Cocktails

Seven Cocktails for Cinema Sipping

March 20, 2017 by Adrian Leave a Comment

“And the award goes to….”

Cocktails and the movies have been co-stars for 100 years.

Hollywood has always loved a cocktail. Bars are often used as critical plot points (“Here’s looking at you kid”), and the drinks sometimes become the stars of the screen themselves – who can think of The Big Lebowski without smacking their lips at the thought of a White Russian?

The days of grimy soulless multiplexes are numbered. Luxury cinemas, with sofa seating, table service and fully stocked bars are popping up across the country, restoring some long-lost Hollywood glamour to a night at the flicks. Where you once gorged on Maltesers while being kicked in the back, you now find yourself eating a bowl of calamari, appreciating the directors’ lighting and sipping on a cocktail.

Going to the cinema is escapism, a permission slip to take time out. A well-made drink is a romantic ritual that also closes the door on the humdrum. Both are visual treats and sensual experiences. That’s the magic of film and the magic of a good cocktail.

Here are seven silver-screen classic cocktail recommendations for sipping at the movies.

Old Fashioned

The oldest documented cocktail with its Rat Pack allure is perfect for big screen viewing. Just the right amount of sweetness with a good strong kick, which if made with a high quality block of ice, won’t dilute, warm up or lose consistency as fast as other drinks, especially if a high ABV bourbon like Wild Turkey 101 is used. Also, the liquid levels mean you won’t be nipping off for a comfort break at the crucial moment!

Recipe

50ml Wild Turkey 101

1 teaspoon brown sugar

3-4 dashes Angostura Bitters

Place the sugar and Angostura bitters in a mixing glass and muddle with a little whisky. Add ice and stir, slowly adding the Bourbon over a 2-3 minute period. Strain the cocktail into a rocks glass containing a snuggly fitting block of ice. Pare an orange peel and express the oils from the back of the peel over the drink. Rub the peel around the rim of the glass and drop the peel into the glass.

ICONIC HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love

Manhattan

Named after the most featured skyline in film, the classy Manhattan has been around since the 1860s and has survived mobsters, recessions and prohibition. The first drink to make use of vermouth as a blend, the Manhattan inaugurated an avalanche of American cocktails and symbolises the American dream. It packs a lot of flavours to keep you entertained if the film doesn’t. You can drink it in an old-fashioned or martini glass, or perhaps in a hot water bottle, as Marilyn did in Some Like It Hot. And the cherry is tasty to nibble on when the calamari runs out.

Recipe

50 ml Wild Turkey 101
25 ml sweet vermouth
3-4 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir the ingredients in a mixing glass with plenty of ice for 45 seconds, then strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

ICONIC HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot

Pina Colada

A bit of a guilty pleasure this one. The Pina Colada was invented in a luxury hotel bar in Puerto Rico for wealthy tourists in the 1950s, but somehow along the way it’s been made to carry parasols, cherries, half a pineapple garnish… But made with a quality Jamaican coconut rum like Koko Kanu, its smooth sweetness is a holiday in a glass with a comforting texture to replace the film-watching ice cream. It’s time to restore its faded glamour. After all, Hollywood legend Joan Crawford apparently claimed the Caribe Hilton’s creation was “better than slapping Bette Davis in the face”. Just leave out the cherries and the umbrellas.

Recipe
50 ml KOKO KANU
25 ml Pineapple juice
20 ml single cream
4 chunks of pineapple
5 ml lime juice
Blend all ingredients in a mixer and serve in a Pina Colada glass. Garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg and two pineapple leaves.

ICONIC HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Rupert Holmes’ The Pina Colada Song has been featured in multiple films such as Mars Attacks 1996, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 2013, Shrek 2001 and many others.

Negroni

The Negroni was created in Florence in 1919 when an Italian nobleman, Count Camillo, asked for a slug of gin in his Americano. It has had many screen moments. Orson Welles famously said about the Negroni: “The bitters are excellent for your liver, the gin is bad for you. They balance each other.” Federico Fellini, the Italian movie director produced a commercial for Campari, called Oh, che bel paesaggio! (“Oh, what a beautiful landscape!”) Bitter, but with huge flavours, some people will never learn to like it. But for those who like their palate stimulated as well as their eyes, this drink will offer many rewards.

Recipe

25 ml Campari

25 ml Cinzano 1757

25 ml gin

Fill a short rocks glass with ice, then layer up the three ingredients (adding the gin first to enjoy the colour change as the darker spirits are added). Garnish with an Orange zest.

