YOU ONLY DRINK ONCE

Of course it's the record player that's really cool.

You’ve probably heard me say before that James Bond, fictional as he was, must have been the worst customer in the world when he came into the bar where you were working. He’d be there telling you how to make his drink, telling you how to do your job, being an all round clever dick.  I imagine a certain amount of spit might have gone into the shaker if he ever turned his eyes away.

Well, thanks to a book titled The Man with the Golden Typewriter, a collection of Ian Fleming’s correspondence, edited by Fergus Fleming (Ian’s nephew), it seems that Bond’s far from fictional creator wasn’t much less annoying.

Fergus has tracked down Ernest Cuneo, an American lawyer, newspaperman, author, intelligence liaison officer,a spy during World War Two, and a long time friend of Fleming.  Cuneo is quoted in the book, “Of all the maddening trivia through which I have suffered, nothing quite matched Fleming’s instructions on how his (martinis) were to be made. [He] was painfully specific about both the vermouth and the gin and explained each step to the guy who was going to mix it as if it were a delicate brain operation. Several times I impatiently asked him why the hell he didn’t go downstairs and mix it himself, but he ignored me as if he hadn’t heard and continued right on with his instructions. Equally annoyingly, he always warmly congratulated the captain when he tasted it as if he had just completed a fleet manoeuvre at flank speed.”

Oh dear. 

     According to some credible, if not cast-iron, online sources there was a time when Fleming was drinking a bottle of gin a day. His doctor convinced him to substitute bourbon.  Where do people find these doctors?

I can’t for the life of me find a photograph of Ian Fleming with a martini, unless that's one above in a wine glass (surely not): hard enough to find one of him with a drink.  Cigarettes and guns no problem whatsoever.

PUMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

I was thinking of the opening line of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights Big City, “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this ..”

I was in Beverly Hills – and I always feel like I’m an illegal immigrant when I slide over the border into Beverly Hills. Everyone there is (or at least gives the impression of being) so slick, so moneyed, so untroubled by the realities of existence, so veal-calf-ish, that I think the secret police are going to ask for my papers, find I don’t have the right ones, and then, if I’m lucky, they’ll give me 30 minutes to get out of town.

In this case I was there because I’d been to a wedding at the Beverley Hills Courthouse (congratulations Elina, congratulations Anthony) and this was the post-reception drink.  We were in Wally’s, which sounds like a modest kind of place, but this being Beverly Hills it isn’t.  You want to read their blurb?

“Creating a space that allows Wally’s to elevate its core mission of providing quality, value and service – with the inclusion of a restaurant under the same roof – has spawned a unique environment in which to enjoy both an elegant dining and a unique shopping experience.”

Well it’s not untrue.  The cheese counter in the back is hard to resist.  And as you can see, the walls are lined with bottles of wine, which seems a very reasonable design choice, though I couldn’t help thinking that once in a while somebody must grab one of those bottles and try to stick it in their bag.  Maybe there are security cameras – and I’m sure if they catch you they beat you up very discreetly, if very thoroughly.

Anyway, this cocktail is the main reason to blog about the Wally’s:

POMP IT UP - Belvedere vodka, Pamplemousse liqueur, grapefruit juice, up - $14

     Personally I’d have squirted some lemon or lime in it – but that’s me all over, never quite sour or acidic enough.

These days I also find it impossible to hear the word pamplemousse without thinking of the song, “Foux Da Fa Fa” by Flight of the Conchords, currently being used in a TV commercial for milk:

And I did wonder why the drink was pinkish – pink grapefruit I supposed, which it is, but channeled (I’m now pretty sure) through pamplemousse rose liqueur, there are quite a few of them apparently and I can't swear this is the kind they use at Wally's, but you get the idea:

And the fact is, Wally’s do serve some kick ass charcuterie and cheese plates, almost worth the risk of crossing the border:

 

I'M LUVIN IT

More sausage lore:  There’s a terrific Thai place in a mini-mall on Sunset Boulevard (the address is the ominous 6660 W Sunset Blvd) called luv2eat, where the staff is wonderfully gender fluid.

