[applause] jim meehan: thank you allso much for coming. thanks to john henry,as david said. he has sponsored our cocktailtoday with el buho mezcal, which i'll be demonstratingin just a sec. and i've been nagging john forabout a year, politely, of course, because i knew that ifhe knew david, and i'd hope to come and speak to you guys. in many ways, i am herebecause of you.
and i'm not sure ifyou know that. and part of what i'd like tohappen during this google talk is to open up a dialogueabout not only-- you want me over here? don't forget your cocktail. [laughter] jim meehan: i'd like this googletalk to eventually become a dialogue, because ithink that not only am i here because of what you guys aredoing, but i think that the
future of what i do depends onthe sort of work that you do. and i'm not sure what broughtyou here today. i imagine a cocktail might help,maybe a book would help. i don't know if david mentioned,but we've brought pdt hats, t-shirts-- we have el buho t-shirts-- and all of the books that i haveon stage on my demo table over there are going to be givenout to one of you for asking a question afteri stop rambling.
so i don't know why you came,but hopefully, for whatever reason you're here, youwill be rewarded. but what i'd like to do todayare a few things. first i'd like to demo thedrink that i made. it's a perfect drink for cincode mayo, which is coming up in just four days. so i figured for those of youwho came out to maybe learn a thing or two about mixingdrinks, i could show you how easy it is to make thedrink you're having.
and next i'd like to talkabout the book i wrote. it came out in november 2011,"the pdt cocktail book." but i want to take a bit of adifferent spin, i want to actually talk about the processthat i used to come up with this book. a lot of times people, they'llcome up to me and ask me, so you wrote a cocktail book,what was it like? what made you want towrite this book? and i think that it's reallyhard to write something new or
to create something new whenyou don't know what's come before you. so i'd like to talk about theprocess that i used to develop "the pdt cocktail book" and i'dlike to introduce a big idea that i'll throw in thebeginning, that i'd like you guys to marinate on as themezcal floods into your veins. and maybe we'll talk aboutit together in about half an hour. but as i said before, i believethat the internet,
google, youtube, wikipedia, onand on, and on his change the way we learn, it's changedthe way we searched. my generation-- i'm 36, i'll be 37 this year-- was one of the last generationsthat went to the library, when we neededto find something out. the last time i went to thelibrary i felt like i needed a master's degree to learnhow to use it. the internet is a lot easierto use than the library.
but one of the things i found,as a kid, when i used to go to the library, before i used theinternet to find information, was, when i looked something upin a card catalog and found out where the shelf was to findit, on my walk to the shelf i'd oftentimes pass books,all sorts of different books-- books about ship peopletying knots, or guns of the early civil war, or justbooks that were very interesting to me. and i found that not only inwhat i'm going to talk about
with "the pdt cocktail book",but in how kids and my generation is searching thesedays, that in many ways what i learned along my searches, wasjust as interesting as what i was going to get. and one of the things that isconfounding, ironic, maybe sad, is that when we googlesomething, or when we search for something on the internet,it takes us exactly to what we are looking for usually, and itdoesn't allow us to go on that journey along the way andsee other things that might
interest us. so why don't we get tothis drink before i exhaust that topic. in thinking of cinco de mayo,the margarita is obviously the cocktail that is moston our mind. in creating a new cocktail-- which i guess you could callthis a new cocktail-- i often take a classiccocktail-- the margarita--
and play around with it. the margarita-- tequila, lime juice, triplesec, cuantro. i usually use a little agavenectar to sweeten it, to balance it out. so i took that and i playedaround with it. i'm going to use el buho mezcal,i'm going to use fresh-squeezed lime juice, alittle bit of agave nectar-- i usually lengthen it into asyrup so it pours easier--
and then a couple twists. and these are things that youprobably will see if you go to cocktail bars in new york, likemayahuel, which features agave cocktails inthe east village. but you've found that your drinkfrom five-six years ago has gone from maybea delicious sour-- something like a sidecaror cosmopolitan-- something that is strong-- it's actually good drinks--sweet and sour, and then
people are adding bittersto their cocktails now. and then later people wereadding saint germain and creme de violette and floralingredients. then people were adding herbsand herbal liqueurs, like chartreuse, and addingthat herbal quality. and then, finally, people havestarted adding spice and hot things, so this isa hellfire shrub. so taking that original recipe,i'm going to take a shishito pepper, whichisn't generally hot.
they say that a few of themin each batch is hot. i'm going to add halfan ounce of-- a little bit less, becausethis isn't a syrup-- add that on top ofthe shishito. i'm going to givethat a muddle. and what i did for yourcocktail-- which is in that giant camera over there-- wasi put all this on top into a large bin and just muddledthat, just like you're seeing here.
