Sauced Blog

Behind the Bar

Five Questions for the Bartender: Ben Sherwood

Marjorie’s long-time barman on white dog, beer bars, and the world’s worst Valentine.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 01, 2011 at 10:10AM Speech Bubble 3 Comments

Ben Sherwood: Skier, sailor, mixer of very large cocktails.

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Benjamin Sherwood was a student at the University of Maine when he first discovered drink-mixing. He bartended for the campus catering company from the tender age of 18.

Meanwhile, he pursued his love of adventure sports—skiing in Colorado, sailing around the Pacific Ocean for years at a time. During one stint at sea, he made friends with a fellow sailor from Seattle. He told me Seattle was the place to be, I moved here, and a decade later I am happily behind the Marjorie bar, says Sherwood.

At that Capitol Hill cafe he makes venti-sized cocktails—try a negroni or anything else involving vermouth—Tuesday nights and Thursday through Saturday. Wednesdays, he work as a table server “to keep in shape.”

Here, five questions for Ben Sherwood.

What is the most underrated spirit?

Aside from vodka, they all are a bit underrated. But having just been out tasting some white dog whiskey in Woodinville I am feeling the moonshine right now. Give me a nice bottle of un-oaked whiskey, citrus, bitters, and a hot day, and we can have some fun!

What is your favorite Seattle bar (other than Marjorie)?

If I am in a beer mode (which I often am) I love the Hopvine up on 15th Avenue East: great beer selection, heavy on the India Pale Ale. If I’m feeling the cocktail I like to belly up in front of David Nelson at Il Bistro or Jay Kuehner at Sambar. We are lucky in Seattle, there is a pretty high good-bartender-to-capita ratio here.

What drink do you order at that bar?

At Hopvine, I start with the Rogue Shakespeare stout and move on to tasty IPAs. With David I get a whiskey served whatever way he deems appropriate. With Jay, well, that crazy bastard just makes me happy. He’s an alchemist.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen someone do in a bar?

Everyone has the puke story, the fight story, the thrown glass story…I like the oblivious story: it was a sold-out Valentines day, five course dinner. No idea what happened, but on course two a lady starts crying, I mean bawling. She stands up, smacks the dude she’s with, and walks out. This is a nice meal, not cheap, coursed out with wine pairings. The gentleman stays and finished the last three courses—his and hers. Dude, really?

Name three reasons you live in Seattle (bonus points if you don’t use the words “mountains” or “water”).

Well, you took away all the best words and I feel that I really need the bonus points, so here goes: I’m within an hour’s drive of basically any world-class outdoor activity; the food scene has been good since I got here and continues to develop each year; and the drinks, the beer, and the wine consistently impress. That forces all us old farts to get better with age. Boom! Bonus points won!

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Tags: Cocktails, Five Questions for the Bartender, Seattle Bartenders, Seattle Cocktail Scene

Imbibing Agenda

Drinking Events This Week: What You Need To Know

More tickets to Sorrento’s whiskey class, details on sake benefit for Japan, and so on.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 28, 2011 at 03:56AM Speech Bubble 0 Comments

Fill ’er up. Plenty of drinking events on the agenda this week.

1. The rum dinner at Daniel’s Broiler scheduled for Tuesday, March 29 has been canceled. Seattle boozephiles will flock instead to meet cocktail legend Dale Degroff at Kathy Casey Studios in Ballard.

2. More tickets have been made available for the previously sold out whiskey conversation on Thursday, March 31 at the Sorrento. Get those here. Proceeds from this $25 talk on Japanese and Kentucky-ese whiskies will go to Doctors Without Borders and its relief efforts in Japan.

3. It’s Hop Scotch time. This annual bonanza of craft beers and booze flights happens April 1 and April 2 at Fremont Studios. I say this every year but buy your tickets in advance or get there early! Lines happen at Hopscotch. Remember too: the whole “beer me” thing has run its course. Please don’t ask the poor volunteers behind the taps to beer you. They are volunteering, after all.

4. In other drinking for Japan news, Saké Nomi’s benefit for earthquake and tsunami victims is officially set for Friday, April 1 at 6pm. Tickets are $40; that includes four appetizers from Umami Kushi and a bunch of sake tastings. The store will be showcasing sakes from the Tohoku region in Northeast Japan, site of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11.

Proceeds here will go to Peace Winds America, a Seattle-based organization working to help Japanese disaster victims. Call the store at 206-467-7253 to reserve your ticket.

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Tags: Whiskey, Drinking Events, Sake, Seattle Cocktail Scene, Japan Relief Efforts, Cocktail Luminaries in Town

Boozy Dinners

Spirit Dinners (Under $100!) at Spur and Daniel’s Broiler

Whiskey or rum? Pick your poison at one of two upcoming cocktail-pairing feasts.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 07, 2011 at 11:40AM Speech Bubble 5 Comments

Spur hosts a whiskey dinner this Wednesday.

Photo courtesy: Spur Seattle

I daresay we’re starting to see more cocktail-pairing dinners around Seattle, though Spur and Daniel’s Broiler have been in the game from the get-go.

Spur’s next boozy repast happens this Wednesday, March 9 and features whiskey cocktails from some of our city’s celebrated bartenders. You’ve got your Phillip Thompson from Tavern Law, your Bryn ~~Lundstrom~~ Lumsden of Rob Roy. Charles Veitch from Bastille will make a drink, as will Adam Freem of Bathtub Gin just across the street.