And the food is really good too.  This is Thai Isaan Sausage, which was beautifully sour and acidic, which which may have been because of fermentation, though it could easily have been lime juice: there’s sticky rice in there too.

And there’s this, 3 kinds of barbecue (that’s 2 pork, one duck) over jade noodles:

And also on the menu is something that caught my eye as “pork leg over” – which sounds pretty obscene if you’re an Englishman – though of course in fact it’s “pork leg over rice” – but a man is entitled to snicker, fluidly or not.

THE SANDWICH MAN

Well it's true, but there's no need for the potty mouth, is there?

PEGGING THE QUEEN

One of the things I like about old cookbooks is that they’re often wonderfully imprecise about quantities – a pinch of this, a dash of that, a knob of the other.  Likewise with certain old cocktail recipe books. 

If you look into a copy of The Artistry of Mixing Drinks by Frank Meier, of the Ritz Bar in Paris, (and I confess I only have a facsimile of the 1934 reprint) you’ll find a somewhat inscrutable recipe for a drink called Queen’s Peg:

“In a large wineglass; a piece of ice, one half-glass of gin; fill with Champagne and serve.”

But how large is a large wineglass?  How large is that piece of ice?  Presumably the measure of gin is half an ordinary sized wineglass, rather than a large one, but how large is that?  I don’t know and I really don’t care too much.  And with this attitude I made my own, using cava rather than Champagne, natch.

    I also went with a tumbler rather than a large wineglass, but I thought that was near enough volume-wise, and I’m still on my large spherical ice ball kick, so that made for a pretty substantial piece of ice.  I put in a decent pour of goodish gin – Death’s Door from Wisconsin - and I topped it off with some run-of- the-mill cava.  It looked like this:

      And how did it taste?  Well, it tasted odd.  You could still very much taste the gin – Death’s Door is a pokey liquor, heavy on juniper, coriander and fennel – and you could of course taste the bubbly.  But it was less than the sum of its part, or maybe the problem was was that the parts simply refused to combine. It wasn’t bad and it was certainly drinkable but I think I’d rather have had a glass of gin and a glass of cava separately.  So then I tried again. 

Smaller glass, blue ice sphere (food coloring), different run-of-the-mill cava, much cheaper supermarket gin.  Friends, it tasted better, at least in so far as the tastes blended somewhat, which may be only to say that the taste of the gin receded in the mix, so the drink tasted more like a gin and tonic, with cava replacing the tonic.  Not the very worst idea, but still somehow an attempt to combine things that don’t really need combining.

Could I tell you exactly what quantities went into either of my two Queen’s Pegs? No I could not.  Could I make another that tasted exactly the same as either of them?  No, not exactly, although I think I could get near enough.  Whether you’d like it, I can’t say.

I looked up a few modern recipes for Queen’s Peg and they of course tend to be very precise - the modern consumer likes to be told exactly what to do - but they’re still variable.  Epicurious says 3/4 ounce dry gin to 6 ounces of Champagne, James Beard says 3/4 ounce dry gin to 4 ounces of Champagne, absolutdrinks.com says 1 part gin to 5 parts Champagne but has nothing to say about overall quantity.  The ice cube seems optional.  There’s also some debate about whether it should be served in a wine glass or a champagne flute, but really, that’s likely to be the least of your problems.

CHOWING DOWN WITH THE GREEN FAIRY

 You know I’ve always been interested in how the owners of restaurants decide what name to give to their establishments.  And for years I’ve been walking past a restaurant with the inscrutable name No Tomatoes, an Indian café in a mini- mall on Beverley Boulevard.

Why would you call a restaurant No Tomatoes?  Why would you choose that name as opposed to, say, No Partridges, or No Bull’s Pizzles.  I’ll probably never know.

