the place for presentation resemble not so much a bar opening as the how-much-longer-are-you-going-to-be-in-the-bathroom machinations of a teen princess primping for the prom.

It’s hard, though, to fault their perfectionism. February 2011 was not so long ago, and yet, back then, The Cedars Social’s opening was a splash of watercolor on gray canvas. Despite a succession of quality chefs in the kitchen, it’s still as it ever was: A breath of fresh air not just for a less-traveled neighborhood seeking life but for a city poised to move to a new level. With its classy wood-and-brick library feel, simple stylishness and a savvy locale drawing a refreshingly diverse regular clientele, The Cedars Social wasn’t just another bar: It’s in every sense a cocktail lounge – smart and innovatively drink-centered, committed to fresh ingredients, focused on casual community and the cocktail as experience.

‘There’s something about the way they’ve set it up – from the cocktails to the food to the music they play – that totally disarms people and makes them feel like they belong there,” says Dallas Morning News reporter Gromer Jeffers, a Cedars Social regular.

Meanwhile, look what we’ve gotten since: In Uptown, Private/Social, Tate’s and Standard Pour; in Plano, Whiskey Cake; The People’s Last Stand at Mockingbird Station; The Usual in Fort Worth; Bowl and Barrel near Northpark; Sunset Lounge downtown. Meanwhile, longtime craft masters like Charlie Papaceno of Windmill Lounge, Libertine’s Mate Hartai, Black Swan’s Gabe Sanchez, Bolsa’s Kyle Hilla, Oak’s Abe Bedell and Grant Parker at Hibiscus continue to work cocktail magic in less obvious settings.

“As soon as they opened, that blew it open for everyone,” says bartender Chris Dempsey of The People’s Last Stand.  “People really look to them in homage.”

Here’s what I want when I walk into a cocktail joint. I want a seat at the bar. I want to know my bartender. I want a quality cocktail with ingredients as fresh as possible. I want a constantly refilled glass of water. I want decent food. I want a bartender adept with the gab, well versed in the classics and able to riff. I want someone willing to make what I want but equally skillful at getting me to try something new. I want a drink menu of variety and daring, low on gimmickry, easy to read. I want a crowd there to socialize, not to party. I want a place where I’m just as comfortable meeting friends or making new ones as I am doing a crossword. And I want the bartender to remember me the next time I walk in.

The Cedars Social has been doing this for me from Day One. Granted, being just south of downtown it’s close to my usual place of business, but I consider that cool karma for a boy who had to be dragged kicking and screaming from cocktail-culture-rich Seattle.

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Williams, a former Green Bay Packer, had been looking to open his own bar for a while. Places like Death & Co. in New York City, the Violet Room in Chicago and Bryant’s Cocktail Lounge in Milwaukee helped shape his vision.

Then he met Martensen, a palate-blessed upstart from Casper, Wyo., who’d been a spirits ambassador for Diageo and barman at The Mansion at Turtle Creek. Both shared a similar passion for the craft and the idea of a place that would be a quality cocktail bar first with great food rather than an upscale restaurant with great drinks.

“It’s definitely a cocktail place first,” Williams says, taking a minute to ask a new bartender to double-strain an herb-heavy drink before presenting it to a patron. “For me it was always about quality, the art of the craft.”

Take away the food, and you’ve still got The Cedars Social. But take away the craft cocktails, and The Cedars Social is gone. Social is the key word. I can’t tell you how many ongoing acquaintances and friendships have been sparked at the bar.

One mark of its greatness is that it doesn’t matter who’s wielding the shaker: You’re going to get a great drink from someone who respects balance, flavor, history and service, who can just as soon whip up something original as throw down any of a long list of classic cocktails in the bar menu along with a seasonal array of originals, a smattering of Prohibition-Era gems and a handful of “tributes” – notable cocktails from other bartenders around the country whose inclusion here reflects the bar’s anti-cookie-cutter ethos of artistry and originality. (My favorite of these has been the Number Four, a mix of gin, honey syrup, cardamom and cracked pepper designed by Tanqueray global rep Angus Winchester.)

