Ice Harvesting in TriBeCa

The cocktail world's obsession with ice just took a big step forward. Soon, no bar owner will be able to hold his head up if not equipped with their own ice works.

Here's an item I wrote on the new Weather Up in Tribeca for the Times' Diner's Journal:

TriBeCa Bar Will Have Its Own Iceworks

By ROBERT SIMONSON

Weather Up, Kathryn Weatherup’s latest eponymously named cocktail bar — set to open at 159 Duane Street in TriBeCa in early November — is one saloon that will never have to send out for ice.

“We’re going to be the first bar on the East Coast of the United States that is doing in-house ice harvesting and production,” said partner Richard Boccato. Whether that’s precisely true or not, as any cocktail aficionado knows, ice — its purity, its size, its shape — is of paramount importance to the modern mixologist. The ice-works will be in the basement, but chunks of the cold stuff will be on display through the bar, cut into pieces by “bandsaw, chainsaw, chisels, hammers, and other torture devices,” as Mr. Boccato put it.

The ice machine is called the Clinebell CB300X2 Carving Block Ice Maker, and costs $6,000. According to Mr. Boccato, it produces two 300-pound blocks of crystal clear ice every three to four days through a slow-freezing cycle. A pump mounted inside the machine’s cabinets circulates the water, thus preventing impurities from freezing into the block, and as well as the formation of troublesome oxygen bubbles and striations which make carving difficult.

“Essentially this ice freezes in the same fashion as natural ice freezes in a lake — from the bottom up,” Mr. Boccato said. “Once the cycle is finished, excess water and impurities are removed from the top of the block prior to harvesting by use of a common wet and dry vacuum. The blocks are then broken down to suit our needs.”

The ice will come in handy chilling the daily selection of oysters and caviar. “It’s basically the best way to put salt in your body,” said Matthew Maddy, another partner in the venture, and one of the founders of No. 7 in Fort Greene. (For the more prosaically hungry, there will be French fries.) Ms. Weatherup and Mr. Maddy founded the original Weather Up (pictured), in Prospect Heights, in 2008. At the time, it was one of the first high-end cocktail joints to brave the Brooklyn scene. Both the Brooklyn and Manhattan bars will share the same vaulted ceiling of white ceramic tiles.

“Because this is a bigger, more complicated project,” said Mr. Maddy, “we wanted to bring in some friends and family.” That includes Tyler Kord, the chef at No. 7; and Mr. Boccato, an owner of Dutch Kills in Long Island City and a fierce proponent of the kind of classic pre-Prohibition cocktails the TriBeCa Weatherup will serve.

The bar will open daily at 3 p.m., offering six to eight draft lines, a selection of wines and an array of martinis and manhattans — what Mr. Boccato calls a “warm-up” cocktail list, made to accompany the oysters. Other cocktails will be available as the day wears on.

Royalton's Forty Four Bar to Open Oct. 1

After a delay of a couple weeks, in which bartenders were brought up to speed and menus were tinkered with, Forty Four, the reincarnation of the lobby bar at midtown Manhattan's Royalton Hotel, will open for business.

Expect to see one or more of the serious-looking, ice-kicking dudes (and dudette) to the right on hand this weekend. They make up The Cocktail Collective, the group that was put together in the wake of this year's Tales of the Cocktail to created Forty Four's menu. As reported earlier, they Richard Boccato from Dutch Kills in New York City (the man holding the block of ice); John Lermayer from the Florida Room in Miami Beach, and Woodward in Boston (shaker in hand); Simon Ford, a former London bartender, and now a global cocktail ambassador employed by Pernod Ricard USA (the man top right who looks like he just got off a cross-country flight, which he probably did); Willy Shine, one of the founders of Contemporary Cocktails, a prominent cocktail consultancy based in New York City (saw in hand, looking like a butcher); Misty Kalkofen, who tends bar at Drink in Boston (guess); and Eric Alperin, head bartender at the Varnish in Los Angeles (tall and vested).

That's one cool photo. Some sort of theme song, along the lines "The Magnificent Seven," should play whenever those guys enter the room.

The menu will feature classic drinks created at great hotels of the past, some served up classically, some with a modern twist.

Three Parts New York, One Part L.A., One Part Boston...

What kind of bar do you get when you mix Pernod Ricard USA brand ambassador czar Simon Ford, cocktail consultant Willy Shine, tiki master Richard Boccato, Boston bartendress Misty Kalkofen, L.A. bar wizard Eric Alperin and Miami Beach mixologist John Lermayer?

We shall find out in mid-September when Forty Four, the bar revamp at the Royalton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, reopens. They are all part of the group the hotel has put together and called The Cocktail Collective. Heard of Ocean's Eleven? Call them Royalton's Six.