I walked past it again a couple of days ago.  It was first thing in the morning and I was on my way to an appointment.  It was early and the place wasn’t open yet, but it looked as though it was still in business.  They had even, it appeared, recently taken a delivery of large amounts of tomato. Wha?

But what really caught my eye on the menu displayed in the window was the naan ‘wich – not an especially exotic or difficult thing to make – just curried vegetables and chicken wrapped in naan - but since I’d never had one, I decided it’d buy one on my way home after the appointment.

Back I went, at about 11.30.  There were tables outside the restaurant, the front door was open, and as I stepped inside I could smell the sweet rising scent of curry, and see food sitting in warming trays.  And behind the counter there was a harassed looking man, obviously Latino rather than Indian, who said, harshly, “Closed.  No more open.”

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.  Did it mean maybe that he was getting things ready and the food wasn’t hot yet but he’d be opening later?  Or had there been some sudden disaster, a power cut maybe?  It did look a bit gloomy in there.  I tried to ask for more details, but the guy repeated, a little louder this time, “Closed.  No more open.”  Well, I can take a hint.

So I headed home, and decided I’d go into the local supermarket on the way, and buy something for lunch.  In I went and, blow me down, they had a salami flavored with absinthe!!!  I couldn’t resist any more that you’d have been able to.

 Man that was a good salami.  I tried to convince myself that I could taste the absinthe and maybe I could, but it really wasn’t the full on Green Fairy experience. 

But I could definitely taste the hatch chiles, very hot but not burning, and there was something gorgeously rich and greasy about the whole thing. 

Probably it was better than a No Tomatoes naan ‘wich would have been, but having looked on Yelp it seems that No Tomatoes is closed permanently, so I suppose I’ll never know.  But that still leaves a few unanswered questions.  Why was the name still up, why was the menu still in the window, why were their tables outside, why was there food in the heating trays inside, and why had they bought so many tomatoes?  Somebody out there possibly knows.  Here’s a picture from Yelp that shows what I missed:

THE BLACK VELVET WAGEN

There was a short time of my life when I used to hang out with actors (I had my reasons).  And some of them used to drink Black Velvet – i.e. Guinness and cider - because it was supposed to be good for the voice – it “opened the throat” apparently.  I used to drink it too, though my throat didn’t need any opening.

Of course we weren’t drinking real Black Velvet: that involves Guinness and champagne and was created by a bartender of Brooks's Club in London in 1861, to mourn the death of Prince Albert.  I didn't actually know that until about ten minutes ago.

Brooks's club - on a quiet night

Over the years I stopped drinking Black Velvet, and I can’t say I really missed it, but lately, when given the chance, I’ve been drinking it again.  Here’s a very decent one I had at Dargan’s, an Irish bar in Ventura.  The cider was Strongbow, the first alcohol that a whole generation of teenage English drinkers ever tasted.  Or perhaps that's just me.

The best thing is that you drink the cider through the Guinness – it all has to do with specific gravity, no doubt.  If you’re interested, that’s a Snakebite in the back – half cider, half Harp lager.

Back in the Psychogourmet Utility Kitchen I’ve been trying to do something similar but different– and a bit classier – Freixenet cava and Big Bear Black Stout.

It tasted good enough but as you can see, there wasn’t the separation I was looking for.  And Big Bear Black Stout is a big chewy, fudgy, liquorice-ish mouthful so it was a bit like drinking dessert.  Still, there’s plenty of time for further experimentation.

Now, as you may know, I am a man who is, or at least used to be, deeply fascinated by Volkswagen Beetles, and blow me down, a stash of Guinness advertising posters has been found.   I must say my first reaction that it was a lark painted by Bruce McCall, but as far as I can tell, they're, so to speak, kosher.

Those fine neutral men at Guinness evidently decided they could shift some units in the Third Reich.  The People’s car, the People’s beer.  Well, only up to a point.

FROM GIN PALACE TO RUM HOVEL

For a number of reasons – including an upcoming trip to Baltimore next month - I’ve been re-reading some Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Last night’s bedtime tale was “The Man of the Crowd” – which is either the greatest ever fictional depiction of night walking, urban exploration and psychogeographic drifting; or not. 