The bottles huddled behind the bar are wide-ranging and forward-thinking. Whiskey in particular is well represented. You can still order a vodka and soda. But why would you?

“We may be running on the beach right now, but we’re still moving forward,” Martensen told me during The Cedars Social’s first year of operation. “Every day I get somebody who doesn’t drink gin to drink gin.”

The prevalence of craft cocktails around town shows how adventurous the city’s palates have become in the meantime. The Cedars Social’s latest menu re-do features a pair of drinks built around vermouth, another sign of the bar’s vanguard thinking. Not in the mood? Order one of the city’s best Sazeracs instead. And while you’re at it, congratulate The Cedars Social on two years of cocktail pioneering. Dallas is much the better for it.

— Marc Ramirez, 2/14/13

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Barmoire

Dallas bartenders make a Lone Star splash at national cocktail festival

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As Private/Social’s Rocco Milano put it, things went wrong. Campari bottles broke. Ordered produce was nowhere to be seen. A batch of concentrated blackberry mix blew up in Whiskey Cake bartender Bonnie Wilson’s car.

Whatevs. Texas knows how to go big, never mind the circumstances. And given their chance in the spotlight, Dallas bartenders left their Lone Star mark on this year’s 10th annual Tales Of The Cocktail conference in New Orleans: No one who stepped into the Iberville Ballroom of the Hotel Monteleone could leave saying they didn’t have a good time. OK, maybe whoever had to clean up the blackberry juice. But on the whole. Seriously.

Drinks flowed. Multitudes appeared. Moods lifted. The Chesterfield’s Eddie “Lucky” Campbell sang a song. And this was all before noon.

The Chesterfield’s Campbell with the double-pour.

“Come And Get It! Cocktails Texas Style!” was the title of the Wednesday morning tasting event, and despite the tricky A.M. draw on the festival’s opening day, word in the stairwells was that the session was the rockingest party in its time slot. An all-star crew of Dallas barmen and women shook their stuff for a packed room of conference attendees: There was Mike Martensen of The Cedars Social, Oak’s Abe Bedell, Standard Pour’s Brian McCullough, Jay Kosmas of Marquee Grill & Bar… the list goes on.

But even before the doors opened at 10:30 a.m., things looked a little shaky, and not in the diffused citrus and disintegrating ice-crystals sort of way. A day earlier, Bonnie Wilson had arrived with bottles of blackberry puree corked and sealed by Whiskey Cake’s Sean Conner, then checked into the hotel. Sugars fermented. Pressure built. The next morning, they opened the car to find that streams of puree had burst through the box overnight. “It looked like a paintball gun had hit the roof,” Conner said.

One bottle survived. And now it was Wednesday morning and the Dallas bartenders frantically readied workstations, setting up tiny sampler glasses, organizing their mises-en-place.

Then, suddenly, Bonnie Wilson’s voice cut through the room: “Oh, Anthony!”

Then, anyone who turned to watch, which was everybody, saw a blast of burgundy spewing in a volcanic rush from Conner’s surviving bottle of berry mix, which Whiskey Cake’s Anthony Krencik had just uncorked. Before they could stanch the flow, much of the mix had doused them and the hotel carpet in a bath of goopy concentrate.

Kosmas, as always unflappable amid the chaos, walked in two minutes later. “Oh, another explosion?” he said.

Bonnie Wilson’s “Bird” was a fetching blend of Evan Williams single-barrel whiskey, black tea, blackberry puree and Benedictine topped with sweet vanilla cream and mint leaf.

Meanwhile, Bolsa’s Hilla had had to scramble when the produce he’d ordered never showed, forcing a last-minute cab ride to the market. His planned drink – the Cherry Pit – became, well, something else. “You can call it the Plum Pit,” he said.

Before long the troublesome juju was lost in an increasingly happy flow of people, who sampled drinks ranging from Abe Bedell’s Barbados Breeze – a frosty blend of Mount Gay XO rum, basil, ginger, lime, pineapple and banana-coconut sorbet – to Kosmas’ Oaxaca Sour, a deliciously smoky blend of Ilegal mezcal, Texas grapefruit, honey cordial, egg white, lime, barrel-aged bitters and a sprinkling of nutmeg.

