Archive for the ‘Liquor/Liqueur/Libations’
New York Stories
ELV note: As most of you know, ELV hearts the Big Apple. He lived just outside of it (in Danbury, CT) between 1985-1990, and never tires of its energy and its eateries. Below is a quick travelogue of our four days there last week, concentrating on — what else? — food and restaurants. Some misguided souls (like The Food Gal®) are under the impression there are things to do in New York City other than eat and drink, and for this they have our sympathies.
SENSI Remains Sensational
Martin Heierling does double duty these days between Sensi and Silk Road, but neither restaurant seems to suffer for it. Call it Germanic dedication, serious chops, or just plain passion; he brings a certain precision to every recipe and format he touches.
How else to explain the continued deliciousness of Sensi — a restaurant that is, by turns Italian, Thai, a steakhouse, Japanese and Indian. Tandoori? They may do it as well as anyone around. Naan? Ditto. Tom ka kai with shrimp? Puts almost every Thai restaurant’s version in town to shame.
You can get steaks and pasta here and find nothing to complain about, but we find the Indian tandoori, raita, mint sauces, kheer (rice pudding), and tempura to be where our palate always heads.
About the only thing we’ve had that left us shaking our heads is the $28 pad Thai — a skimpy portion of a poorly executed copy of a classic dish that’s done better all over town for 1/3rd the price.
But we’ll forgive Martin this single mishap, as just about everything else in his repertoire is right on.
One of the most righteous things remains the house-made ginger ale – a refresher so bracing, it’s worth driving across town for, parking at the Bellagio, and taking a stroll to Sensi just for a sip.
Yeah, it’s that good.
SENSI
In the Bellagio Hotel and Casino
3600 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109-4303
702.693.7223
Bruton Birra Artigianale – Boffo Brews
Back in the day, all brewmeisters looked like this. These days, they look like Iacopo Lenci — a 26 year old Italian who started brewing beer in his garage — and now runs an uber-hip brew pub in Lucca, Italy.
One of the coolest things about being ELV is being invited by fellows like Iacopo to sample his family’s hard-to-find, artisanal, hand-crafted beers that hardly anyone in America has tasted.
So that’s just what we did with a batch of Bruton birra last Friday — courtesy of BEVI Beverages — a small distributor who has been single-handedly working to upgrade Las Vegas’ brewski IQ over the past few years.
Bruton makes precious little of its top fermented, unpasteurized, unfiltered and natural yeast brews — only 70,000 bottles a year. (By comparison, Dogfish Head — an American, boutique brewer — makes over 100,000 cases.) So getting a little of this precious elixir in Vegas is a small coup indeed.
Those brews are Belgian-inspired, but highly idiosyncratic and slap-my-ass-and-call-me-Sally delicious.
We asked Lenci why so many interesting beers are coming out of Italy lately, and he told us it’s because, unlike the Germans and Belgians, Italians aren’t so hidebound by tradition (and laws) that determine how and what they can make as malted/fermented-grain-beverages.
So instead of some same old, same old lager (or lambic), you get stone R — a Belgian-ale reinterpreted into a 7.5% alcoholic big boy, made with three different malted grains (barley, wheat and rye), and given tiny doses of white pepper and orange peel. It smelled to our staff like an intense gueuze, and went down way to easily for something approaching the strength of wine.
Speaking of wine, Bruton’s 10 is a 10% barley wine that will take (and needs) time in the bottle to allow its rich hoppiness to mellow. More mellow by far is the Lilith (named after a demon made from the rib of Adam – who knew?) that weighs in at 5.5% alcohol, and tasted to us like a fruity, slightly sweet English bitter. About the only one we tasted we didn’t want to overindulge in was the Bruton di Bruton — their everyday drinking beer that will be a big hit with the hop lover in your life. To our buds, it was bracing and refreshing, but to the American (read: dumbed-down, wooden, let’s-not-taste-too-much) palate, it will be way too astringent.
These beers are obviously not for the Bud Light crowd. You will be able to find them only in the better Italian restaurants in town, i.e. NOVE, Fiamma, Carnevino, Settebello, Enoteca San Marco, et al, but you will also find they are a revelation in a glass and go wonderfully with strongly-flavored Italian food (especially salumi and cheeses).
Prosit!
George Sproule Shoots and Pours!
ELV doesn’t have an alcohol problem, he just pretends he does whenever George Sproule and his band of merry mixologists are whipping things up at the Downtown Cocktail Room.
When things aren’t too busy (like early last Saturday night), and they’ve just brought in a bounty of limequats, loquats, aprium and figs from Molto Mario’s Farmer’s Market, the bar at DCR becomes their laboratory of licentious libations.