HOLLYWOOD CLAIM TO FAME: Vivien Leigh supped them on the veranda in her 1961 hit The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, which also starred a young Warren Beatty. Expect to see it in more films soon as its popularity continues to rise.

Tom Collins

The Tom Collins is the most classic of gin cocktails, (so classic there’s a glass named after it) and an American favourite. The king of cooling drinks, it will refresh you through the steamiest of scenes and keep you looking interested in the dreariest. It’s the perfect balance of sweet, sour and strong when made to the right recipe. Ensure glass is well topped with ice to keep dilution to a minimum.

Recipe

50 ml Bulldog Gin
25 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
12.5 ml sugar syrup
Soda water

Add the gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup to a Collins glass full of ice and top up with soda. Garnish with a lemon wedge and a maraschino cherry. Add more ice if there’s room.

ICONIC HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Drunk by Robert de Niro in Meet the Parents, 2000 and Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, 1955

French 75 Cocktail

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world…” Casablanca is set around a lot champagne cocktails; the French 75 ordered by Ingrid Bergman by far the coolest.

With three parts gin and one part sugar, this drink is bitter sweet (like the film’s ending) and will hold your hand through an epic drama. Named after the French M1897 75mm artillery gun by British soldiers who created the drink from the only ingredients they had – London gin and local champagne – it can weather the storm.

Recipe

37.5 ml Bulldog Gin
12.5 ml lemon juice
6 ml sugar syrup
Champagne

Shake the first three ingredients with ice. Pour into a champagne saucer and top up slowly with champagne. Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

HOLLYWOOD CLAIM TO FAME: Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, 1942

Alessandro Palazzi at Duke’s Bar

Vesper Martini

Probably the best known movie cocktail, the Vesper Martini was dreamt up by Ian Fleming at Duke’s Bar in St James and made famous in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. In chapter seven, Bond directs a casino barman through his specific recipe and he later names his invention after the beautiful double agent, Vesper Lynd. It is, famously, ‘shaken, not stirred’, which aerates the drink, making it ice-cold and longer lasting for a blockbuster. It is quick and easy to make if parking was tricky and you find yourself at the back of the queue.

Recipe

60ml Bulldog Gin
20ml vodka

10ml Lillet Blanc

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

HOLLYWOOD MOMENT: Eva Green in Casino Royale, 2006

69 Colebrooke Row – Review

June 26, 2013 by Adrian 1 Comment

69 Colebrooke Row Islington

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69 Colebrooke Row, London N1 8AA
drinks@ 69colebrookerow.com
07540528593
Sunday to Wednesday 5pm – 12 midnight
Thursday 5pm – 1am
Friday & Saturday 5pm – 2am

69 Colebrooke Row

69 Colebrooke Row, also known in a rather enigmatic gesture as The Bar with No Name, sits in an Islington backstreet in that liminal zone where the bobo outposts of Camden Passage and Islington Green merge with the more urban terrain of Essex Rd. The bar is the creation of Tony Conigliaro, the dark prince of London mixology. Looking like a refugee from an El Greco painting, Conigliaro cut his teeth bartending at joints like Isola and Shochu Lounge. He has developed radical new approaches to the art of mixology influenced as much by processes in contemporary molecular gastronomy and perfumery as by his background in art and fashion.

The bar has the feel of 1950s Milan with the welcome addition of a speakeasy piano in the corner. The space it occupies is small, verging on the cramped, and the upstairs is devoted to a lab where Conigliaro and his assistant develop new blends. The drinks menu takes you on a tour of imagined locations-Avignon, St James’ Gate, Terroir, Death in Venice and Orange Grove Fizz-and invites you to sit back and enjoy the ride at the very reasonable price of £9 per drink.

So how did the drinks stack up?

The ‘Terroir’ @ 69 Colebrooke Row

The ‘Terroir’ is described as ‘Distilled clay, flint and lichen served straight from the bottle.’ It is the taste of the land that gives each wine its individual character but without the grapes getting in the way!

Served from a wine bottle with a spoof Spanish label, it drinks like a Martini and is built on a Vodka base with the addition of three secret elements. The taste characteristics reminded me of a Pouilly-Fume, the dry white wine from the Loire, the grapes for which are grown on a clay and flint soil. Sugar is clearly present in a way that is almost non-sweet and there are vegetal and soil flavours coming through too. It’s a serious drink that plays with our perceptions and asks questions about how we receive flavour.

