Back in the early 1870s when saloons had swinging doors and bad reputations, bartenders would set you up with a bottle of bourbon and a glass and you poured it to the brim for a quarter. Some 137 years later, Reserve in Chicago’s West Loop will uncork a bottle of Cristal in front of you—for a mere $700 not including tax and tip. But that’s practically chump change at this two-floor thirst palace. For $950, you get the Red Ruby cocktail. It’s a pricey shtick in a glass. Reserve (http://www.reserve-chicago.com/) concocts Grey Goose L’ Orange vodka, pomegranate juice, a float of Dom Perignon Rose, garnished with a one-carat red ruby that VIP manager Marshall Mering swears is worth $1200 alone. He also insists 12 people have ponied up nearly a thousand dollars apiece for the drink. Who would be that naive other than a showboater trying to impress an impressionable lady? But if she’s a real gem, bring your jeweler along to make sure you’re not getting slipped a bogus stone. Me? Give me an old-fashioned girl and an old-fashioned in a bar with great bones and a mixologist with some miles on him (or her). I call them “all-star bars”—friendly places with honest, fresh and sometimes flavorful libations where a visiting business traveler is treated like a local. The perfect place: The Café Pierre Bar at the Pierre Taj Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Now we’re talking. Terrific location—Fifth Avenue at 61 St. opposite Central Park. Celebrating its 75th anniversary with a discreet and deferential bartender named Efrian Rodriguez who’s worked at The Pierre for 48 years and is obviously in love with his job. “It’s the guests, the neighbors, the regulars that make a great bar,” a genuinely modest Rodriguez says. Over the years, he has poured for and listened to icons like Liz Taylor, Sophia Loren, Jacquie Kennedy, that dearest of mommies Joan Crawford “and lots of nice people—doctors, lawyers, executives, showpeople—from the neighborhood,” he adds. Wisely, there is a separate entrance into the small, intimate, Chippendale furnished bar with its groupings of armchairs and tables for quiet conversation and wheeling and dealing and 12 stools for those of us who might come in solo for a cocktail and a chat.
The Café Pierre Bar is a refuge of sanity from the occluded streets and sidewalks of New York. Frenetic outside (frenzied during rush hour), it has the bearing and the beauty of a private club that you don’t have to join and has no monthly dues. Nothing is hurried. While the martini cocktail has been cloned and bastardized worldwide, the Pierre makes a sterling attempt to enlighten us on its origins with a page from a history book. Several versions, we learn, claim the martini appeared in the San Francisco area in the mid 1860s or early 1870s for flush gold miners heading for Martinez, California, 40 miles to the east. Another story has it that an Italian bartender in New York whose first of many names was Martini first made the drink for the financial titan John D. Rockefeller in 1912. While that lore is repeated, it’s also called into question since John D. was a Baptist and supposedly liquor never touched his lips.
Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the martini’s birthplace and birthday, it makes for spirited conversation and for cocktail making where pedigrees are honored. Rodgriguez pours five ounces of Tanquerey, Bombay or the gin of your choice into a mixing glass full of ice, adds one drop of Martini & Rossi dry vermouth, stir until the gin is ice cold, strains it into a tower of crystal stemware, and adds either three olives on a spear or a slice of lemon, $16. Add a single white pearl onion and it’s a Gibson, the libation that powered a generation of “get the deal” corporate executives who perched skyscrapers and ruled the businessworld in the ‘40s and ‘50s. The Café Pierre Bar isn’t hidebound, although you do see customers here dripping in fur and diamonds. Its own versions of the classics are creative but well thought out for balance and flavor. In fact, the bar has its own Martini Menu with starters, main courses and desserts and a tasting menu. My suggestion: Order ala carte. A tasty tipple is the Alexander Nevsky—Stolichnaya Raspberry vodka, Bombay gin and Framboise, the raspberry liqueur. A drink that would have been popular with British colonialists posted in India at the end of the 19th century is the Major Special—Hendricks gin, Martini and Rossi vermouth, dry sherry and Blue Curacao. A little mood music? The “piano lady” still plays nightly between 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. The Café Pierre Bar at the Pierre Taj Hotel 2 E 61 at Fifth Ave, New York City, 212-838-8000, www.tajhotels.com/pierre You’ve got to love a place where the owner has a big rep as the city’s top chef yet names her restaurant after a house wine that’s infused with local fruits and veggies. And who pours as much love and talent into the saloon side of her house as in her kitchen. In fact, Houston’s Monica Pope, as comfortable elbow bending on a barstool as she is bending over a stove, has turned T’afia into this bastion for shockingly original food and drink. First, some background. T’afia is Pope’s take on the French-Creole word ratafia which is a wine fortified with things you’d expect to find in a salad. The French word also means “to your health” or “the deal is done.” Plus, T’afia, the restaurant and bar, is surprisingly Spartan which I find refreshing. In a day when gastronomy and libational temples often look like 5 million bucks were blown on the decor, Pope and her partner Andrea Lazar have gone retro in this plain-Jane circa 1950s brick-and-cement former carpet cleaning factory in Houston’s funky Midtown area. But if hotel bars are boring, impersonal—and many are—T’afia is cozy and welcoming. The bar is small—four stools plus table but the lone mixologist, Joe Murphy, has the congeniality of four ordinary barkeeps. Insists Joe: “The drinks here are really food.” That’s no PR puff. The Ratafia Royal is an infused concoction of a Texas white wine, champagne, vanilla beans, a few herbs, spices and local, organically grown sour oranges. It’s tart and a thrill to the tongue for $8. Ratafia Rocks is a Texas red wine infused with Rio Grande organic pecans and sweet vermouth, also $8. Find infusion tough to get your brain around? Think marinating all the ingredients in the drink for at least a month. Murphy has a short list of creative cocktails. And while too many bars today slapdash their drinks together with cheap liquors and mixers, T’afia puts some real thought and fine spirits into the glass. The Come to Daddy is an unexpectedly tasty marriage of velvety smooth Patron Anejo (which makes straight tequila taste like tap water), Chambord raspberry liqueur, fresh squeezed lime juice in a glass rimmed with Kaffir lime salt, $9. The Pink Onion Gibson is a twist on the classic—an inventive mating of Hendricks’s gin, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, fresh onion juice, garnished with a pickled onion, $9. T’afia’s version of the Mohito uses Charbay blood orange vodka, just-squeezed pomegranate juice, fresh mint from T’afia’s garden, and the powdered sugar is organic and local (from Sugar Land, a Houston suburb). The tomato juice in the bloody mary is squeezed by hand. Pope, a stickler for homegrown in her kitchen, doesn’t cut corners at her bar. While saloonlords nationwide have jumped on the pricey designer vodka bandwagon hawking Grey Goose and Belvedere because the self-anointed übercool are seduced by buzz and designer bottles, T’afia pours lots of Tito’s Texas vodka distilled in Austin. Nor is Pope slavishly wedded to French or California wines; Texas varietals