Connaught Bar in London: Martin Trolleys and White Gloves

(http://onelondonone.blogspot.com/2010/10/london-cocktail-week-october-11-17.html)

After Manhattan, Frisco, and Tokyo, it's time to visit a bar in London. The choice would be the Connaught where guests are served from martini trolleys managed by white gloved attendants. How to call them, martini trolleys or gueridon trolleys? Well, matter of taste, or of habit.

Anyway, here's the description for such a trolley (according to One London One): the trolley features an engraved Japanese crystal mixing jar which has been cleverly engineered to conserve freezing temperatures; double frozen ice cubes from purified water ensure the martini is chilled to perfection; the stirring utensils are made of silver, while the martinis themselves are served in elegant engraved crystal glasses especially created for the Connaught by a leading French designer. Not bad!

(http://fnb-portfolio.blogspot.com/2010/10/types-of-food-service.html)

Ago Perrone and Erik Lorincz are the mixologists at the Connaught, presiding over the extensive list of expensive cocktails.


(Bartenders and Mixologists)

High Five in Tokyo

Hidetsugu Ueno preparing ice cubes for the drinks
(http://caskstrength.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/2008-cocktail-world-cup-in-queenstown-new-zealand/)

Looking on the web for cocktail bars in Tokyo, I bumped on an unexpected sentence: Japan is the Galápagos Archipelago of bartending! Hidetsugu Ueno said that: he is the manager of Bar High Five.

What I knew so far was that Japanese cell phones were affected by the Galápagos syndrome: like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands they are fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins (according to Takeshi Natsuno from Keio University). Well, it goes the same for Japanese bartenders: they developed their own ways of making classics (bartenders or mixologists, if you prefer the term).

Hidetsugu Ueno is obsessed with finding the perfect shape and perfect temperature for ice cubes: different drinks need ice cubes of different temperatures, and carved like diamond. If this is not Galápagos syndrome, then Darwin invented his giant tortoises.

Hidetsugu Ueno demonstrating a double twist at Bar Convent Berlin 2009
(video by alkoteka)

Ueno San has been the mixologist at Star Bar in Ginza before starting his own High Five.

Star Bar, Ginza
(http://www.network54.com/Forum/234648/thread/1101185252/Report+on+MJLC+dinner+in+Tokyo!!)

(Bartenders and Mixologists)

The History of Oofty Goofty

Photograph of the Bella Union in Barbary Coast, first run as a gambling hall in 1848
credits: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
(http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Oofty_Goofty_Stars_in_Romeo_and_Juliet)

Back in the old times, when Barbary Coast in San Francisco was still known for gambling, prostitution and crime (and was not overlapped by Chinatown, North Beach, Jackson Square, and the Financial District), there was a guy who seemingly could pronounce only two words: Oofty Goofty. So the other people called him like that, Oofty Goofty. He was making a living by letting others to beat him with a bat for 25 cents. So it goes. Anyway 25 cents meant by those times really 25 cents.

Well, eventually someone hit him too hard and the guy died.

The name was taken over nowadays by a cocktail you can have at the Jardinière in Hayes Valley. After a couple of drinks you would feel like the old guy from Barbary Coast: fearless and eccentric (don't let others hit you, though).

The creator of the Oofty Gooty cocktail is Brian MacGregor, the mixologist at the Jardinière.

Here is the recipe (according to http://www.nirvino.com/blog/posts/Oofty-Goofty-Jardiniere?id=YrX1Nnd345dqdsI1lV):

• 1/2 oz No 209 Gin
• 3/4 oz Aisan Pear Puree
• 3/4 oz White Wine Verjou
• 3/4 Ginger Syrup
• 3 Dashes St. George Absinthe

And here are the directions (according to the same source):

• Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice.
• Shake vigorously for 10 seconds.
• Strain into a cocktail glass.

Bon Appétit!

Cocktail Week at the Jardinière
(@Camper English, http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da208834011570960d46970b-popup)

(Bartenders and Mixologists)

Bartenders and Mixologists

(@ Brian MacGregor, Oofty Goofty at Jardinière)

You can drink an Old Fashioned at the Experimental Cocktail Club in Paris, and a Lusitania at the Beckett's Kopf in Berlin. You can have a Moscow Mule at Rockpool in Sydney, or an Oofty Goofty at the Jardinière in San Francisco. Bottom line, you can find your drink and your place provided you are a free spirit. The only issue is to know what a bartender and what a mixologist are.

According to Colleen Graham, mixology is generally accepted as a slang term for a refined and in depth study of the art and craft of bartending. Well, it's not that simple: the same Colleen Graham comes back and asks herself, is a mixologist just a fancy, scientific-sounding name for a bartender? Technically, yes, but there is a generally accepted difference between the two job titles while the two are often used interchangeably. Still confused?

Now let me give you my two penny opinion: bartending can be an art, if you are obsessed with looking for the perfect mix of drinks. Therefore not all bartenders are also mixologists, while all mixologists are also bartenders. To say nothing about baristas (just kidding). I'll come back to this.

• The Campbell Apartment
• The History of Oofty Goofty
• High Five in Tokyo
• Connaught Bar in London: Martini Trolleys and White Gloves

(A Life in Books)

The Campbell Apartment

The Campbell Apartment at Grand Central: an amazing room, some say the largest in New York, anyway the tallest, and sure one of the most upscale cocktail lounges you could imagine.

The legend goes that here was a clandestine bar during the Prohibition, which explains why it is located in a pretty hidden corner of the Grand Central building: you cannot find it by yourself, someone who knows has to be with you.

Actually it seems that it wasn't a bar by those times. John W. Campbell (a financier and railroad executive) rented the room and made it his office. He hired architect Augustus N. Allen to remodel the space. The architect made from the room a Florentine palace, with a hand painted timbered ceiling, organ pipes, and a huge fireplace, in which John Campbell put a steal safe.

At nights private receptions were organized with music (and maybe also with drinks, which explains the legend about the clandestine bar).




After Campbell died, the room entered in disrepair. It was used as store room for the station and even as a small jail.

In 1999 the space was restored and became an upscale bar, with bartenders having the real upscale style:) It is not very expensive, though. I was there one of these days, with one of my sisters (I wouldn't have found the place by myself) and as I was sipping a glass of wine I wandered whether the timbered closets were not hiding some skeletons. A waiter came and opened one of the closets, so I could see that there were not skeletons at all, only bottles of Scotch and Bourbon: enough bottles to feed a small regiment.

The coats of arms of the Campbell family are over the fireplace, and in ancient times the Campbells and McDonalds of Scotland were in great rivalry, which made me suddenly very careful: they say there is some McDonald inheritance in our blood :)

By the way, the name of Campbell is pronounced Camel. That's it!

(New York, New York)

(Bartenders and Mixologists)