On Sunday, a wait at Alembic asked what the name of the cocktail “Vieux Carre” meant.

I started to explain that it meant something like, “old quarter,” or, “old square” in French, and referred to the oldest section of the city of New Orleans.

Brandon pushed his glasses down his nose, hunched his back a bit and said, “Man, no, this is an ‘old square.’”

I laughed and said, “I am totally THE Old Square”.

He didn’t disagree.

Clearly I’ve been VERY naughty!

Honored to be the caretaker of Grandpa Flannery’s wonderful artifact.

Riding home on the N yesterday, with a sore throat and probably a fever, a group of fellow riders conspired to make my evening even more miserable.

First a gentleman got on the train, with an interesting strategy for getting contributions: Repeatedly and loudly saying, “Can anyone give me money for food? Can anyone give me money for a burrito?” over and over.

This sort of thing, you come to expect on the N. Typical, not that bad. Annoying, but harmless.

But when he passed another gentleman on the bus, that gentleman said, “Why don’t you just sit down and shut up!”

Well, fair enough. I looked at that gentleman and saw he was reading Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon”. Well groomed, with dockers and white sneakers.

The panhandling gentleman moved to the end of the train and sat down. But continued to loudly and repeatedly ask for money for food.

White sneaker dude also kept his end of the deal up. Glaring at the panhandler and occasionally yelling something at him. When someone accidentally bumped the panhandler he exclaimed, “Don’t touch me, I’ll call the cops!”

To which white sneaker guy countered, “Yeah, pan handling on MUNI, that’s against the law, isn’t it?”

At which point I’m beginning to wonder about the motivations here. Then I notice white sneaker dude has his hand in his pocket and is fingering something. I look a bit closer and see that it is a can of mace or pepper spray.

Looking at him, I see the look in his eye. It’s the hopeful look that a nerd gets when he thinks he’s got an ace up his sleeve that will enable him to finally beat the bully who has been torturing him. He wants the homeless guy to come at him. He’s baiting him so he can pepper spray him and maybe get in a punch or two.

They go at it some more. Yelling back and forth swearing at each other. White sneaker guy, with white knuckles around his pepper spray bottle sez, “Goddamn drug user, why don’t you go do some crack or heroin and kill yourself!” Thankfully, the panhandler seems to have enough sense not to approach the white sneaker guy.

At Duboce and Church, the MUNI train driver finally comes back to our train and asks the panhandler to get off the train.

Relieved that nothing worse would happen than shouting, I start to calm down.

Then someone else sez to white sneaker dude, “Man, the only thing that allows those people to survive in San Francisco is that we’re too afraid to touch them.” To which a middle aged woman in a jeans jacket and carrying a forever21.com bag replies, “Next time we’ll all wear hazmat suits and lay into him.”

White sneaker guy mutters something like, “Goddamn disgusting San Francisco,” and I have to admit I’m thinking the same.

I’ve made a couple changes to the blog.

I’m moved what was getting to be a ridiculously long Blogroll onto its own page:

Blogroll

I was trying to auto-generate this from my Google Reader, which seems to be broken at the moment. Hopefully the genius engineers at Google will fix this soon, but I’m not sure if I’m thrilled with the result anyway.  I’ve started changing it back to a regular old web page. Lots of links to add, though…

I’ve also added a page of what I guess I’d call my current “haunts”.  Often people ask for recommendations when they are visiting San Francisco.  I figured it would be easier to just write them down on a web page.  Not really meant to be reviews or anything.  It’s more just the places I’ve gone recently and enjoyed enough to recommend.

Haunts

Both are still works in progress. Well, as is everything else on the blog!

This is kind of related to the Baker quote regarding lazy drink makers and also to an excellent post I read over on line cook called “Pressure“.

Sure there is a lot of pressure at any fast paced food service job.  And there are good nights and bad nights.  We’re all humans, allegedly, and some shifts are just going to suck.  You’re hung over, slammed, not prepared, just had your heart broken, whatever.

But the thing that Richie didn’t talk about in his post is the pressure that you get to just put something out, even if you know it is wrong.  To compromise your own or the restaurants standards.

The wait staff wanted their order 10 minutes ago.  The customers are sick of waiting and you can see the look on their faces when you glance into the dining room.

The printer is clicking away and you just want to get some of these damn tickets off your back.

You over cooked the steak or messed up the proportion of the drink.

The wait person is standing there looking at you.  You just tasted the drink or felt the steak.  You know it is wrong.  You may even say to them, “I screwed this up, let me remake it.”  And they reply, “No, I’ll just take it out.  They won’t even know.”

What do you do?

Do you give in and just send it out?

Or do you have the character to gather up what little strength you have, regroup, and maintain your standards?

For better or for worse, the new model of nearly instant reviews by almost anyone on the internet has changed the balance of power between restaurant and critic permanently.