are high on her list by the bottle or glass. A glass of 2002 Travis Peak Cabernet from grapes grown in Marble Falls is $13.50. Houston winemaker Lewis Dickson’s 2002 Petard Blanc from Startzville, Texas is $13.55. Not all Texas wines carry double digit prices by the glass. I sipped a 2005 Flat Creek Estate pinot grigio also from Marble Falls, Texas and a 2004 McPherson Rose of Syrah from Lubbock, Texas. Both were delightful and around $8 for a good-sized pour. Spend a little time on a T’afia barstool and you’re sort stirred by Pope’s passion. “The fruits and vegetables that go into our (drink) infusions have never seen the inside of a refrigerator. And let me tell you something,” she tells me, “organic doesn’t mean vegetarian.” I’m a believer. She will do bar appetizers from the dinner menu that explode with flavors. The date wrapped in bacon and stuffed with chorizo dazzled my tongue. The beef cubes in spicy sticky rice and a shrimp and sausage on a skewer in a coconut curry is a far cry from Tex-Mex and down-home BBQ. You won’t miss your greens here; T’afia has a hickory salad with smoked Rio Grande pecans that’s just downhome delicious. More chefs are taking a cue from Pope and paying close attention to their bars, which, too often, are simply waiting rooms for diners. They’ve also one-upped bars that put out cheesy finger food at the cocktail hour. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, buy a drink and they roll out a gratis lounge menu that may have a sashimi tempura roll, curried Waldorf chicken salad or chickpea French fries with red curry ketchup. Murphy minces no words: “This isn’t some Texas rum and coke bar.” T’afia, 3701 Travis, Houston, (713-524-6922), http://www.tafia.com/ Bostonians have had a long love affair with the libational arts dating back to 1634 when Sam Cole opened the first licensed tavern known, not surprisingly, as Cole’s Inn, on the waterfront near what’s now Faneuil Hall. Sam, an ex-artilleryman, welcomed locals and travelers who quaffed downstairs and slept upstairs, often in the same room and same bed. The fathers of liberty—John Hancock, Paul Revere and Sam Adams—fancied The Green Dragon tavern on Union St. George Washington hoisted a few at Cromwell’s Head Tavern on School St. Urban archaeologists engineering Boston’s “Big Dig” unearthed wine glasses and wine bottles from where the Three Cranes Tavern once stood for over 100 years until it was leveled by the British in the Battle of Bunker Hill. By the late 17th century, Cotton Mather, the witch-hunting, puritanical minister of the old North Church, fretted that “every other house” in Boston was a barroom. However, my own cocktail safari was pure scholarly research looking for Boston’s best bar for out-of-towners and I think I found it. Simply called City Bar and tucked inside the historic (103-year-old) Lenox Hotel, I felt at home the minute I walked in the door. No, this is not a sports bar with 20 blaring TV screens and gaudy pennants—but there was no shortage of Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics fan-atics. It’s not a faux “Cheers” bar, either, with an ersatz Sam Malone behind the plank. If you’re a diehard and want everyone to know your name, drop into the basement level of Bull and Finch just off Boston Common and buy the tourists a round. Instead, City Bar is a sophisticated, soothing saloon that probably cut my blood pressure 20 points by just walking in the door. It’s clubby with rich mahogany paneling, comfy brown leather sofas and chairs, with gold throw pillows, and tall leather bar chairs that are easy to sit in. The back bar is like an elegant ceiling-high bookcase filled with all the best brands of popular and rare spirits. There is a razor-sharp plasma TV but head mixologist Trina Sturm keeps it low so you can have an intimate or business conversation without being drowned out. Sturm, attractive, blond, with quick hands and a fast smile, transformed me from stranger to guest in about five minutes. “This is not a hotel bar but a bar that happens to be in a hotel,” she says. Actually, she is more like a chef who teamed up with head chef Robert Fathman from Azure, the hotel’s American bistro restaurant, to create what they call diabolical infusion drinks that volcanically explode with flavors. Makers Mark bourbon, for instance, is infused with caramelized Turkish figs, Chinese cinnamon and vanilla bean, “aged” for a month, and served on the rocks or straight up. I savored it as an unforgettable Manhattan. The Myers Dark Rum infusion includes ginger, cardamom and lemon