These will be their base spirits: Oban 14 single-malt scotch, Bushmill’s Black Bush Irish whiskey, Crown Royal Reserve from our neighbors to the North in Canada, Bulleit bourbon, and Dickel 12 year from Tennessee.

This is what you’ll eat with your cocktails: Kusshi Oysters; duck terrine; smoked cavatelli with razor clams, cashews, and grana padano; porchetta with cabbage, apricots, and chantarelles; and an orange blossom panna cotta.

This is what it will cost you: $80 per person. That’s a good value since the drinks alone would run about $50 at a cocktail bar.

Call Spur to reserve.

On Tuesday, March 29, Daniel’s Broiler on Lake Union has planned a rum dinner. Rum obsessive Rocky Yeh will speak along with Dragos Axinte, who runs the Novo Fogo cachaca company from Bellevue, though the distillery is in Brazil.

Presumably, you’ll be drinking Novo Fogo’s aged and uaged cachacas. Other stuff on sample: Dos Maderas, Rhum Clement, Creole Shrubb liqueur, and Ron Zacapa 23.

Daniel’s Broiler chef Mike Hillyer cooks, a call into the restaurant revealed that he’s still working on the menu but the price has been set at $85.

Call 425-990-6310 to reserve.

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Tags: Cocktails, Seattle Bartenders, Special Dinners, Whiskey, Rum, Seattle Cocktail Scene

Cereal Milk Cocktails?

Yup, cereal milk cocktails.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 07, 2011 at 11:09AM Speech Bubble 1 Comments

Cereal milk makes its way behind the bar.

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Where would drink writers be without whacky culinary trends? Seriously. If it’s not fat-washing your Mount Gay with a grilled cheese (which sounds gaggy), it’s adding cereal milk to your cocktails.

As detailed in this Atlantic.com article, the cereal milk fad began at David Chang’s Momofuko restaurant in NYC, but has spread as far south as Washington, DC, where bartenders at PS7 and the Columbia Room are mixing Cap’n Crunch Crunch Berries-contaminated milk with bourbon and St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram (PS7), and oat-soaked milk with scotch and cream (Columbia Room).

Of course, in the grand tradition of trend pieces, this one also reveals (spoiler alert!) that using cereal milk in food and drink is not actually a new practice but in fact a very very old one.

Also: ether cocktails!? Jeezy creezy.

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Tags: Cocktails, Bartender Gossip, Seattle Cocktail Scene

A Few Thoughts On “Against Mixology”

Sarah Deming skewers the craft cocktail world, employing valid points as well as troubling ones.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 24, 2011 at 09:51AM Speech Bubble 4 Comments

Too big for their britches? Sarah Deming decries the modern mixology movement.

There’s an essay bouncing around the internet called Against Mixology. The writer, Sarah Deming, skewers the craft cocktail scene (I have a feeling she would curl her lip at the words “craft cocktail scene”) for what she perceives as generalized pretentiousness and delusions of grandeur.

Deming describes taking her father to a New York City cocktail lounge where he was treated disrespectfully. “The mixologist doesn’t like Amaretto,” he was told by a server, after attempting to order an amaretto sour. He then asked for a mojito, which earned him more scorn.

“[Dad] felt like a hick, and I felt like a jerk for exposing him to such unkindness,” writes Deming. “And Dad and I were always out of step in each other’s world….A bar should be the kind of place that lubricates such tensions, rather than aggravating them.”

I couldn’t agree more. Bottom line: A bar with rude service can never be a good bar. Even if it makes the world’s best drinks. There’s no cocktail-maker equivalent of the soup Nazi, because at a bar experience is an essential piece of the puzzle. A friend of mine was derided, recently, at a local cocktail bar for ordering a Heineken, even though Heineken was clearly listed as one of the beer choices on the menu. This shouldn’t be, and it’s an unfortunate side effect of the new seriousness with which people are treating the cocktail.

On the other hand, that seriousness has led to a renewed enthusiasm for artisanal products—creating a market for small, local businesses making bitters and vermouth and vodkas using antiquated techniques rediscovered in old books and records. For those of us who enjoy cocktail history, it has provided a community for delighting in the strange and fascinating stories surrounding booze. And for a generation of bartenders, it has engendered a pride in profession that helps them engage with customers on a deeper level, exposing their patrons to novel flavor combinations and obscure spirits. Done right, the craft cocktail experience transcends a simple trip to the bar—it’s educational, it’s interesting, it’s fun, and it’s anything but elitist.

Bar owners and tenders who lose sight of of good service are all over the place—at craft cocktail bars, at dive bars, everywhere—and most end up with a business towards which nobody directs tourists, one where few celebrate birthdays or bring their dads in for a drink. Bar owners and tenders that take service seriously, well, there’s a reason that the barstools at Zig Zag are in such high demand.

But back to the essay. Here’s how “Against Mixology” begins:
When I walk into a SoHo gallery, I expect to be snubbed. One look at my shoe-handbag combo and even the intern knows I can’t afford the art. At an alt-rock show in Williamsburg, I am game for shame at the door. I’m not that young anymore, and all my piercings are hidden. Basically, if art is on the line, I’m okay with elitism."

This troubles me, this idea that there is ever a situation where treating people poorly is okay. Does the staff of a Gucci purse store have the right to disrespect people wearing cheap shoes? Where is this line drawn, exactly? Personally, I think everyone should expect respect at the bar and the art gallery and the rock show and the…whatever. And if they don’t get it, my recommendation would be to go elsewhere.

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Tags: Cocktails, Booze News, Zig Zag Cafe, Seattle Cocktail Scene