In the old days it was pretty easy to spot the one or two restaurant critics or VIPs in your town.

Sending that badly proportioned drink or overcooked steak out to Joe Schmoe, in town from Iowa, wasn’t likely going to have much consequence.

Today, Joe Schmoe may be Iowa’s most famous steak connoisseur or drink blogger.

His opinion may have more weight than the local restaurant critics.

Throw out the drink or refire the steak.  You owe it to yourself, your profession, your coworkers, and to your employer.

I’ve been re-reading Charles H. Baker Jr.’s South American Gentleman’s Companion recently.  I ran across the following choice passage this morning on the way to work and found it amusing.  Apologies to the more sensitive souls, for the nominally curmudgeonly and misogynistic content.

WHY DO SO MANY AMATEURS MIX La BEBIDA PIOJOSA?

Bebida in Spanish means “Drink,” and piojosa means “lousy”; and the 2 of them together means a disappointed guest anywhere, besides a demerit in the mixer’s reputation.  The 1st and great commandment in building mixed-drinks is that of not being lazy.  Results are sad for the poor chap who has to drink his brews; but sadder still is the realization deep down in our poor mixer’s heart-of-hearts that he has betrayed his callings, his finer mixing art, through refusal to do the right and proper things–yet still does nothing about them.

…

Summing this whole business up may we say that just as there is no such thing as a 1/2-good girl there no such animal as a 1/2-good drink.  A mixed drink is either made correctly out of correct stuff: good; or it’s La Bebida Piojosa.  Even a homely gal can, with cunningly-employed paint, powder, patches, rouge-pots, whale-bone and falsies, fool part of the people part of the time; but a poorly-built drink betrays itself with the first sip.  The only person our lazy drink-mixer is fooling is himself; he is a traitor to his art and there is no health in him.  Amen.

Suffice it to say, in these modern times I don’t believe that “Amateurs” are the only “lazy drink-mixers” in the world…

I was reading one of the cocktail related discussion boards, and someone made the comment, “Line cooking and bartending are two completely different things.”

As someone who has done a lot of one (line and prep cooking) and a little of the other (bartending), I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast my current perspectives on both jobs.

Ways in which the jobs are similar:

• Both are jobs in the Food Service Industry. You’re going to go home sweaty and smelling like the kitchen or bar you work in at the end of the day.
• Both jobs will likely require you to work when your friends and family are playing: Nights, Holidays, Weekends.
• Both jobs require standing for the duration of your shift. Invest in good, durable, comfortable shoes.
• Both jobs require you to be physically able. You’re going to have to lift a 50 Pound bag of beans, a 20 gallon pot of hot soup, a case of vodka, a keg of beer, or a container of ice at some point.
• To do both jobs you must perform relatively repetitive tasks accurately, quickly, and efficiently.
• Both jobs require a fair bit of manual dexterity.
• Both jobs perform time sensitive tasks in concert with a group of coworkers. Communication with your coworkers is key.
• Both jobs require astute senses of taste and smell.
• Both jobs require a heightened awareness of your surroundings. Whether it is simultaneously monitoring all six of the saute pans you have on the stove or the various and sundry patrons lined up in front of you at the bar, there’s a certain amount of “spidey sense” involved in both.
• Most of the training for both jobs is typically social and on the fly. You can read a book or go to school for either, but most of what it is important to know, you will learn by example from your coworkers and supervisors.
• Aside from certain celebrity examples, the vast majority of practitioners of either profession are not particularly highly regarded nor rewarded by society at large.

Ways in which cooking is not like bartending.

• Cooking is a lot harder work. Sorry bartenders, and I know you work hard, but it’s just not the same thing.
• The extent to which you must perform time sensitive tasks in concert with your coworkers is taken to much more of an extreme in cooking. That’s why Kitchens usually have expediters (aka wheel or pass) and few bars have a similar role.
• There is a much greater danger of physical injury in cooking.
• Many kitchen tasks are performed behind closed doors. For better or for worse.

Ways in which bartending is not like cooking.

• Bartending is a Service profession. That is, you must engage and interact with members of the public for most transactions and are often rewarded in some fashion for the customers’ perceptions of how well you do your job or connect with those same customers.
• Bartending often pays a bit better than cooking.
• Bartenders must handle money.
• Bartender responsibilities and roles are often less specialized than those of cooks.
• Bartenders serve intoxicating beverages and have a whole host of legal and/or ethical responsibilities related to that fact.

To me, those are the broad strokes. What did I miss?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “Artisanal Spirits”.

When wrestling with making sustainable food decisions there are a lot of choices which it seems like a consumer can make which can directly impact the way our food is grown.

You can buy directly from food producers and distributors whose philosophies you share.

You can buy from food producers and distributors which source ingredients from within your geographic area.

With spirits and cocktails, it gets a bit more tricky. Not only are the final products more far removed from the Farmers, but often products only come from specific regions. Armagnac only comes from the Armagnac region of France. Cachaca only from Brazil.

