Tag Archives: Milk & Honey

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.

Bars, Bartenders, Cocktail history, Cocktail Legends, Community, Tributes

Cocktail community remembers legendary bar man in nationwide “Milk & Honey Hour”

Milk and Honey
Milk and Honey’s Sasha Petraske, in a still shot from the documentary Hey Bartender.

With coupes raised high, members of Dallas’ craft-cocktails community paid tribute last night to Sasha Petraske, the influential bar man who pioneered or popularized many of the elements linked with the culture today.

Petraske, who launched Milk & Honey in a quiet residential area of New York’s Lower East Side in 1999, died August 21 of unknown causes. A sartorially polished sort whose exactitude and attention to proper form inspired the way many craft cocktail establishments comport themselves today, he was also instrumental in the development of San Antonio’s cocktail scene and a beloved mentor to many in the industry nationwide.

Midnight Rambler
Aleeza Gordon, of Greenwich Village’s Little Branch, delivers the memorial toast.

Bartenders across the country were invited to salute the 42-year-old legend on Monday evening at 9 p.m., the hour at which Milk & Honey would open its speakeasy-style doors. In Dallas, that went down at Midnight Rambler, whose owners, Chad Solomon and Christy Pope, both worked at Milk & Honey more than a decade ago and went on to partner with Petraske in a bar consulting business called Cuffs and Buttons.

Aleeza Gordon of Little Branch, the bar Petraske started in Greenwich Village, led the Midnight Rambler toast for the 30 or so people in attendance.

“He cared about the way that he looked,” Gordon said from her perch atop the bar. “No matter how crazy and interesting the night got, he seemed to be a gentle man. He cared about the way things were done; I think that’s why all of you came to honor him, because you feel the impact of his caring.”

Midnight Rambler
At Midnight Rambler, Petraske’s favorite cocktail, the Daiquiri.

She recalled Petraske’s frequent visits to Little Branch, as well as her occasionally nervous execution of the “ridiculously simple” drinks he would order, such was his presence. “He wanted things to be done right,” she said. “But he did it in a way that made you feel good.”

And with that, a covey of daiquiris – Petraske’s favorite cocktail – rose skyward. Glasses clinked and a group bid farewell to the friend, a mentor and colleague who’d helped shape the world they now inhabited.

Bars, Bartenders, Cocktail Legends, People

An influential bar man passes on: NYC’s Sasha Petraske, whose legacy is a land of Milk & Honey

Milk & Honey
Petraske pioneered or made popular many of today’s craft-cocktail bar practices. (Ben Rose Photography)

Milk & Honey appeared on New York’s Lower East Side in 1999, when today’s rocketing craft cocktail renaissance was practically still on the launchpad. The proprietor was a debonair young gent named Sasha Petraske, who in deference to his mostly residential-area neighbors instituted a number of features that would be copied by other cocktail spots in years to come: A speakeasy-style unmarked location and entrance (to be inconspicuous). A reservations-only policy (to avoid lines of people outside). A no-standing policy at the bar (to quell hooliganism). And because Petraske was a decorum-minded soul, rules of behavior to maintain civility (for instance, asking men to remove their hats and not hit on women).

Other practices would follow, also to become cocktail-bar staples – things like hand-carved ice, an adherence to jiggers and water served with cucumber slices. “If he didn’t outright originate (those practices), he was the most successful champion of them early on,” said Chad Solomon, who along with fellow New York ex-pat Christy Pope now runs Midnight Rambler in downtown Dallas.

And so it was with much sadness that the craft-cocktail world absorbed the news that Petraske had died Friday of unknown causes in Hudson, N.Y., as reported by The New York Times. He was just 42.

Both Solomon and Pope got to know Petraske well, having worked at Milk & Honey in the early 2000s; both bartended and worked as servers in the intimate, 34-seat, candle-lit venue to which customers had to be buzzed in. Petraske had flown in for Midnight Rambler’s grand opening in October 2014, and the two were among the attendees’ at Petraske’s recent wedding.

“Shock doesn’t even cover it,” Solomon said Friday. “It’s a very sad day.”

Even more than his contribution to cocktail culture, Solomon said, Petraske stood out for his generosity and decency. “He was always self-aware, always about becoming a better man,” he said.

Petraske helped launch a number of prominent bars and, in partnership with others, created stalwart spots like Greenwich Village’s Little Branch, Queens’ Dutch Kills and Varnish in Los Angeles. Such was his sway that when San Antonio’s Bohanan’s Prime Steaks & Seafood sought to overhaul its bar in hopes of revitalizing the city’s Riverwalk area, Petraske was brought in to train the staff. He would go on to become a co-founder of the San Antonio Cocktail Conference and was among the New York City bartenders featured in the 2013 documentary Hey Bartender.

His reservations-only and no-standing policies would be adopted by places like Dallas’ Bar Smyth (now closed), while Denver’s Green Russell has been among the bars that similarly posted rules of decorum for their customers. Meanwhile, speakeasy-style entrances, hand-carved ice and cucumber water are everywhere.

While the original Milk & Honey had closed, Petraske was planning to reopen at a new location.

“He was never content to leave things static,” Solomon said. “He was always looking to improve. His influence cannot be overstated.”