Tuesday, July 15, 2008

el presidente

1 1/2 oz light rum
3/4 oz Creole Shrub (orange curacao)
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1 dash grenadine

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Squeeze lemon oil, coat rim, and drop in peel. The recipe above is from The Cocktail Chronicles website (with the Creole Shrub swapped in) and not necessarily how Eastern Standard makes the drink.

Last night, Andrea wanted to go to Eastern Standard after I DJ'd up the street at Ceremony. I started the night with a Flying Dutchman (a Batavia Arrack-based cocktail) and ended with an Ameri-beer (Amer Picon-Czech beer combination). For my middle drink, I requested something to be made with Creole Shrub. Tommy recommended El Presidente which will be Eastern Standard's drink of the month for August. Their menu states that it will be made with "orange curacao" but he used the requested Creole Shrub instead.

The drink itself is rather smooth, and it had the right degree of dryness for me. Moreover, it was interesting to have a rum drink at a bar that did not have fruit juice in it (save for the pomegranate juice in the dash of grenadine). There are plenty of rum drinks that I have made at home sans fruit juice (I do appreciate fresh juice in my cocktails, but not all the time), but a common trend is to treat rum very differently from the other liquors.

1 comment:

Stevi Deter said...

The El Presidente is one of my favorite cocktails.

I've been trying to find the right balance to replace the dry vermouth with Lillet Blanc; a straight sub is a tad too sweet. Probably need to dial back the orange liqueur.

Which reminds me, that's a project I should get back on, especially as I just bought a new bottle of Lillet.