I mean sure, there are grape brandies produced in the US. And some are even good. But few are close to those produced in France.

So what’s a body to do?

Well, first, I suppose, do source as much of your ingredients locally as possible. I have a somewhat precious idea about the fruits and herbs I use for cocktails. As much produce as possible is purchased from the Farmers’ Market. It is either organic or no spray. If I have to, I’ll purchase some products from independent groceries or markets, preferably also organic.

I really distrust “Organic” ingredients from the larger stores. From what I’ve read, it seems like the food industry in the US has gutted so much of the legislation related to the organic standard to give corporate farms and suppliers an edge, that I’m no longer sure that the label “Organic” means anything on food. To me, “Organic” should also mean “Sustainable”, not simply factory produced food created with organic fertilizers and pesticides.

Sugar is hard. Sugar is darn near impossible.

Cocktails are made using lots of sugar and there’s no getting around the fact that something like 99% of the sugar in the world is made by a few companies none of which are particularly admirable. For example, about 20 years ago I stopped buying refined white sugar. For a while I labored under the notion that somehow “brown” sugar was better than white sugar. That is until I discovered that what is sold as “brown sugar” in the US is simply refined white sugar with a bit of the molasses added back in. Ooops. Since then I’ve stuck with washed raw sugar. It’s usually in kind of large crystals, but if you give it a spin in a food processor or blender, you can easily make it smaller.

Spirits are even harder.

I mean, how much do the raw materials matter in something that is so highly processed and distant from its original source?

Vodka is distilled to basically chemically pure ethanol before it is diluted back down to strength and sold to the consumer.  If something is 99% pure ethanol, does it matter if the source material is organic or not?

I guess the only way I can look at it, is how I look at Coffee.

I have no direct impact on the plantations in South America that grow the beans I use for my coffee.

But I can buy it from a distributor and roaster who believes in similar ideas that I do. Supporting small farmers. Supporting sustainable farming.

Likewise, I think the same mindfulness can be applied to spirits and alcoholic beverages.

Everybody sez it’s just booze, don’t take it so seriously.

But ultimately alcoholic beverages are agricultural products, the same as the flour or grape juice that you are so carefully select.  If you’re going to bother thinking about those, why not think about your booze?

Or more importantly, if you don’t want to think about it, buy it from bars, retail outlets, distributors, and producers who do have the interest to think about these issues.

Back in June, 2008 (or July, 2007), I ran a Savoy bartender profile and drink making session with Victoria D’Amato-Moran.

Well, the good news is, as of the end of August, 2008, she is no longer at Monaghan’s in the Marina.  She has gotten a new job and will be working at a brand new restaurant located at Pier 1 1/2 here in San Francisco.

Opening September 18th, 2008, La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, to quote Victoria, “will focus on 12 different styles of Ceviche, (Cebiche), fresh fish, peruvian flavors, world wines and fantastic cocktails.”

Expect to find her there Tuesday through Friday, 11:00 AM until 5:30-ish.

Here’s wishing her the best of luck in this venture!

When I wrote about the Corpse Reviver No. 2, I explored the variation with Swedish Punsch instead of Lillet (or Cocchi Americano) and found I preferred the version with Cocchi Americano.

However, recently a friend mentioned they’d been enjoying the same cocktail with the version of Arrack Punch I made for Tales. I wanted to revisit same.

So when Brian Ellison, from Death’s Door Spirits, called me and asked if I wanted to help out with his booth at the Slow Food Expo here in San Francisco, the first drink that came to mind was a Corpse Reviver with my home made Arrack Punch.

I mean, c’mon, if there is a more appropriate drink to make with Death’s Door Gin than a Corpse Reviver, I have no idea what it is. Plus, it has a whole home made angle…

So I made another 3 liter batch of Arrack Punch, sent him the list of other ingredients, and put it on my calendar.

We served them Saturday night and Sunday morning. This evening my arms and shoulders are still sore from shaking cocktails. But, wow, what a great response! Many folks just surprised that they would even enjoy a cocktail made with gin. Others who were coming back, and some telling me that their friends had told them they had to try that “Corpse drink”. And a group from Chow.com, I probably should have cut off, as they were probably responsible for drinking a quarter of the Corpse Reviver mix I had prepared. But hey, they kept coming back and telling me how great it was…

So anyway, if you’re keeping track:

Corpse Reviver No. 2a

3/4 oz Gin
3/4 oz Homemade Swedish Punch
3/4 oz Cointreau
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
dash Absinthe

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

For what it is worth, the earliest I find this variation on the Corpse Reviver No. 2 is in the 1948 edition of Patrick Gavin Duffy’s “The Official Mixer’s Manual” edited, revised, and expanded by James Beard.

In earlier editions of Duffy’s book, the more traditional Kina Lillet is called for.