At Royalton's Bar, a Collective of Cocktail Talent

By Robert Simonson

Like a Danny Ocean of the cocktail world, Howard Wein, senior vice president of food and beverage of Morgans Hotel Group, has cherry-picked some of the most prominent and talented bar figures from across the United States to create the liquor program at Forty Four, the lobby bar and restaurant of Midtown Manhattan’s Royalton hotel, which closed this summer for a revamp and is set to reopen in mid-September.

The group has been christened the Cocktail Collective by Mr. Wein, and includes: Richard Boccato from Dutch Kills and Painkiller in New York City;John Lermayer from the Florida Room in Miami Beach, and Woodward in Boston; Simon Ford, a former London bartender, and now a global cocktail ambassador employed by Pernod Ricard USA; Willy Shine, one of the founders of Contemporary Cocktails, a prominent cocktail consultancy based in New York City; Misty Kalkofen, who tends bar at Drink in Boston; and Eric Alperin, head bartender at the Varnish in Los Angeles.

“At first I was thinking the group of people might be New York bartenders,” Mr. Wein said.

His mind changed when he attended the New Orleans-based liquor convention Tales of the Cocktail in July, and saw an event called Bar Room Brawl, in which the bar staff members of six cocktail destinations from around the nation competed with one another. Among the rival taverns were Dutch Kills, the Varnish, Drink and Florida Room. Mr. Wein was impressed and began to think nationally.

“I decided to see if we could get a bunch of the people who were represented at Bar Room Brawl, because they’re the best,” he said. “I picked people not just because they were in Bar Room Brawl. I consulted people I trust, and these are like-minded people. They approach what they do in a similar fashion.”

The six drink-slingers have been furiously e-mailing ideas to one another every since. They will meet in New York next week to firm up Forty Four’s spirit and cocktail program.

“I’m sure there’s going to be some competitiveness, but it’s for the better of the program,” Mr. Ford said. “Different perspectives is key to this. Eric is very classical in his approach to cocktails. Misty is a little more rebellious. For me, I can draw on some international experience.”

There will probably be classic cocktails on the menu, as well as exclusive liquid inventions. There will also be punch bowl menu, and a “custom boutique barrel program,” which will be spirit-based and may or may not involved barrel-aged cocktails.

Mr. Ford hinted at a few other possible highlights. “We want to pay homage to the hotel bars and the great hotel bartenders,” he said. As an example, he mentioned Eddie Woelke, an American bartender who mixed drinks in Havana hotels during Prohibition, and is credited with inventing the Mary Pickford cocktail (rum, pineapple juice, maraschino liqueur and grenadine).

Complementing the drinks will be a new food menu created by the Royalton’s executive chef, Scott Ekstrom, who has worked at Daniel and Oceana.

The focal point of the new Forty Four — formerly 44 — will be a U-shaped bar at the center of the lobby, positioned roughly where a webbed wall once separated the lobby from the restaurant.

“What I’m trying to do is make Forty Four at Royalton the great lobby experience in New York,” Mr. Wein said. “It’s not going to feel like restaurant vs. lobby. The energy will flow and the bar will be the main vehicle that will create that. You can sit wherever you want and get what you want.”

As far as the extent of the collective’s long-term involvement, Mr. Wein said: “Everyone’s involved for an extended period of time. They’re going to come together a couple times before they begin training the staff, and then for training and opening. Everyone’s going to be there once a month for the better part of a week. They will rotate. The idea is there is always someone there driving it. And there will be a series of events where they all come together.”

More About Painkiller

Richard Boccato and Giuseppe ("Joe") Gonzalez' new tiki bar Painkiller opens officially tonight. I visited the place on Monday, and talked to Boccato about the debut menu shortly after. Here are my findings, published yesterday, in the New York Times' Diner's Journal.

Zombies Descend for Drinks on the Lower East Side

By ROBERT SIMONSON

If the patrons at the new Lower East Side tikiden Painkiller want to order a Zombie — as many will — they’ll have a choice.

“We have to pay respect to Donn Beach,” said Richard Boccato, one of the owners of Painkiller, which officially opens on Friday. Beach, who founded the legendary Don the Beachcomber bar in Hollywood in 1934, is one of tiki’s founding fathers. But one of his signature drinks, the lethally alcoholic Zombie, is also one of the most debated cocktails in tiki history, with several differing published recipes.

“His 1934 Zombie is a masterpiece,” Mr. Boccato continued. “But there’s also the 1942 recipe and the 1956. We’re going to be serving various interpretations of the Zombie.”