The ‘ Vampiro’ @ 69 Colebrooke Row

The ‘ Vampiro’ is a Tequila and Mezcal Bloody Mary, but this is a much subtler version than the blood-spattered smoked chilli crazed zombie version that I had recently at a Mexican restaurant-fun as it was in a Tarantinoesque way. It is more measured and insuates its way into your system like a certain Transylvanian count on a first date with a virgin.

The ‘Avignon’ @ 69 Colebrooke Row

The ‘Avignon’ takes us back to the Middle Ages when the papacy shifted to France. It tastes of Frankincense and musty church pews and is a blend of Merlet Cognac, chamomile syrup and smoked frankincense.

The ‘Death in Venice’ @ 69 Colebrooke Row

The ‘Death in Venice’ is a Campari Spritz (Campari and Prosecco) with added Grapefruit bitters. The citrus taste of the bitters lingers long after the other flavours have died away-imagine Dirk Bogarde as composer von Aschenbach on the beach at the Venice Lido in Visconti’s elegiac movie, his makeup running in the sun as he sits, slowly dying and longing for the unobtainable boy…

Conigliaro is in some ways a Ferran Adria type figure in the world of cocktails, unafraid to innovate and investigate, preparing drinks that are not in any way gimmicky but that are multi-layered and intriguing. He is spreading his wings, collaborating with chef Bruno Loubet in Clerkenwell at The Cocktail Lounge at The Zetter Townhouse hotel and at Loubet’s new King’s Cross hit Grain Store (see our review), but as with Adria you get the sense that he is changing our perception of what a cocktail can be. If you are interested in contemporary drinks culture you should check out 69 Colebrooke Row.

Beagle – Review

May 14, 2013 by Adrian Leave a Comment

Beagle Hoxton

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397-400 Geffrye Street, E2 8HZ

020 7613 2967/www.beaglelondon.co.uk/

I’ve been going to Hoxton for years well before it became so trendy that even the train station sign is cool. From the mid 80s on I used to play at The Bass Clef jazz club which also became an important venue in the early drum and bass scene, the club nights subsidising the more swinging bass and drum sounds of the jazz cats. Watching an area you know change so radically is a bit like watching a child develop. Brats can become sophisticated, urbane and charming and the sweetest children can turn into monsters….

Beagle is a restaurant and bar situated in a couple of railway arches right next to the station. It’s the baby of Danny and Kieran Clancy who are music promotors and in the kitchen is James Ferguson, who used to run the kitchen at Rochelle Canteen, Margot Henderson’s (wife of St. John’s Fergus) critically acclaimed East London joint. I don’t know Margot but she has danced to my piano playing a few times-I admire a woman who will shake a blue stockinged leg-and on that basis I’m hoping for good things from Ferguson.

The Bar at The Beagle

The bar space is bright and buzzy and in the evening when lit up it looks pretty sexy. But down to business-we are here to sample the cocktail and bar snacks menu.

Hoxton Fizz and a Master Grey

We start off with a Hoxton Fizz (£8). It’s a cool cucumber, vodka, lemon juice and elderflower concoction and is a perfect cooler for an early summer’s evening. The Master Grey (£8) has more of a citrus flavour and tasted like a Tequila Sunrise that had gone to finishing school. It was a blend of blanco Tequila, Earl Grey, lemon juice, orange juice and marmalade.

With the alcohol starting to hit the spot it was time for some nosh. Grilled pepperoncini (£3.50) were hot and salty-without the kick of the now ubiquitous Padron peppers but still very good.

Brisket with red cabbage

Slow cooked beef brisket with pickled red cabbage( £6.50) needed something creamy to pick it up , maybe some horseradish, as brisket is a dry cut.

Smoked cod’s roe (£5) was tangy and had a depth of flavour like a proper Greek taramasalata. It came with really good toasted bread and was the best of the dishes.

Lady of Bergamot

For “dessert” we had a Lady of Bergamot made from Gin, Bergamot, lemon and egg white (£8.50). It was a kind of runny lemon syllabub cocktail and pretty good for that.

I’d be very happy if Beagle was my local hangout. The cocktails are reasonably priced and well made with distinct flavours and there is an attractive selection of local beers; the small but perfectly formed bar menu had some definite hits. I’d like to try the restaurant next to see how Ferguson fares on a bigger scale.

The Hedonist was a guest of Beagle