The plot is simple enough: our convalescent hero, looking at the crowds in the street through his hotel window, spots an evil-looking old man and for no very good reason (but then who needs one?) follows him all over London for the next twenty-four hours.

I thought I was reasonably familiar with the story but I’d forgotten these lines: “Once more he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze of light burst upon our sight, and we stood before one of the huge suburban temples of Intemperance one of the palaces of the fiend, Gin.”

As so often with Poe, you kind of wish he’d tone it down a bit, but then if he toned it down a bit he wouldn’t be Poe.  But just the term Gin Palace – it sounds so wonderful, so mythical.  It’s a palace!  And it’s full of gin!  The term of course was ironic, although some so-called gin places looked more much appealing than others.

     The old man dashes inside and the narrator follows him, but neither takes a drink, and both remain sober throughout the adventure. 

Then there’s Poe’s story “The Black Cat” in which the narrator, when violently drunk, gouges out the eye of his pet cat: something that today strikes me as far more disturbing than some of Poe's more lurid fantasies.   
“My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.”  “Gin-nurtured” – well, aren’t we all at one time or another?  And then he finds a replacement cat. “One night, as I sat half-stupefied in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin or of rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat—a very large one—fully as large as Pluto.”   
He takes the cat home with him and, as you can guess even if you don’t know, it doesn’t end well.

There’s also a column in the form of a letter, one of a series written for the Columbia Spy under the title “Doings of Gotham,” in which Poe refers to the closing down of the “Rum Hovels” of Philadelphia, which he thinks may be a good thing, though he considers it unconstitutional.

So yes, Poe was familiar with gin and rum, at least as literary tropes, and you could say the same for casks of Amontillado: “I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.”

       It’s easy enough to find something absurd and overwrought about Poe’s descriptions of alcohol and its effects. but Poe’s own battles with the demon drink were real enough, destructive to himself and others, and sometimes downright fiendish.  He belonged to the “one drink’s too many and a thousand’s not enough” school of drinking.  One of his more tolerant supporters, Thomas A. Clarke wrote, “if he took but one glass of weak wine or beer or cider the Rubicon of the cup was passed with him, and it almost always ended in excess and sickness.”

A certain amount of walking and drifting, and no doubt staggering, seems often to have been involved, sometimes ending in Poe having to be carried home by more or less sympathetic friends and acquaintances.

But what did Poe actually drink?  I think the essential answer is: anything he could get his hands on.  When he went to West Point military academy in 1830 he was known as having a taste for brandy. His roommate Thomas W. Gibson, recalled in Harper’s Magazine that he was “seldom without a bottle of Benny Haven’s best brandy.  I don’t think he was ever intoxicated while at the Academy, but he had already acquired the more dangerous habit of constant drinking.”  Benny Havens (Harper’s or Gibson got the spelling wrong) ran a tavern that was strictly off-limits to cadets but that only made them want to go there, obviously.  Getting there was either a trudge through the woods or a float down the river but Poe (and many other’s too) thought it was worth the risk.

Benny Havens - not a man to tangle with.

Poe also claimed that other people forced him to drink, the poet William Ross Wallace, for instance, “who would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.”  This was in a letter to his publisher J and HG Langley, explaining why he’d arrived at their New York office in a drunken state.

There’s also an extant Poe family recipe for eggnog but however indiscriminate Poe’s tastes, I can’t imagine that eggnog ever be the number one choice for a serious drinker.  Maybe this would have been better:

PARACELSUS HAS A LOT TO ANSWER FOR

The most fun you can have with a dry martini and a garden gnome.

That titled explained: the gnome first appears in the alchemical works of  

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), aka 

Paracelsus.  He's also often credited with the line "the dose makes the poison" - 

good advice to martini drinkers.

THE GIN AND I

Some mornings you wake up wishing you were this guy.

And then in the evening, you wish you were one of these guys.