Choose your Zombie preference carefully. Each customer can only have one.

Made with four ounces of rum (tall thin bottles on the bar contain the pre-mixed “Zombie rum batch”), the cocktail is powerful, but slides down like lemonade. “These drinks go down very fast,” Mr. Boccato warned.

Painkiller’s debut drink menu leaves the customer, and the bartender, a lot of leeway, and not just in the Zombie department. Presented in the form of a colorful tacky placemat [pdf], it divides the world of tiki beverages into 10 categories. Some drinks, like the Mai Tai, the Painkiller itself, and the Cradle of Life (which involves an inverted lime wedge filled with flaming Chartreuse), stand on their own. Others entries, like “Frozens,” “Daiquiris” and “Swizzles,” embrace whole categories of cocktail, without getting more particular.

“Because the spectrum of these drinks is so broad, rather than nail down, for instance, a specific, set frozen drink, like a frozen daiquiri, we’re trying to encourage people to experiment with several different varieties,” explained Mr. Boccato, who runs the bar with Giuseppe Gonzalez. Drinkers can specify a particular brand of rum if they wish.

“It’s like the Bartender’s Choice option that you get at Dutch Kills,” said Mr. Boccato, naming the Long Island City bar where he and Mr. Gonzalez used to work. “The menu-placemat is a kind of template that we can use forever. It makes life easier for everyone involved. It gives you more choices.” (Single drinks run $12 to $16.)

Another less-familiar stratum of drink on the menu are the Bastards. These are variations on a gin-ginger beer-lime juice mixture, and were created by a globetrotting, mid-20th-century bartender named Joe Scialom. They include the Suffering Bastard, Dying Bastard and Dead Bastard.

Mr. Boccato is working on a new version called a Glorious Bastard. The menu also offers a tiki flight, a series of miniature drinks decided upon each night and served in small, clear-glass skulls.

“There’s so much to play with,” he said. “Our bartenders are going to be able to experiment a lot.”

The machine that will supply drinkers with the steady stream of complimentary hot dogs will arrive next week, Mr. Boccato said. It will turn out 50 to 60 dogs at a time.

“We hope that people will take advantage of the fact that they will be free,” he said, “because you do need something in your stomach if you’re going to be drinking Zombies.”

Painkiller, 49 Essex Street (Grand Street), Lower East Side. 212-777-TIKI (or 8454)

How to Tag a Tiki Bar

Last night, May 3, the new Lower East Side tiki bar Painkiller has a soft opening for "family and friends." Preparations were so up to the brink that the storefront was still getting spray-painting up until the doors opened at 9 PM, and even afterwards. The artists, we were told, are graffiti taggers of some renown. Inside, there were Painkillers, Zombies, Mai Tais and about 587 people.

A Painless Painkiller

Here's an update on the upcoming New York tiki bar Painkiller, written for the New York Times' Diner's Journal blog a few days ago.

An Island Cocktail Lounge, Manhattan Island

By ROBERT SIMONSON

If you like piña coladas, free hot dogs and a live-and-let-live approach to life, Painkiller, a tiki bar due to open on the Lower East Side this spring, may be your cup of rum.

Richard Boccato, the veteran bartender and bar owner who will run Painkiller with his Dutch Kills colleague Giuseppe Gonzalez, said he hoped to kick off a new era in tiki culture with the bar.

“We’re not trying to do a classic tiki bar,” Mr. Boccato said. “We’re not going to build our father’s or grandfather’s tiki bar. We want to foster the inception of a New York tiki culture. We’re not taking you off the island of Manhattan onto the island of Oahu. We’re staying right here.”

Patrons should expect some “thatch and some bamboo,” as they would at any tiki bar, he said. “But you should also expect some graffiti and some subway tiles and things that are more reminiscent of the Bowery circa 1978. We’re trying to do an amalgamation of that.”

In preparation, Mr. Boccato and Mr. Gonzalez went on a multinational research trip, visiting acmes of tiki culture in California; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Puerto Rico; and London. Among the more than 20 bars they inspected on the whirlwind 10-day tour were Martin Cate’s Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco and Mark Peel and Jay Perrin’s Tar Pit in Los Angeles, where, until recently, Audrey Saunders of Pegu Club was a partner. Along their travels, they hit upon some themes that may prove novel in New York’s sometimes doctrinaire cocktail world. Standing at the bar — anathema at some of the more exclusive Manhattan cocktail bars — will be allowed. There will be free hot dogs, a la Rudy’s, the celebrated Eighth Avenue dive. And there will be a place on the menu for the piña colada, a drink that has never been celebrated by the cocktail elite.