Bolsa’s Kyle Hilla made do with a last-minute produce run.

Martensen and Cedars Social owner Brian Williams had recreated a mini version of their bar in the ballroom, propping up signature menus and a small array of books on the table to evoke Cedars’ study-like atmosphere. Martensen had gone as basic as possible. “I’m doing the original margarita,” he said. “We want to represent Texas, right?”

Martensen has been coming to Tales for years, and Williams joined him starting four years ago. But Dallas was barely represented otherwise, and today’s splash showed how far the scene has come.

“It’s good representation for Dallas,” Williams said. “We have so many chain restaurants, and people get caught up in the whole restaurants-per-capita thing It’s good to let people know we’re out there.”

The Cedars Social’s Mike Martensen made margaritas. “We’re representing Texas, right?”

Eventually, Chesterfield’s Campbell – who was flanked by New Orleans native and Dallas chef David Anthony Temple, he of the festive “underground” dinners – would make a prideful speech and belt out “Deep In The Heart Of Texas.”

You could say Private/Social’s Milano was, well, moved. “As I look around the room, this is, to me, a minor miracle,” he said. “This is awesome. We are not a backwater third-tier market.”

And Krencik, in the conference T-shirt he’d quickly bought to replace his berry-drenched top, added this: “Texas is one of those states everybody knows, but they probably don’t expect us to bring a cocktail game. But from five years ago to now, it has just skyrocketed. We’re, like, the underdogs, coming out and showing that we can shake.”

The fun showed no sign of slowing down until conference officials finally shooed everyone out of the room. As the buoyant Dallas bunch headed onto the streets of the French Quarter to celebrate at nearby Mr. B’s Bistro, a hotel staff person came up to Bolsa’s Hilla.

“Sir,” she said. “Your produce is here.”

Dallas’ Lauren Laposta was here to help the Lone Star State represent.

— Marc Ramirez

Published 7-27-12

Barmoire

D and Easy: Tales of the Cocktail opens with Dallas on menu

Lucky Campbell of The Chesterfield says hello to New Orleans.

Tales of the Cocktail, the premier party event for the nation’s bartenders, cocktail chroniclers and spirit and liqueur reps, is officially underway in the Big Easy, with one big D of difference:

For the first time, Dallas bartenders have a special seat at the table, with a tasting event called “Come and Get It! Cocktails Texas Style!”

I’m not sure what the purpose of that second exclamation point is, but suffice it to say that the sampling of local luminaries – including Jason Kosmas of Marquee Grill & Bar, Rocco Milano of Private/Social and Michael Martensen of Cedars Social – on hand to show what makes the Lone Star State so dadgum special are awfully excited.

Bartending tool seller Cocktail Kingdom represents with shakers, jiggers and coupes.

I’ll be posting dispatches from that event and some of the 10th annual festival’s other cocktail workshops, tastings, contests, industry showdogging and requisite revelry along the way.  Most of the action will be going down at the veritable Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street, home to the revolving Carousel Bar and birthplace of the Vieux Carre cocktail.

The Vieux Carre is one of several classic cocktails with roots in New Orleans, which makes this festive city an appropriate home for the yearly event founded by Ann Tuennerman and just one more reason to shower it with love.

Tales of the Cocktail has taken over New Orleans’ Hotel Monteleone. In the background, event founder and executive director Ann Tuennerman talks with a conference attendee.

This is my first year at the festival, and I’m already wowed by the offerings: tributes to rum, apertifs and cucaçao; workshops on Russian drinking culture, foraged ingredients, bartending ecology and even the health benefits of alcohol spiked with beneficial herbs. Some of us will see how bartenders have been portrayed in popular culture, make our own vermouths and bitters or experience the whisky bars of Japan.

These are marathon days, launching with Bloody Marys and oysters on the half-shell when most other people are barely pawing at bagels and drearily sipping morning coffee. Making it through the race requires a shrewd sense of pacing, indomitable endurance and a mighty constitution.

Let’s do this.

Absolut Breakfast.

– Marc Ramirez

Published 7-25-12