Many of the country’s best-known bartenders made it to New York earlier this month for the inaugural Manhattan Cocktail Classic. Side events included lots of after-parties, including the closer at Macao Trading Company, where the go-to quaff was Pabst Blue Ribbon and Fernet Branca. Also getting a lot of bartender attention: the Tanqueray party, where (below, from left) Angus Winchester, Steve Olson and Danny Valdez, among others, worked the mahogany stage. Erick Castro of San Francisco’s Rickhouse served his Spring Fever Sorbet Punch at the Dizzy Fizz Tastemaker's Punch party.
Pre-MCC, a host of barfolk bussed to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery with Simon Ford, Jared Brown, Anistatia Miller et al to visit the final resting place of Harry Johnson, bartender and author. Stops included Delmonico’s, Harry’s Bar in Hanover Square, Keens Steakhouse and other stops relevant to Johnson’s career and life in the Big Apple.
Along the way, cocktails from his Bartenders’ Manual, or How to Mix Drinks were served, including the Turf Cocktail:
3 dashes orange bitters
3 dashes Maraschino liqueur
2 dashes Pernod Absinthe
2 ounces dry vermouth
2 ounces of Plymouth gin
Stir up well with a spoon, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a medium size olive and serve.
Nightclub & Bar’s Jenny Adams blogged her trip to the Manhattan Cocktail Classic; click here to read her take. And in case you missed it, check out NCB Publisher/Editorial Director Donna Hood Crecca's view on the opening night gala. You can read it here.
The New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society and Crescent City School of Bartending have created a bartending scholarship in honor of Flo Woodard, the longtime bartender at the Court of Two Sisters. The Flo Woodward Memorial Bartending Scholarship will annually select a bartending professional to attend the 12-week bartending/beverage management course at the Crescent City School of Bartending, valued at $3,000. Woodward was an award-winning bartender and placed at the Tales of the Cocktail official cocktail competition in 2007 with her Crescent City Cooler, which is still on the menu at the Court of Two Sisters. Applicants should contact
flowoodardbarscholarship@crescentschools.com.