World-renowned food and beverage writer Charles H. Baker, Jr., published his most famous work, The Gentleman’s Companion, in two volumes in 1939. The second half of that series offers some of the best exotic drink recipes every published, as well as some of the most purple, flowery prose you might be lucky enough to find. The “Jigger, Beaker, Flask,” flight will always be a staple of our menus as a rotating selection of three favorites… Read More
As you may or may not know, we keep our House Gin & Tonic on tap, a process that makes service super easy but that involved more numbers and science than we usually communicate. We pack 640oz of our house tonic and Castle & Key’s Restoration Gin under 16psi. And though it took about 24 tries to get the system right, it cranks out about 106 House G&Ts with inspiring consistency. So, in the end:… Read More
We’re all familiar with the Old Fashioned Cocktail but it’s less known that ‘Old Fashioned’ actually refers to a construction: sugar, bitter, spirit, and citrus rind. In the later part of the 19th century, it was very much the fashion to “improve” the Old Fashioned cocktail by adding maraschino, a dash of absinthe, and/or curaçao. One iconic version of this format was the Improved Holland Cocktail (or “Improved Gin Cocktail”), made with the Dutch Genever. Read More
sweet tropical fruit, clove, allspice, big bold flavors Planter’s rum, lemon, oleo saccharum, grenadine, gunpowder green tea, pineapple juice, monk bitters The historic Planter’s Punch is a legendary recipe summarized by the rhyme, “One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak.” An early ancestor to the Tiki drinks of the twentieth century, our version of the Planter’s Punch is a mix of of black, gold, and overproof Jamaican rums combined… Read More
flowery and fizzy, refreshing, a riff on a classic lemonade old tom gin, lemon, sugar, maraschino, orange blossom water, sparkling wine In the late 1800s, at the Limmer’s Hotel in London, England, an enterprising headwaiter created a Gin Punch so famous his guests named it after him: the John Collins. By the 1870s, the widespread use of Old Tom gin changed the Punch’s name to “Tom Collins” and a classic cocktail was born. We… Read More