Anatomy of a Cocktail Cockpit
| By Chuck Terhark |
|
Photo by Marshall Franklin Long
Think your bar is stocked? Your bar is the Spirit of St. Louis compared to Bradstreet Crafthouse, the Starship Enterprise of cocktail bars. Ensign Jourdan Gomez, whom you’ll find manning the ship most weekend nights, gave us a tour of the bar’s bridge, where some of the city’s best drinks are mixed nightly.
1. Liquors: The shelf is stocked with rare liqueurs (try a sip of Zwack, made in Hungary since 1790) and plenty of whiskeys. But they only serve one vodka: the Minnesota-made Prairie.
2. Juicer: If it can’t be juiced, Bradstreet doesn’t have it. That means no cranberry juice, and that means no Cosmos. But your bartender will happily recommend a similar (and probably better) option.
3. Luxardo cherries: No neon Maraschino cherries here. These dark beauties are candied Marasca cherries, imported from Italy.
4. No olives: The Bradstreet is an old-fashioned cocktail bar and as such, they don’t use olives. As a 1955 Time magazine article on the classic American cocktail put it: “Nothing enrages the sophisticate more than olives, onions or other hors d’oeuvres in a martini. But a twist of lemon peel is usually acceptable.”
5. Bitters: The Bradstreet has 14 on hand, seven of which are brewed in-house. They use eyedroppers to apply just enough of the fragrant concoction.
6. Fresh mint: The Bradstreet goes through two pounds per night, using it in a julep, a mojito and the popular gin-and-rosewater “Juliet and Romeo.” Before adding the mint, they “spank” it—clapping it between their hands to extract the oils.
7. Cocktail spoon: These are made of twirled steel, allowing the bartender to gently “swizzle” the ice. This cools the liquor quickly without cracking the ice, which would result in a watered-down drink. “It’s like taking care of a baby,” says Gomez. “You don’t want to bruise the cocktail.”
8. Jiggers: Most bars have one size jigger or none at all. The Bradstreet uses three, so each cocktail recipe is exact. “It’s all about precision,” says Gomez.
Bradstreet Crafthouse
601 First Ave. N., Mpls. (Inside Graves 601)
1. Liquors: The shelf is stocked with rare liqueurs (try a sip of Zwack, made in Hungary since 1790) and plenty of whiskeys. But they only serve one vodka: the Minnesota-made Prairie.
2. Juicer: If it can’t be juiced, Bradstreet doesn’t have it. That means no cranberry juice, and that means no Cosmos. But your bartender will happily recommend a similar (and probably better) option.
3. Luxardo cherries: No neon Maraschino cherries here. These dark beauties are candied Marasca cherries, imported from Italy.
4. No olives: The Bradstreet is an old-fashioned cocktail bar and as such, they don’t use olives. As a 1955 Time magazine article on the classic American cocktail put it: “Nothing enrages the sophisticate more than olives, onions or other hors d’oeuvres in a martini. But a twist of lemon peel is usually acceptable.”
5. Bitters: The Bradstreet has 14 on hand, seven of which are brewed in-house. They use eyedroppers to apply just enough of the fragrant concoction.
6. Fresh mint: The Bradstreet goes through two pounds per night, using it in a julep, a mojito and the popular gin-and-rosewater “Juliet and Romeo.” Before adding the mint, they “spank” it—clapping it between their hands to extract the oils.
7. Cocktail spoon: These are made of twirled steel, allowing the bartender to gently “swizzle” the ice. This cools the liquor quickly without cracking the ice, which would result in a watered-down drink. “It’s like taking care of a baby,” says Gomez. “You don’t want to bruise the cocktail.”
8. Jiggers: Most bars have one size jigger or none at all. The Bradstreet uses three, so each cocktail recipe is exact. “It’s all about precision,” says Gomez.
Bradstreet Crafthouse
601 First Ave. N., Mpls. (Inside Graves 601)
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