They muddle, they stir, they shake, they adjust and they season — always looking for the perfect balance of booze to fruit, and other accents to the alcohol.
So good have cocktails gotten in Vegas (thanks to pioneers like Tony Abou-Ganim and acolytes of his like George, Nectaly Mendoza and Patricia Richards), that the idea of a mixed drink out of a gun or a pre-made mix now seems as foreign to us as settling for frozen fish or mealy tomatoes.
The cocktail revolution as we know it really began in New York City in the early ’90’s with proselytizers like Dale DeGroff and Steve Olson preaching the gospel of good liquor blended with impeccable, fresh ingredients.
It took a while for the movement to reach our humble burg, but in the past five years, things have exploded here with a vengeance. Example #1: If you look closely at the restaurants of Aria/City Center, most of them spend more effort promoting their specialty cocktails than they do their (mostly unexceptional) wine lists.
Along with this progress has come the elevation of the humble barkeep into significant soothsayers of sagacious, savory and sweet sedatives. Back when ELV was bartending, the ability to open a beer and pour one jigger into cocktail glass was the extent of expertise needed. For anything else, we had a dog-eared copy of an Old Mr. Boston cocktail manual by the cash register. We didn’t learn much about mixology back then, but did learn that, next to being a professional athlete or a great looking musician, tending bar was the best way to get more action than Frank Sinatra.
ELV is far too polite to discuss such things with George S.. Besides, we’re usually too busy tasting, savoring and cogitating over the hellaciously haunting and happy hooch he’s handing us.
As DeGroff has said, “…cocktails have been taken out of the beverage category into something culinary. Bartenders have to look at their bars like a chef would look at his kitchen.”
True, and what ELV has learned in the eighteen years since he first sipped a classic, Hemingway daiquiri made by Dale at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, is that you can drink less, enjoy it more, and wake up with less of a hangover.
What you do in between should only be discussed with your favorite bartender.
As for those of you who don’t drink, all we at ELV can do is quote the Chairman of the Board (our spiritual bar mate) about the sad state of such affairs: “The trouble with not drinking is, when you wake up in the morning, that’s the best you’re gonna feel all day.”
Or, to finally put a cork in it, remember to enjoy yourself (in moderation of course), since, in an MMMBop, it’ll all be gone.
Getting Smashed with Class – Cocktails and Cuisine at Encore
Theo Schoenegger and James Benson
When you put master mixologists Steve Olson, Tony Abou-Ganim and Patricia Richards together at the same time, you can pretty much be assured that the good booze will be flowing.
Combine their talents with Italian nibbles from Theo Schoenegger and James Benson, and you have the booziest, funnest, and tastiest sippin’ seminar….ever.
It all took place beside the Encore pool and was packed with devotees of the cult of the cocktail. Surprisingly, the afternoon soiree was a remarkably sober affair for all the top shelf hooch being hand-crafted to a fare thee well.
Maybe that’s because Abou-Ganim’s acolytes are more interested in flavor, ingredients and technique than intoxication.
ELV of course, was only there to lap up the libations and plow through the potent potables.
And as you can see, the result of seven spectacular drinks before 5 PM wasn’t a pretty sight.
HERBS & RYE – reviewed in Las Vegas Weekly
(ELV note: what follows is our review of Herbs & Rye – published yesterday in the Las Vegas Weekly. Last night we received a call from owner Nectaly Mendoza informing us that the he and his chef had parted company a few days earlier, and that he was eager to find a new direction for his kitchen. We are going to meet him tomorrow to discuss the review and ideas for improving the menu. Would that all restaurateurs were so mature and level-headed… In any event, despite the negativity of the review, we are rooting for Mendoza, and intend to give H & R a second chance, once his new kitchen crew gets squared away.)
When Nectaly Mendoza opened Herbs & Rye late last year—on a forlorn stretch of west Sahara near Valley View—I was a bit put off by its name, which tells you nothing; my hopes took another small plunge when I first entered the place, redone with an on-the-cheap speakeasy look.
Herbs and Rye’s rendition of the classic Moscow Mule made with vodka, lime juice and ginger beer.
Let’s Scotch This Idea…
ELV went scotch drinking the other night. Which is pretty extraordinary since he’s a bourbon drinker.
One Good Drink – AMERICAN FISH’s Singapore Sling
This Singapore Sling was so good, one sip took us back to days of yore, when were but a young buck, full of testosterone, and eager to tackle the challenges of getting freshman college girls drunk so they would have some kind of sex with us.
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.