i'm going to add an ounce offreshly-squeezed lime juice. and then i'm going to add 2ounces of el buho mezcal. and you'll notice that wheni'm making this cocktail, because i'm speaking, ihaven't added any ice. i'm a big proponent when you'remaking cocktails, especially, when you're makingcocktails at a bar like mine, where i might be making threeor four cocktails at a time. build your cocktails without anyice and let them sit, so i could make four of theseif i wanted.
and then as soon as you'reready, then that's when you want to ice your shakerand shake. and, john, i don't actuallyhave a glass up here. so this allows me an opportunityfor john, my handy barback to come andbring me a glass. i'm going to add my iceon the other side. john henry, el buho mezcal,thank you very much. give it up. it takes a village, everybody,it takes a village.
so i'm going to getthat together. you want to get a nicestrong seal there. i always seal thecocktail shaker. you want to seal right here,so that it's easy to open. if you put the cocktail shakerstraight in, you're going to have a hard timegetting it out. give it a nice hard shake. [shaking cocktail] if you go to a cocktail bar, andthey're not shaking very
hard, order a beer and amaker's on the rocks. strain that. you can fine strain it, if youdon't want all the little seeds there. and that's it. this is the cocktail, if i wereserving it at home, i could put a salt rim on it, icould add some chile to the salt and make it alittle colorful. i could add citrus zest.
i could add all sorts ofstuff and maybe only do salt on the side. you could add a shishito pepperthere if you wanted. you could garnish itwith a lime wheel. what do you guys think? refreshing? for some of you, it mightbe a little too sour. for some of you, it mightbe a little too strong. for some of you, it mightbe a little too sweet.
one of the things that a lotof people of my credentials maybe don't mention isthat's ok, we all have different tastes. so the beauty of-- i feel like-- everyrecipe is modular. so if it's too sweet, pull backa little on the agave; if it's too strong, pull back onthe mezcal, and on and on. so that's your cocktail. does anyone have any left?
man, all right. because i wanted to make surethat we weren't getting in the way of efficiency hereat google today. and i wanted to get you, guys,a good buzz before i started on my journey. now, as i said, part of what iwant to talk about is not only the book that i wrote, butthe journey that i went on to write it. i first started working at thepegu club on houston street
with audrey saunders in 2005. audrey saunders wasdale degroff's-- dale degroff was her mentor. she worked with him right whenhe was leaving the rainbow room; was the head bartender atdale's bar that was opened called blackbird. when blackbird closed, dalebrought in audrey as the head bartender at bemelmans. audrey ran bemelmans for manyyears and then opened the pegu
club in 2005. and for me, this is very much awatershed moment in new york cocktail history. i got to be on theopening bar team. at that time it's hard toimagine, because there are dozens and dozens of greatcocktail bars, even in brooklyn, much lessmanhattan now. but at that time, the cocktailbars in new york were really milk & honey, flatiron lounge,angel's share--
those were the main ones. basically, there was three orfour bars employees only was almost open, and little branchwas almost open. so there were five greatcocktail places. audrey opens the pegu club, andit was really sort of a coming out party forthe cocktail. in these years 2005, 2006,2007, you really see the cocktail bar and the cocktailbartender go from person to person to person, to place toplace to place, till the last
couple years, where three placesare begetting nine places, and nine places arebegetting 18 places. so we're seeing an exponentialgrowth. but at the pegu club audrey--and still to this day-- had a collection of vintage cocktailbooks behind the bar. and at the time i was interestedin cocktail books. i had dale degroff's "the craftof the cocktail." i had gary reagan's "the joy ofmixology", which you'll see. i had ted haigh's "vintagespirits and forgotten
cocktails", which you'llsee in my presentation. but i really wasn't awareof how many old books that were out there. and audrey had original copiesof the 1862 jerry thomas, of the 1948 "fine art of mixingdrinks" by david embury. she had the 1937 "gentleman'scompanion" by charles h. baker and all these beautiful booksfor us to look at. and i immediately realized thatthere's so much about the history of bartending, and somuch about what i was doing
for her there that i reallywasn't aware of, and i wanted to investigate more. i went to ebay and startedspending all of my tips on old bar books and started meetingpeople who had more of these books. i'm going to forwardto my first slide. 1862, jerry thomas. this is the first "bartender'sguide". the book on the left, the onethat's sort of old brown one,
that is the first edition. the green book on the rightis the 1876 edition. and the book in the middlewith the torn cover-- so these are all my copies; theywould have weighed about 70 pounds, or i wouldhave brought them-- is the 1923 edition with an introduction by herbert asbury. this is a book that came outand was printed many times. you can see the price here,i think it's says $2.50.