peel. It would be a waste bordering on a sin to mix it with Coke. Imagine Sauza Commerativo tequila infused with pineapple, mango, white peppercorn mint and lime as the heart (and soul) of a margarita. The libational creativity doesn’t stop there. Sturm combines the infused tequila with citronge, mint and pineapple juice to produce a delicious Tequila Julep. On a wintry January day, I’d dive into a tall glass of her Spiced Wine—infused bourbon, splash of orange juice, pinch of cinnamon sugar, filled with Wolf Blass Merlot. Trust me, this is no Sangria. City Bar’s cocktail prices are $10 to $12. That’s steep at many bars but when you consider what is in the glass here, it’s a bargain. Hungry? Try the Scallop Ceviche Taco with caramelized shallots, shiitake mushrooms and sesame soy marinade, $11. City Bar, The Lenox Hotel, 61 Exeter St., Boston, Massachusetts, (617) 933-4800, http://www.citybarboston.com/ Age old mystery. Why does a margarita, rum sour, even an ice cold beer taste much better in a breezy beach bar with just a corrugated tin roof, no walls and an unbroken panorama of white sand and turquoise water? You can crawl the world elbow bending in the name of research or grab the next flight to Pensacola and a funky land’s end cantina called the Paradise Bar and Grill. You’ll find the answer. Here we are in the dead of winter. But I’m on a bamboo stool sitting at a horseshoe-shaped, vintage copper bar with locals and a few savvy touristos decked out in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops soaking up the sunset and live jazz. Overhead fans spin slowly; underfoot is a slab of concrete perfect for dancing. Outside on the sand are bamboo chairs, picnic tables, fire pits and umbrellas. Late January is summer on Pensacola beach with thongs but no throngs. I’m also nursing head barkeep Darin Churchward’s Paradise Punch: four rums (coconut, pineapple, passion fruit, mango) and cranberry, pineapple and orange juice. Tariff? $5.50 plus a half a dollar surcharge to pay for the musicians. I missed Wednesday martini night where off-the-wall libations like a chocolate mohito, apple lemon drop and cherry martini plus the classic dry gin, whiff of vermouth, olive or twist straight up are all a scant $3. The suds list is short and predictable—Bud, Bud Light, Corona, all around $3, but there’s a Red Stripe from Jamaica that dazzles the taste buds for $3.50. The wine by the glass list is impressive. A six-ounce pour of the delicious Cambria chardonnay from central California is $7. The house cabernet, zin or merlot, also from California, is a bargain $3.25. And here’s a switcheroo: Happy Hour is eight hours long in Paradise—Monday through Thursday, from 11 a.m., the opening, to 7 p.m. This delightful dive is the brainchild of an old Pensacola boy named Fred Simmons who built a 100-foot pier so you can sail up or power up, tie up, and party down at his bar. Plus, he happens to own the Paradise Inn, a vintage 1950s motel that rents its 55 rooms for $69 a night. Want to see the sunrise the next morning after a little revelry? Check in. Fred had the good sense to hire Renee Mack who’s been a Pensacola “beach chef” for 20 years. She’s character-personable, chatty and a creative cook. Her quesadillas are packed with sautéed onions, bacon, fresh spinach and either chicken or fresh shrimp, $7.25. Her New Orleans shrimp salad uses locally caught and peeled gulf shrimp and is a meal and a half, $6.75. Pensacolans are nuts about her Cuban sandwich piled thick with the requisite pork, plus ham and provolone cheese pressed flat with a brick on the grill. “I learned that from an old Cuban,” she smiles. Hungry for a steak? Renee has a hefty rib eye with new potatoes and a salad for a grand total of $15. Fish tacos, spotlighted on Tuesday night, can be filled with wahoo, amberjack or mahi mahi. Uh oh. A storm is brewing off the coast and the Paradise Bar crew swing into action. There are “walls” after all except they’re “garage doors that we pull down in foul weather,” Fred says. The kitchen is in a trailer that can be hooked up and hauled out if the weather gets really nasty, and it can—Simmons has rebuilt the pier three times. Meantime, everyone is dashing for the deck that is tented with plastic see-through windows. “Rain? Sip on a generous pour of Kendall Jackson chardonnay at a scant six bucks and ride it out. Unforgettable way to make new friends. Paradise Bar and Grill, 21 Via De Luna Dr., Pensacola, Florida, 850-916-5087, http://www.paradisebar-grill.com/
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