Here’s something I wrote for Grub Street that I think may interest some of the people on this board. There appears to be a micro trend of new cocktails bars, opened by experienced cocktail people, that have decided to focus on classic cocktails sold at reasonable prices ($12-$17). It was interesting talking to these bar owners and finding out the various ways they found to keep costs down and pass the savings along to the customer. The primary way to do this, it seems, is to cut back on inventory. Instead of carrying 15 different gins, you carry one or two, use them in all your gin drinks, and buy the brands in bulk at a discount. What you expect to happen at these bars does: cheaper drinks causes people to buy more rounds and sales go up. Let’s hope more bars see the logic of this approach.
Hear, hear! A return to the golden age!
Makes sense to me. Plus, most of the classics don’t call for bespoke house-made ingredients which costs extra payroll time for the people who prepare them.
There’s a place for a bar with fifteen different gins, but most bars and restaurants really don’t need to do all that. And shouldn’t. I see all these menus where each drink is comprised of unique ingredients, as if their choice of specialty spirits has made all the difference in the drinks. Nonsense.
As someone who lives outside of a major metropolitan area, where just the act of ordering a Manhattan is taking your life in your hands, I would love to find a place that serves classic cocktails that are well-made at a reasonable price (Meauxbar in NOLA was a great example). The few places going the craft cocktail route in our area tend to go with the over-top mixology drinks, which I am fine with, but sometimes you just want a nice classic and the high-costs just keep us from going out and supporting them as often as we would like.
The rampant overstocking in US bars and stores is also a contributing reason as to why so many European bottles can be so difficult to find in their home countries. Not that I minded seeing and calling a lonely-looking bottle of Bonal from behind a bar in Philadelphia, but they had 20 others looking equally unused. A return to San Francisco and a stroll down Haight a few years ago, turned up 3 small liquor stores stocking Bonal. I know at least a dozen stores in Manhattan that stock it.
In Paris? Maybe two… if you’re lucky and it’s in. Basics from just next door like Averna? Cocchi vermouth? Good luck.
Martin, I think it is much worse than that. I was listening to a recent podcast Philip Duff did with Salvatore Calabrese, and basically his thesis is that modern craft cocktail bartenders are moving towards the kitchen/becoming chefs. In other words, most of the new cocktails are extremely difficult to ever replicate outside of where you can order them. Creativity is more important than anything else, and to be honest, when I am having a more molecular/gastronomical experience in NYC, it is rarely as good as a really well-made classic. Few drinks have ever risen to the deceptive simplicity of, say, Toby Cecchini’s riff on a Japanese Cocktail or his gimlet. I truly hope that Robert is right, and it seems like a return to normalcy is in order, but I have my doubts.
Separately, there was a great article in Wine Enthusiast about high-end cocktail bars in Manhattan increasingly being a place where there are no regulars. People go for their 1.5 hour Resy slot for impersonal service ordering $35 pre-batched drinks and only care about their Instagram photo. I’m pessimistic. This is the result of the bar business being impossible to make work economically in a place like NYC.