i think it initially startedat $1.25 and then went to $2.00, and then $2.50. each of these books was printedprobably in seven or eight editions. and in the early days,this "bartender's guide" was very simple. it was a collectionof recipes. the recipes were not umbrellarecipes, like cocktails are, they were separated into shrubs,into punches, into
scuffers, into negoos,into sours. cocktails were verycategorical. and this was a very simpleutilitarian book, that was obviously meant for bartendersthat had in the 1862 addition a big appendix that was filledwith information for bar owners for how to make your owncordials, how to make your own bitters. this was before spirits weredistributed in bottles. so it had information for howto tap kegs of beer, and how
to blend whiskeys together. very utilitarian, extremelyinfluential and it spunned what i'm going to call"jerry's kids." you can see the 1876 edition ofthe "bartender's guide", on your left you see o.h. byron's"modern bartender's guide" and c. f. lawlor's "themixicologist." "modern bartender", 1884, the jerrythomas in the middle is 1876, "the mixicologist"on the right, i believe, is around 1891-95.
there are going to be cocktailgeeks on youtube, who are sitting there scolding me fornot knowing my dates, so i'm just going to make sure andcheck my cheat sheet, which i've created here. see, yeah, you've got 1894byron and 1895 lawlor. and what i call these "jerry'skids", these are other bartenders from other places. i believe o.h. byron is newyork, and "the mixicologist" was published in cincinnati.
but these are books that havevery similar gatherings of recipes, some differences--you know, we've gone another 15 years. but the "bartender's guide"really hasn't sort of transformed itselfas a genre yet. it's still a collection ofrecipes with a back appendix that includes information aboutmixing your own syrups and bitters, and cordials. moving on to about 10 yearslater, we get the first what
i'm going to call "technical barmanuals." 1900, the book on the bottom, harry johnson's"bartender's manual." and then, i believe, the firsteditions of the hoffman house were published around 1894,this one's around 1912. and you can see the picture ofthe guy dashing the bitters, and the slide says, this ishow you dash a bitter. one of the reasons why am ishowing you these slides, one of the things that i wasthinking about when i was writing the "pdt cocktail book"is how, why write a
cocktail book, unless you'regoing to add something new. and then what is alreadyout there, what has already been written? and as i started looking throughthese old books, it was interesting to find how,through each generation, you sort of saw an evolution, evenin the books themselves. the 1862, the 1890s, things aresort of very formulaic, they haven't reallyevolved yet. and then in 1900 to around 1910you see books like these.
these are 300 to 400 pagemanuals that tell you how to write a guest check, how tohire a porter, how to keep your walk-in clean; the mostinfinitesimal details were all mentioned in these books. and i thought it was incrediblyinteresting, because we are right now at atime, where if i pitched a book to a major new yorkpublisher saying, you know i want to write a book, and i wantto make sure that there's a good 20 pages on how to getthe bathrooms cleaned
properly, how to make sure thegarbage gets collected, how to make sure you know how to hirea bartender, how to hire a barback from mexico and not getbusted by the government. i want to make sureand add that in. the publisher would look at meand be like, uh, this is totally disinterestingand just pass it off. if you look back 110 years,there weren't many, but there were at least a handful ofthese books that were published and republished, andpopular, because i can still
get my hands on them now for alot of money, which is showing that during this time bartendingis moving into a craft, is moving intoa valued profession. people want to read these books,and the craft of the cocktail is evolving. we move forward from there. this on the left is kappler,1895, he bartended at a very posh hotel called the hollandhouse. "jack's manual", that's 1907.
dave wondrich shall bedisappointed, but i don't remember where jack worked. and then on the right is1908, william boothby. i actually have, i think,i have boothby up here to give away. and i have mr. johnson upthere to give away. these are what i'm calling"the first celebrity bar books." and as i said before,we've moved from very sort of simple recipe books to veryinvolved professional guides,
to right around 1910, we seethese bartenders who've gone from just being guys who ranpubs to being famous. many of these bartenders at thetime had travelled around the country, they had mixeddrinks in numerous posh hotels, and by now they have notonly their own books, but they have books that they're notcalling "the bartender's manual" or "how to mix drinks",but they're calling it "jack's manual", or they'recalling it "the world drinks and how to mix them" and theygot that weird sort of thing
with boothby, where he isthe standard authority. but the bartenders kind of by1910 become a celebrity. moving forward to vest pocketbooks, which for me, remind me of the function that pda sortof serve for bartenders now. a lot of times now if you goto a cocktail bar, and the bartender doesn't know therecipe, the first thing everyone does is they grab theirphone and they start googling, well, i canfind the recipe. and everyone is on their phonegoogling the recipe.
