August 06, 2006
Cocktails and Complication
PG attempts to defend the bartender of "not a very good manhattan" fame. (And, no, I won't be naming names, but I suspect readers are unlikely to end up at the same establishment.) She writes:
Perhaps Will's bartender had mostly encountered people who wanted their Manhattans with orange liquer, as some reportedly do. Or maybe the bartender was being deliberately obtuse because Will and his girlfriend were 3-for-3 on the alleged "Five drinks that bartenders just hate to make." (The fifth of those is "specialties of another bar," so of the named drinks, they left out only the Lemon Drop.) Of course, different bartenders take these orders with different levels of grace.
First of all, who are these people who put orange liqueur in their manhattans, and what on earth is their recipe? I haven't been able to find an example of this amidst all the other atrocious cocktail recipes online, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been invented. Manhattans with orange liqueur are to manhattans as the chocolate martini is to the martini. i.e., not.
Second of all, I was intruged by PG's link to the "five drinks that bartenders just hate to make" list. Bartenders hate to make cosmopolitans? Manhattans? The nerve!
I don't go to bars frequently, partly because I can rarely hear myself think even at what friends bill as a "quiet" or "laid-back" place, unless I go at a very early hour. But when I do go, I like to order things that require some degree of preparation and equipment, things that I can't easily make at home. I'm willing to take the risk that the bartender will prepare the drink differently than I would, but if all I wanted were shots of Grey Goose, I'd buy a bottle.
I think the basic problem is that bartenders in many urban establishments have become used to easy-to-please clientele wanting nothing more than to pay top dollar for crowded, noisy, smelly tables where they will get served drinks that require nothing more complicated than opening bottles and pouring. I usually have better luck with real cocktails at restaurants. And even better luck at home.
Anyway, when going out to a bar, I usually order some draught beer, which seems to be the one thing that satisfies the criteria of I-can't-quite-do-this-at-home and the-bartender-doesn't-appear-offended-that-I-actually-want-him-to-mix-me-a-drink.
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