#riverhead bar

Charles Baudelaire once sagely said: “One should always be drunk…With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.” Here at Riverhead we do believe in moderation, but we also believe in drinking in as much literature as possible. We are thrilled to introduce another celebration of the finer things in life with our new series that takes our love for reading and imbibing to the next level: #RiverheadBar.  

For our third Riverhead Bar, we toasted Álvaro Enrigue’s Sudden Death. We felt this “mind-bending” (Wall Street Journal) and “engrossing” (The New Yorker) “novel without boundaries” (O Magazine) needed an extra splash of something special. So we invited one of the coolest people we know to one of the coolest bars in the city: Álvaro Enrigue himself at the East Village’s cocktail mecca: Death & Co.

Opened on New Year’s Eve in 2007, Death & Co quickly became an established cocktail institution, owed greatly to its staff of incredible bartenders. We know you’re wondering… just how good are the cocktails at Death & Co? Here’s your answer: in 2010, Death & Co won Best American Cocktail Bar AND World’s Best Cocktail Menu at Tales of the Cocktail Spirited awards.  Needless to say… they’re good.

“There was always plenty of grappa.” –Sudden Death

For this edition of Riverhead Bar, Death & Co bartender Jon taught Álvaro how to pour one of his signature cocktails: The Yellow Jacket.

“For breakfast he had half a bottle of wine that he found at the foot of his cot…” –Sudden Death

In the same way that Sudden Death blends arts, places, and time — a ball of Anne Boleyn’s hair + a Spanish poet + Mexican hallucinogens, for example — The Yellow Jacket links together French, Spanish, and Mexican cultures.

The Yellow Jacket is made of a mélange of global liquors including French Chartreuse, Spanish Sherry, and Mexican Mezcal. Much like Sudden Death, this cocktail gets its signature bite from a mixture of flavors, countries, histories, and characters.

The Yellow Jacket

1 oz     Nuestra Soledad San Luis del Rio

.75 oz     Alvear Pale Cream

.5 oz     Douglass Fir

.5 oz     Yellow Chartreuse

.5 oz.     St. George Green Chile

Glass: Nick & Nora Garnish: Lemon twist Method: stirred

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Have a favorite cocktail + book combination? Have you made this recipe yourself?  Let us know! 

F. Scott Fitzgerald once raised the toast, “Here's to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.” Here at Riverhead we couldn’t agree more. We are thrilled to introduce another way to celebrate the finer things in life with a new series that takes our love for reading and imbibing to the next level: #RiverheadBar.  

For our second Riverhead Bar, we toasted a stunning memoir – Nadja Spiegelman’s I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This. Daughter of The New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman (the cartoonist behind the Maus graphic novels), Nadja’s memoir tells the story of mothers and daughters - and mothers as daughters - traced through four generations, from Paris to New York and back again. And what better place to drink to this book than a gastrotheque that has roots in both New York and Paris as well: the gorgeous Buvette.  

“We bought limes and salt from the corner deli by my father’s studio and wandered through the winding streets of the West Village, rotating the three – we’d suck the back of our hand between thumb and index finger so the salt would stick, sprinkle it on, suck it off, swig the tequila, then bite into a wedge of lime.” –Nadja Spiegelman, I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This

Opened in early 2011 by Chef Jody Williams, Buvette Gastrotheque is inspired by the European traditions that honor a history of craft and design where each detail evokes a sense of story, place and delight. Part restaurant, part bar, part café, Buvette combines the elegance of an old world cafe with the casual nature of a neighborhood eatery.

“So many secrets have been told at this bar. It must be located on a karmic center of energy…You offer them some wine, some saucisson, some tea. They sit like this… And then all of a sudden they tell you the interesting things.”

–Nadja Spiegelman, I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This

For this edition of Riverhead Bar, Buvette mixologists crafted a cocktail with a storied history of its own: The French 75. The origin of this cocktail is surrounded with subjective and oftentimes competing narratives that have evolved as it has traveled from France to New York and back.

Some trace the birth of the French 75 back to a Parisian bar during World War I. But Buvette mixologists and historians believe that during the Great War, French soldiers took the empty shell casings of their 75mm artillery and filled them with lemon juice, cognac and champagne and shared that potent concoction on down the line. Whether in mutiny, celebration, or medication we can’t know for certain. But we do know, and The Savoy Cocktail Book confirms, that the French 75 is a cocktail that “hits with remarkable precision.”

Like the stories that fill this memoir, the French 75 is a creation that emerged from conflict yet is effervescent, potent and surreptitiously sweet. And, like Nadja's mother, Francoise, the cocktail is elegant, slightly famous, incredibly powerful and still sweetened with a bit of mystery.

“We’d finished our drinks. She suggested another round. I suggested that we go home, drink wine, and continue the conversation privately.” 

–Nadja Spiegelman, I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This

 French 75

Ingredients:

1oz Cognac Le Grand Champagne

.5oz freshly pressed lemon juice

.5oz simple syrup

Champagne top

Lemon twist

Measure Cognac, lemon juice and sugar. Add ice and shake. Strain into coupe. Top with cold champagne and garnish with lemon twist.

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For our inaugural Riverhead Bar, we travelled to the gorgeous Betony to celebrate a novel brimming with champagne, dirty martinis, and daiquiris – Anton DiSclafani’s The After Party. This delicious novel of secrets, money and obsessive friendship set in 1950’s Houston was called “a literary gin and tonic” itself, and the perfect novel to kick off our new series. Betony is a Michelin starred restaurant located just a block off of Fifth Avenue in New York City and features soaring ceilings and the luxe ambience of DiSclafani’s novel, making this book + bar pairing a match made in heaven.

“Joan sat in my living room, on my squat orange sofa, sipping a dirty gin martini, her usual drink. It was her second, but Joan had always held her liquor like a man.” –Anton DiSclafani in The After Party

General Manager @EamonRockey took inspiration from the gin-drinking Joan Fortier and crafted a cocktail fit for the sultry, decadent, and scandalous world of The After Party. Betony’s “The Socratic Oath” is a refreshing take on a classic 50:50 martini with a daring twist of hemlock – perfect for a humid Houston night.

“’I’m not in the eating mood, tonight, not especially. I’m in the champagne mood. A magnum,’ she pronounced, and smiled brilliantly at the table. ‘I want to do something special for my girls.’” –Anton DiSclafani in The After Party

The Socratic Oath

Ingredients:

50 ml Gin

50 ml Green Vermouth (see recipe below)

Absinthe as needed

 Combine gin and green vermouth in a mixing glass. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass that has been rinsed with absinthe.

 To produce Green Vermouth:

825 g Hemlock

900 g Angelica

300 g Yarrow

85 g Sweet Fern

485 g White Pine

7.5 L Pineau des Charentes

 Directions:

Fabricate each dry ingredient individually to express maximum surface area. Remove all stems. Steep fresh foraged greens in Pineau des Charentes for twenty-four hours. This is known as “Green Vermouth.”  Extract the greens and discard.

“In Houston we meant something, and we knew it. We might have gotten silly when we drank but we tried never to get sloppy. We didn’t do drugs. We kept our prescription painkillers at home, in the medicine cabinet, where they belonged. We didn’t follow strange men into bathrooms and swallow what they placed in our palms. We knew that some people did, in other places: New York, Los Angeles. The big cities. But us? Alcohol was enough of a drug for us. It took the edge off. It made us come alive.” –Anton DiSclafani in The After Party

Have a favorite cocktail + book combination? Have you made this recipe yourself?  Leave us a message! We hope you enjoyed the first Riverhead Bar! A new book and menu pairing will be here before you know it.