and following this periodof so much-- this is the golden age-- "drinks" from straub is 1916,"the abcs of mixing cocktails" i've actually snuck in english;book is around 1915. it was republished all theway through the '20s. "drinks and how they're mixedand served" by paul lowe was 1904, but was publishedfor a decade. and applegreen'sis around 1916. so between 1862 and 1916 so manyrecipes were created and
the guests were so familiar withthem, that the bartenders needed these little sort ofcheat sheet books to put in their vest pocket. so this would be one of thesizes of the books, and they would put them in theirvest pocket. and someone came to order adrink, and they didn't know what it was, they probably didwhat most of us do now-- they sort of go over here and theystarted looking through it. so it's sort of a medieval formof google from a hundred
years ago, and it'sinteresting. it's also interesting what isaw as i was putting this together for you. and this is why i took thesephotos is if you look at the trim sizes of all these books,they're very similar. this is taken from above,they're all very similar size. these are very similarin size, almost the same trim size. moving forward, now we have thisgenre of books that are
sort of vest pocket books thatcome out together all around the same 15 years. and then we move to what i'mcalling "the end of the era". this is a book i've alsobrought to give away. 1917, hugo ensslin's "recipesfor mixed drinks." it's strange, you would think thatthe sort of last cocktail book to come out before the goldenage ended and prohibition was enacted would be like a plushbible that came with, who knows what, a special box,but it's a very--
it looks like a very-- simple book. but this book by ensslin, whowas also a new york bartender, there are at least 50 of hisrecipes in a book that came out later, which will be in oneof my next slides, "the savoy cocktail book." and what's interesting, if youlook at ensslin, 1917, versus some of the books of the late1800s, is the sophistication of the cocktails by 1917verses the 1860s.
this is a time in americawhere champagne was-- champagne was around in theearly 1800s, but imagine what champagne tasted like after itsat on a horse drawn cart crossing the west till it got tothe guys digging for gold. i mean, it probably didn'thave much effervescence. who knows how sweet itwas to preserve it? so this is by 1917, especiallyin new york and on the east coast, you have all theseinteresting european ingredients from all over theworld, and all of them were
going into the cocktails. and the cocktails of this thatare in this book and they come from this era are some of themost sophisticated that have ever been created. but as i said, it's theend of the era. one of the popular myths isthat prohibition was this great time to drink in america,and it wasn't. when prohibition was enacted,there was about a year, year and a half for people whohad a lot of money
to stock their cellar. and some of them who really didhave a lot of money put as much as they possiblycould in there. but for most people, theycouldn't afford to save up for the end of the world. so as they ran out of booze,and then pretty soon you're either buying booze fromgangsters or you're buying booze from someone who's bringit illegally off of a clipper. a lot of these people who wereselling the booze were
criminals in it of themselves,they could not be trusted. they were adulterating a lot ofthe spirits, cutting them. you certainly weren't mixingwith some of these finer cordials and liqueurs, andbitters that you could get when booze was still legal. and drinking was illegal, so youhad to do it quietly, you had to do it discreetly. and the great bartenders of thegolden age from 1890 to 1916 they either quickbartending or they left.
they went to cuba, they wentto tijuana, they went to paris, they went to london. they went somewhere else, wheretheir skills could be used, they couldwork in hotels. and what we saw happen duringthis time, which is interesting, is these sort ofprohibition era guides. here's how "noble experiments",there's another one called "giggle water." andthe pub dates, the pub dates for these books are--
"here's how" is 1927-- so that's on 1919 and 1933roughly is prohibition-- so that's towards the end ."noble experiments" is 1930, "giggle watter" is 1928. so this is people, whose stashhas run dry, there's recipes for how to compound differentspirits in there. the recipes have gone fromthese very sort of sophisticated cocktails fromensslin to sort of going more towards the screwdriver, ormore towards the bronx.
this is a period-- and the other thing you'llnotice about the trim size, you can't tell by this, butthe "here's how" books are also really small. and this is a period, wherebooks go from being books written by bartenders forbartenders to books written by who knows who-- because theydon't want to put their name on it, because it'sprohibition-- for people, who are basicallyhosting these illegal parties,
going to speakeasies,and want to know a little more about it. and the content has really leftthe realm, the cocktail guide has really left the realmof the bartender and has moved into the realm of theamateur or the host. moving forward from here what,as i said before, these great bartenders in new york, or insan francisco, or in chicago and new orleans, in cincinnati,who wanted to continue their trade left andthey move on. "the cafe royal
cocktail book", 1937,is from london. the 1930 "the savoy cocktailbook" on the right, which is still in print, and the one inthe middle, "the artistry of mixing drinks" by frank meier,around 1937 as well. these are the house cocktailbooks of three amazing bars. "the cafe royal" and "the savoy"were sort of ukbg-- the united kingdombartender guild. these were sort of their housebibles in many ways, their sort of jerry thomases.