“We took a look at the different piña colada situations that are going on” in Puerto Rico, Mr. Boccato said. “We thought about things in a different way. We pretty much do what we do behind the bar with our shakers and ingredients. But there’s really something to be said about the machine thatblends it all together and keeps it cold. It was eye-opening.”

The opening menu will feature 15 to 20 drinks, including some classics by tiki trailblazers like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s, as well as some original creations, and a “Scorpion Bowl” menu. There will a half dozen booths and an equal amount of stools, but nobody need feel pressured to sit.

“We’re not going to restrict standing,” Mr. Boccato said. “We don’t want to have anything less than a convivial, festive environment. If there are people standing, so be it. If there are people cursing, so be it. This is not Tiki Chic. This is not Sleepy Tiki. This is New York City Tiki.”

Above all, Mr. Boccato wants Painkiller to be a painless experience for the customer. “This is almost a natural progression into something that’s no less historically valid but a little bit more lighthearted, more relaxed,” Mr. Boccato told me recently. He said that what the rum expert Jeff Berry “and other tiki-philes will tell you is that to them the essence of tiki is really an escape, it’s almost a retreat, coming into a bar and feeling you’re somewhat removed from your life. That’s the reason people go to dive bars. So why not have a beautiful Polynesian setting to help you along the way?”

Mr. Boccato expects Painkiller to be open “between the Ides of March and April Fool’s Day.”

Rum and Punch: Two Trends for 2010

I was at an industry event for the Guatemalan rum Zacapa, talking over the cocktail scene with a couple collegues. We were discussing how it seemed that, after gin and absinthe and tequila had all recently gotten their moment in the spotlight, it now appeared to be rum's turn. "Yeah," said one man, "I wonder what will be next?" We thought for a moment. "Nothing," another finally said. "Rum's it. It's last. It's the last major liquor category to be rediscovered."

Late last year, the New York Times ran a big feature story on how rum had come of age in America, and was being newly rediscovered by U.S. drinkers and drink makers. The piece focused mainly on west coast places like Martin Cate's Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco and Audrey Saunder's Tar Pit in Los Angeles. But the article's looking pretty prophetic as far as New York is concerned. 2010 is not even two months old and we have already learned that, before spring is over, we well see Painkiller, a new tiki-rum place on the Lower East Side run by Richard Boccato and Giuseppe Gonzalez of Dutch Kills fame; and, as part of the new East Village Cuban restaurant Cienfuegos, two rum bars overseen by mixologist Charlotte Voisey. No longer can anyone say, "Why isn't there a decent rum bar in New York?"

To my mind, part of this gravitation toward rum is an either intentional or subconscious desire to chill out a bit. The cocktail scene can get rather arch sometimes, with it's insistence on the right way of doing things, its ingredient and behavior snobbery and its sometime rococo new cocktail creations. Rum is all about relaxing and taking it easy.

Both of these new bars also seem to tangentially embrace what I feel is another dawning trend of 2010: Punch. Now, I know that a lot of cocktail geeks out there will balk at that statement, saying "Punch was so 2008." True, Death & Co. and Clover Club have been doing punches for a couple years now in New York, and Prime Meats serves a different punch by the glass every day. But the punch thing never really took hold. It was an isolated, intermittent side show, found only in the most fanatical corners of cocktaildom.

This year may change that. One of the rum bars at Cienfuegos will focus on rum punch. And Painkiller is going to have a Scorpion Bowl menu. That would all be fine and good, but the real clincher to this being a punch year is the arrival of David Wondrich's new book on the matter. Wondrich created quite a stir with his last opus, "Imbibe!," basically an exhaustive history of cocktails in 19th-century America. Fans will be waiting anxiously for his next volume. (I don't know what the title is yet, but I'm guessing, maybe, "Punch!").

Wondrich recently gave a little preview on what the book will contain during a well-attended lecture at Pegu Club on Jan. 25. He had just turned in his manuscript two days beforehand.  He talked about the history of the brimming bowl, and made a few sample punches (there's one below), including one made with ambergris, which anyone who has read "Moby Dick" knows is a once-treasured byproduct of sperm whales. Though something in me tells me that punch will be a harder sell to the general public than individual classic cocktails were (it's labor intensive, requires special equipment, and you need to lay out a fair amount of money to make a good-sized bowl), I'm still betting that the book will inspire plenty of bars to start offering punch.

Stick to Swizzles

I can't tell you how sick my wife is of hearing me say, with utter seriousness, the word "Swizzle." For the past few weeks, I've been researching this category of West Indies cocktail—talking with bartenders about Swizzles, soliciting recipes for Swizzles, sampling Swizzles. Each time I mentioned a new tidbit of information on the topic, my better half would roll her eyes and walk into the other room.

