Monday, November 3, 2008

[chaud lapin]

2 oz. bourbon (Old Fitzgerald was used)
1/2 oz. gomme syrup
1/4 oz. pimento dram

Stir with a mixture of cracked and whole ice in a mixing glass, and decant into a cocktail glass. Squeeze a generous amount of lemon peel over the top and discard.

Last night (11/2) marked the first time that Drink was open on a Sunday. Fred and I hopped on the Red Line last night after dinner in Davis Square and we arrived there to find the same cast of bartending characters as last time - Sam, John, and Ben. There were maybe a dozen patrons all clustered at the central bar. We chose the right-hand edge, and John asked us what we were in the mood to drink. I was leaning towards bourbon, and then I spotted the dram on the counter. John said he would make me a simple drink utilizing both, and I clapped in anticipation.

I don't know if there is any cinnamon in the pimento dram, but that's certainly what I tasted. The heat of the Old Fitz was dulled only slightly by the gomme, and the result was like an old fashioned candy with just enough bite. In the scale of trick or treat, this was certainly a treat.

Neither John nor Sam enjoy naming drinks. And since many of the cocktails at Drink are made up on the fly, I suppose naming each and every one would be quite an undertaking, and ultimately unhelpful. That's all well and good, but it leaves me in a bit of quandary as a blogger, since I'd like the titles of the posts to immediately evoke in my memory what the drink was like. So, I'm adopting the following convention: if a drink is unnamed, I'm simply going to make a name up and enclose it in brackets. Hopefully the name will evoke something, and provide a degree of entertainment value.

And if there isn't already a cocktail that's actually named "chaud lapin", well, there should be.

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