and what happened thankfully forthe cocktail globally is that a lot of the best drinks,drinks like you saw in ensslin, move rightover to europe. and these are-- i have a couple of these-- i think i have one of thesesomewhere to give you guys-- but these books are amazing. and this is when you really seethe books go from being jerry thomas' "bartender'sguide" to being books about
the places that drinkscame from. moving forward, postprohibition, in my opinion, things start tapering off,they get kind of sad. "the stork club cocktail book",1946, "the old waldorf bar book", 1935, and crosbygaige's "cocktail guide and ladies' companion"in the middle. i think crosby gaige mighthave been gay. but these are books, they werewritten by journalists after prohibition.
and it's interesting, as i saidbefore, we've gone from sort of the bar manual beingalways authored by bartenders to the bar manual throughprohibition and all these sort of nifty little gifty guides,being something that is now not written by bartendersanymore. they're written by hosts,they're written by men or women among town. and they are written not forbartenders to make good drinks in bars, but they're writtenfor the host to sort of
continue their roaring'20s parties into the '30s and '40s. the thing that you will find,and then moving forward, "the didactic bartender", 1934, "theofficial mixer's manual" by patrick gavin duffy and1945-51 townsend's "bartender's book." this is whenthese kind of crotchety bartenders who had been part ofthe golden age and ridden out through prohibition, theysee what's going on and they're disgusted.
and what these books that you'llfind from 1934 to 1955 are written with the bartendersare basically telling the young bartendersabout how they used to walk through the snow, and how longit took to get to school; and then they want them to stopmaking drinks with orange juice and drinks with cream,they want them to go back to the classics. they want them to learn theclassics first and then they can move forward.
but it's almost like thebartender has lost the ability to command an audienceanymore. people are not as interestedin cocktails as they were before. america does not havethe same spirits. we're in the middleof two world wars. people are drinking what they'redrinking to get drunk. they're not drinking becausethe economy and because the country is on the up and up.
so i call these "the didacticbartender guides." and then we move forward to-- i know, this is going toend, guys, hold on-- cocktail theory. the first cocktail theory book"the fine art of mixing drinks" by david embury, was notwritten by a bartender, it was written by a lawyer. it's about 700 pages, incrediblydry and acerbic. david embury liked his cocktailwith a lot of booze,
a little bit of sour,and almost no sugar. and this is where we move intothe mad men era, hard-drinking men, in the seven-to-onemartini. who knows where thebartender is. and i included a book that cameout in 2003, "the joy of mixology", because this is thesecond theoretical bar book. and then we move,essentially-- i'm not sure how many peopleyou've heard talk about the history of the cocktail--
but the cocktail really prettymuch goes into the toilet by the 1950s. it's highballs, it'sold fashions. i think that maybe the patrickgavin duffys of the world got their day. and the drinks, they'renot very interesting. they're dry, they're strong,they get the ad men through. once again, we're at war. and then pretty much, if youwant to find anything about
cocktails, you've got to lookat books like "the complete book of drink" byt.e. carling, or these grossman's guides. and the cocktail book hastaken away from the bon vivance and taken away from thesort of "gay happy hosts", and move towards the english. and things become veryanalytical and dry. and then we move forward to theabsolute darkest point of the cocktail--
the 1970s. there's two cocktailbooks that i'd recommend from the 1970s. one is stan jones' "completebar guide" from 1977. and i've put another book herefrom 2010 "diffordsguide", which i do recommend. i recommend both these books. and once again, i want you tolook at these books sitting right next to each other,because these books are very
much those kitchen sink timebooks that have thousands of recipes in them. and they both actually havearound the same trim size. as we're going through all thepossible genres of cocktail books, that i could possiblythink of writing, when i'm thinking, what should i write,if i write a cocktail book? the autobiography isactually an option. in the 1950s, johnny brookswrote "my 35 years behind bars." he claims that he createdthe between the sheets
cocktail, a beguiling mixtureof gin and lemon, and brandy and cuantro. also very dry, something thatcould certainly get someone who wasn't paying attention towhat they're drinking between the sheets. and then a book by my friendtoby checchini "cosmopolitan". toby wrote this book in 2003. and i consider it to very muchbe the sort of kitchen confidential of thebartending world.
anthony bourdain wrote thisgreat book about being a chef that basically involves nothingbut parties and drugs, m girls in the walk-in. and that's sort of toby'sbasically follow-up to that. i'm sad to inform many of youwho are thinking of leaving your excellent job at google,but that is not the way bartending really is. and then we-- we're getting there, guys--
we move to what i'm calling"the modern giants". these are my modern follow-up100 years later from those celebrity cocktail books. you have "cocktail technique" onyour left, written by kazuo uyeda, the founder of thehardshake method. the hardshake method for allof you cocktail geeks-- you probably know about this, butfor those of you who don't-- it's a method of shaking, usinga cobbler shaker, that has become very popularamong the youtube set.