You can't blame her. It's a funny word. And cocktail people can start to sound a little touched in the head when they start talking with deadly earnestness about things like garnishes and the right kind of ice. Still, she was impressed when she finally sat down and tried a properly made Queen's Park Swizzle.

I was fortunate enough to write about Swizzles for the New York Times Summer Drinks issue. Here's the piece.

It’s Not So Mysterious: The Secret Is in the Swizzle

By Robert Simonson

WHEN Katie Stipe, a bartender at the Clover Club in Boerum Hill, gets an order for a mojito, she recommends that the customer try a Queens Park Swizzle instead.

“We steer them to it as a far superior version of the same sort of drink,” she said. Indeed, the cocktails share many ingredients: rum, citrus, sugar, mint. So why bother converting a customer? What makes one different from the other? Well, the swizzling, of course.

A Queens Park Swizzle is the best-known representative of a crushed-ice-laden and slightly mysterious cocktail category. The genre was born in the West Indies, probably in the 19th century, but has become increasingly popular in New York bars of late. Among other noteworthy examples are the Bermuda Swizzle (still wildly popular on that island) and the Barbados Red Rum Swizzle, a onetime staple at Trader Vic’s.

These drinks are not shaken or stirred, but rather swizzled with a genuine swizzle stick. Now, if you’re picturing one of those colorful plastic doohickeys that bars and resorts stick into their drinks as a combination advertisement and souvenir, stop right there.

The implement in question is an actual stick. It is snapped off a tree native to the Caribbean. Botanists call it Quararibea turbinata, but it is known to locals as the swizzle stick tree. The sticks are about six inches, with small prongs sticking out at the end, like the spokes of a wheel without the rim, and they are used as a kind of natural, manually operated Mixmaster.

These are halcyon days for behind-the-bar theatrics, and nothing lends the bartender’s art a touch of razzmatazz like a deftly deployed swizzle stick. “It takes a little showmanship,” said Stephen Remsberg, a New Orleans lawyer known for his extensive rum collection (1,300 bottles) and knowledge of rum drinks. “You insert the swizzle stick in the drink. And with both hands moving in coordination, simultaneously backwards and forwards, you simply rotate the shaft of the swizzle stick between your palms as quickly as you can.”

It is believed by some that the success of any swizzle lies entirely in the mixing prowess of the bartender.

“There really isn’t any difference between a simple rum punch and a swizzle except the technique used for making them,” Mr. Remsberg said. All agree that one thing happens when the drink is prepared in this way — and has to happen, for it to be a swizzle. “With the ideal swizzle you get a nice frost on the outside of the glass,” Ms. Stipe said.

Beyond that, what the method contributes to the drink — aside from a lively sideshow — is somewhat open to debate. Wayne Curtis, a cocktail authority and the author of “And a Bottle of Rum,” suspects that the stick’s significance is mainly cultural and ritualistic. Not that that’s a bad thing. “Ritual is fine,” Mr. Curtis said. “There’s a lot of ritual in the cocktail world.”

Richard Boccato — who put the Queens Park Swizzle on the menu at Dutch Kills, a new bar in Long Island City, Queens, that he owns with Sasha Petraske — thinks there’s more at stake. “The act in the swizzling is what makes the drink aesthetically pleasing to the guest,” Mr. Boccato said. “They enjoy watching it, for sure, but it’s also something that integral to the preparation. It’s very much what brings the drink together.”

But Mr. Petraske regards swizzling as simply a more controlled way of stirring. “It’s a way of not disturbing the muddled stuff that’s at the bottom,” he said. “Aside from that, I can’t think of any difference it makes.”

The swizzle is just that kind of cocktail. The more you chase after its essence, the less you understand. The cocktail expert David Wondrich said, “Vague answers are all you’re going to get.” That’s perhaps just as well, because it seems a shame to invest too much analysis in a practice so pleasingly theatrical, and in a drink that’s so easygoing and refreshing. “It’s almost like an adult snow cone,” Ms. Stipe said.

There’s one additional mystery surrounding the swizzle. Despite the demands of the cocktail craze, a real swizzle stick is not easily found in New York. Nearly every bar that serves swizzles gets the needed tools through some Caribbean connection. Mr. Boccato brings some sticks back from Martinique every time he visits his father, who lives nearby on St. Lucia.

“I’m surprised no one’s come out with a plastic version,” Mr. Curtis said.

While you're at it, take a look at the other fine articles in the section, including a A to Z guide to home bartending and a look at the lives of sober bartenders. And Eric Asimov looks at the problems in New York's beer scene.