if you go to a bar and you seesomeone shaking like this, and they look very japanese, they'veprobably been watching kazuo uyeda do this three-pointmethod shake. greg boehm has actuallytranslated this book, and it's excellent. you have "the craft of thecocktail" in the middle, dale degroff, the sort of yoda andtree trunk of american cocktails, wrote that in 2002. i have charles schumann's"american bar".
ironically, charles schumannis from munich. he has a bar, called schumann's,which has been around for at least 25 years. he's one of the most elegant,charismatic, and interesting bartenders on earth. and his book "american bar",written by a german, was a huge influence on my book. and then down below there youhave the "cocktails of the ritz paris", written by colinfield, an englishman, who has
been bartending at the ritz inparis, which is now closed for a couple years, forover 20 years. so we have the modern giantsin the cocktail technique. we have a book that is verymuch one of those harry johnson "hoffman house" books. it's very technical, veryinformative, as far as what he's thinking when hemakes a cocktail. we have "the cocktails of theritz paris", which is sort of a reprise of "the house cocktailbook." in "american
bar", we have a little bit ofeverything, which is what i ended up going for. and in "craft of the cocktail",we have a coffee table book filled with greatrecipes and photographs. and in my opinion, if you read"craft" closely, you'll see a bit of that sort of patrickgavin duffy, sort of "let's bring it back, guys". and moving forward we have thiswhole genre now of what dave wondrich calls"mixography".
and this is, guys, once again,going back to the 1940s. these are guys that know waytoo much, they have way too many college degrees. and instead of studying whateveryou do to get phds, they decide, i'll writea cocktail book. so in the 1980s, ibelieve, lowell edmunds wrote "martini". he is a classics professor,i believe, somewhere in a college in new jersey.
in 2004-05, forgive me, dave,dave wondrich wrote "imbibe". dave wondrich also has a ph.d.in early english literature, i believe, in comp. lit. william grimes, "straightup or on the rocks". i think he wrote that in 1993. i remember readingthat as a college bartender in madison, wisconsin. at this time i was servingcocktails and orange juice from the soda gun, a lotof alabama slammers,
long island iced teas. my idea with molecular mythologywas a cement mixer, which is bailey's with a littlebit of rose's lime-- stick a straw in it-- snake bites, the wholenine yards. and i remember reading that bookwhen i was in college, and being like, this is soboring, who would want to drink in a hotel bar? it's actually a prettygood book.
2005 or 2006, ted haigh, setdesigner, who actually has done the set design forthe latest series of "boardwalk empire". ted's based out of la. this book is brilliant,well illustrated. it's called "vintage spirits andforgotten cocktails", and it's really one of the booksthat is most responsible for the return of lot of these oldsort of weird spirits they go in cocktails that come outof books like this.
and on the bottom "the groglog", an early '90s book by tiki guru named jeff berry,who has spent the last 20 years trying to find out whatpeople like trader vic and don beach were putting in thesevery potent and delicious cocktails that ruledthe '40s and '50s. last-- almost, guys, we'regetting there-- the coffee table book. this is "speakeasy" by jay anddusham of employees only.
certainly, there have been anumber of others that i could have put up here. but what i've found in the lastten years, as i said, thinking about what i'm goingto write my cocktail book about, is that the people buyingbartender books from the publishers, were used tobuying books from chefs. and they were used to notwriting professional bar guides, they were used towriting books that were sort of something you could-- it hada manhattan and a martini,
and a margarita, and was sortof light and lively, and something that you could puton your coffee table. this is a great book, but itwasn't what i wanted to write. another book that i've actuallyedited for the last 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6 7 years is "thefood and wine cocktail book." when i started working onthis book, after rob willie left, it was just a kind ofcollection of all sorts of old cocktail books. and what i found in 2005-2006,when i started, there was this
sort of-- as i said before, istarted working at the pegu and i felt like what was goingon all over the country was absolutely unlike anythingthat had gone in the history before. and i found for the last sevenyears that i can use this book with my editor kate krader andthe editors of food and wine to actually document what'sgoing on year after year. so our latest editionjust came out. the other ones are around.
and it's kind of a neat way tofollow what is out there. and then last-- actually not even last,but not least-- is the "pdt cocktail book", abook i wrote in 2011, a book some of you, guys, probably havein your hand, and maybe even pacing through it. what i wanted to do wheni wrote this book-- and i promise i'm going to openthis up for some dialogue in one second--
is write a book that broughtback the 1930s book, brought back illustrations insteadof photos. i wanted a book that didn'tjust have recipes, but had recipes that had a story. i feel like cocktails tell astory, and i wanted the drinks in this book to tell a story. for that reason theillustrations in the book aren't illustrations of memaking cocktails at pdt, but they're illustrations thatdocument maybe the playfulness
of the cocktail. i wanted a book that had anannotated bibliography, that not only showed you where ifound these recipes, but where you can look for more. i wanted a book that hadthe food recipes in the back, and on and on. there's one more cocktail bookthat i want to show you, one more format of cocktail booki want to show you before i start opening things upfor conversation.
if you guys couldplay the video. [video playback] [music playing] -the best bartenders in theworld realize that there's a sense of nobility toserving people. -so this is some of thedifferent ice that we use here at little branch. we use a hand-cut enormousrock of ice. when you have a drink sittingon that, it will dilute much
more slowly, so you can sitthere and sip your drink, without it turning intoa watery mess. -if you have lime juice, or ifyou have eggs, or if you have cream, and it's already a cloudydrink, that's usually the decision maker betweenwhether we stir or shake. -and the fun part, we're goingto give it an orange twist. and in this case, a flamedorange twist. you always want to usea nice fresh orange with a shiny skin.
-sea salt tends to clump aroundthe edge of the glass, whereas kosher salt givesyou this nice fine rim. -this is the irish coffee. you can use the coffee of yourchoice, two brown sugar cubes, and just give them a crush. irish whiskey is thetraditional. a little bit of hot water,and just float it on top, mint leaf. and that is an irish coffee.
-caipirinha. -tom collins. -daiquiri. -sazerac. -the mojito. -gin & tonic. -pisco sour. [end of video playback] jim meehan: this is an app thati did right after i was
working on the "pdt cocktailbook." it came out right before the "pdt cocktail book"came out, so i couldn't really do much to promote it. but it's a book thatis all digital. and it's so hard to explain tosomeone how to stir a drink, but when you have a video of it,it's completely different. it's a new format ofcocktail book. and i guess what i'll leaveyou with before i take a couple questions, because i knowwe're running late, is
the future of cocktail books,i think, is going to depend heavily on the technology thatyou guys are working on, on the way that we search foreverything, and how we display information. i would argue thatit's so much-- i prefer, for instance, havingsomething that i can hand someone, something that i cantouch, something that i can refer to it. and when i wrote this book, ididn't think bartenders would
still keep it behind the bar. i figured that everythingwas moving towards apps. and thankfully, thathasn't happened. but i would argue to all of youthat there's really never been a better time to drink. the information out there-- especially after the seminar-- and knowing that, and knowingthat there's so much information out there, and thatthis information is being
accessed by people all theworld, it's kind of up to you, guys, for how they'll use it. and i guess the question i haveis, as i talked about in the beginning, walking youthrough the journey that i went on, looking through allthese old cocktail books. before i weighed in what wasgood about them, or what i didn't like about them, anddecided what i wanted to write, when i wrotemy own book. how can the search that we useon a daily basis, many, many
times a day, maybe evolve orchange so that you can see a little bit of how you findinformation, instead of just getting to that information. so i'll leave thatto you guys. no pressure. do you guys havemany questions? complaints? jim meehan: thank you. audience: we've got aquestion over there.
jim meehan: yeah. audience: [inaudible] that i had in mind [inaudible],but for everything that's come outin 2013 and end of 2012. what do you see assticking around? what do you see as going tobe passe in a year or so? jim meehan: i think that, what'sinteresting is we live in new york. so what's happening here willcome and go quickly, because
our interest cycle here is-- one of the things i realizedworking with the new york media is that really all theywrite about, god bless them is-- what's new andwhat's hot. so if you want to remain in themedia and become popular, you have to constantly evolve. so it's hard to say in thebigger picture how long some of these things willstay around. i think, at the endof the day, people
buy with their eyes. and also people are impatient. so the beautiful things, thethings that involve the ceremony, the things that createcocktails, where a guest watches the bartender makethe drink, and then the glass goes to the guest, andthen everyone looks at that guest and says, i want that. and then the guest actuallylikes that drink. those will be the thingsthat stay around.
i think that the reason whypeople go out for drinks, instead of making them forthemselves in their home, is because they want tosee and be seen. even if they want todo it discretely. so i think that if you applythat logic to some of the trends that are going on. if it's delicious, if it allowsyou to see and be seen, if it's efficient, i thinkit'll stay around. crew member: please use themicrophones for your questions
because we are recording. audience: yeah. all right. my question is, i guess i feellike, when i was a kid, i couldn't walk in a grocery storeand find an avocado. i'd probably had nevereven seen one. so as the world's become muchmore global, and we have access to all different thingsfrom all around the world, how has that changed the kind ofdrinks that people are, i
guess, experimenting with ordesigning, or whatever-- jim meehan: yeah, i mean ithink that it depends on where you're at. for instance, in san francisco,the mentality about what ingredients they work withis different than the mentality, say, that wework with in new york. new york is as close to europeas we are to san francisco. so i find that, depending onwhich part of the world you're in, you'll see differenttrends for how they use
ingredients. for instance, in copenhagen withnoman, the sort of new nordic cuisine, you'll see adifferent more locavore sense, whereas in new york or inlondon, you'll probably see more of interchangeable globalsense; san fransisco-- more local and sustainable. but i think that in general, asi said before, it's making drinks i think moreinteresting. and one of the reasons why i'vebeen able to remain as
interested as i am in cocktails,is because cocktails have like ananthropology to them. so you can follow the of thisis agave-based, so i'm going to use an agave-basedsweetener. and jabanero peppers are sort ofthings you find in mexico. so it's sort of the more youlook at it, i think, the more interesting it becomes. i had a reporter recently cometo me at a charity event a couple nights ago and said,so what are the
latest trends in cocktails? what a lot of people around hereare saying is that we're going back to the basics,more simple cocktails. and one of the secret i'll tellyou about most bartenders is most of them arepretty lazy. so, of course, there is anincentive to keep it simple. but i think that the more yousee avocados in cocktails, the more you see these sort ofinteresting and esoteric cocktails, that maybe involvethings that you didn't expect
or never desired to be in yourdrinks, it's what makes going out to drink interestingto me. audience: thank you. audience: so, firstof all, pdt was my first speakeasy, so-- jim meehan: we never meantto be a speakeasy, but i'll take that. audience: sorry. but going through the phonebooth, and doing that whole
kind of thing was a reallyawesome introduction. so thank you for that. jim meehan: no, thank you. audience: so one thing i wantto ask is so the next time i go, what should i get in termsof cocktail plus deep fried hot dog pairing? and a follow-up, howdo i get in? jim meehan: i do have a limitedamount of business cards, which you could probablyauction off after
some of you go toyour meetings. but, yeah, i think the way thatthe menu is set up at pdt, is i came from a winebackground before i focused on cocktails, so the list goesfrom light, refreshing, usually white spirit drinks,moving onto to sours, moving onto stirred and strong drinks,sometimes rich drinks in the winter. so the idea is to drinkthrough it. the idea of what we'redoing trying to
do is course cocktails. so in an ideal situation, likean ideal pdt experience for me is you start out with somethinglight an dry, something like a paddington,which is a sort of daiquiri variation with marmaladeand absinth. you move into something that'smaybe a touch stronger, a touch sweeter, maybe atouch more bitter. and then you finish off withsomething brown and stirred, like the benton'sold fashioned.
she'll send the kidsto college. as far as the food, one of thethings people always say, so what hot dog should i havewith what cocktail? and really the food is there, ifyou have too many of these cocktails, you're goingto have to stop having these cocktails. so the food is really there tosustain you and fortify you as you sip your way throughmy menu. we have the chang dog with thekimchi, so as long as you're
not on a date, i highlyrecommend that. the torres tots, i recommendeveryone gets that. that's sue torres from suenos,all these amazing mexican ingredients on top. well, we have the missionchinese dog, which has a little bit of sichuan pepper,so it's a little numbing, as long as that doesn'tbother you. and then we have the wily dog,which is, as i've said on the menu, this from wd~50,the dogs go
molecular before the drinks. so they're all there to pleaseyou and help you gain weight, and keep you drinking. so it's your choice. and what i told-- audience: is that what thedeep-fried mayo is for? jim meehan: deep-friedmayo is to keep you large, living large. but what i tell mystaff is that
ideally we want to serve-- we spend so much time keepingthis menu up-to-date-- that we want to serve youthe drinks on this menu. a lot of times cocktail geekswill go to a bar and they be like, so what can iget off the menu? and it's just like, what we'retrying to do, what we spend all of our time on this menu. so we do want you to trythe drinks on the menu. if none of them soundappetizing, we generally defer
to old pdt cocktailsor the classics. so i mean that's sortof our procedure. you could walk in, just like youdo at milk&honey and say, i want something brownand stirred. i want something with tequila. i love the diablo, or whateveryour favorite drink is, and then they should be able tohelp you with that too. so i think what we'll do forthose of you that can possibly stay longer or drink more is iwill find one of the-- we'll
reposition one of these tablesfor those of you who bought a book and want me tosign it still. and you get a shot of mezcal assoon as i sign your book. how do you feel about that? sound good? jim meehan: thank you,guys, very much. i really appreciate your time. crew member: thankyou, jim meehan.