294: Robert Simonson

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Cocktail bartenders like to talk, and they like to be in the media, so it's very easy to approach them and interview them. But the old guard, the old-style bartenders who came up in the late 20th century, that is not their style. Someone once told me that in the old days, the only time a bartender ever got his name in the news is if he was arrested. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard.

0:59Robert Simonson writes about cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders for the New York Times, and is the creator and author of the subsect newsletter, The Mixed with Robert Simonson. On this episode, we talk about his terrific new book, The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, The People, Bars, and Drinks, with more than 100 recipes. The book is absolutely amazing. It covers the world of modern drinking, the people, places, and the watering holes, without being dry or earnest. Simonson cuts to the heart of the past 100 years of the cocktail, and in this episode, we go over many of the entries and also dive into Robert's history and covering the scene for nearly 20 years.

1:34This is such a great episode, and I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:46Robert Simonson, this is Tace. How are you doing, man? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm great. I'm better because I have your book. That's nice. It's just the Encyclopedia of Cocktail. I love it. It's really fantastic. It's such an impressive work, and it's just really fun to read. And I want to just first off just get a sense, what's the origin of this book? Because it's very unique because it isn't a recipe book. It's the A to Z of cocktails, both modern and going back. And it's written with a flow and with a sensibility of, like, knowing and knowing the right people to write about, the right people to not write about.

2:22You just did such a nice job, Robert. Oh, thanks very much. You're right. It is called the Encyclopedia of Cocktails, but it's not just cocktails. I decided early on that an encyclopedia that approached the topic of cocktails would also have to include entries on bars and on bartenders and on cocktail making techniques, things like that. So it's a mix of all that. There are something over 300 entries all told. Wow, 300. And, you know, I was going through the bars alone and I was like ticking off the ones I've been to. This is not a name drop. This is just to say like Amore Maro, American Bar Savoy, Angel's Share, Bemelman's, Boadas, Booker Index, Glover Club, Clyde Common.

3:04Yeah, that's just A, B, and C. That's just A, B, and C. And you're covering these places. And I think you're tuning in because you like our show, but also you might enjoy cocktails. And Robert, you're like at the center of gravity for cocktails. I don't know about that, but I have been writing about cocktails for 17 years, so I am pretty soaked in that culture. How do you decide then? Well, first off, the project. Like, what's the origin? Is it – did you just realize you needed to – like, there was a lot of, like, white space in cocktail writing. You needed to call out a lot of people because you really do – you write beautifully.

3:37You write essays. There's some of them that are quite lengthy. The Sasha Petrosky entry is a couple pages. It's beautiful writing there. Yeah, yeah, that's one of the longest ones. This was actually my first cocktail book. It's my seventh cocktail book, but it's the first that was not my idea. This came to me during the early days of COVID in 2020. And I got an email from the publisher of 10 Speed Press, Aaron Wenner, and it was his idea. And the gist of it was, do you want to write an encyclopedia of cocktails? And I thought to myself for a while and I thought, do I? Do I? And so then I decided that I did.

4:17I mean, it was definitely a book of the moment because it was COVID and we were all at home. We were all quarantining. I had a lot of time on my hands. And if there was any time that was right for me to write a whole encyclopedia, it was that time. So I signed in. I got a little more time than I usually get with my books to write this. I think it took about two years to put it all together. But I'm glad I did it. Yeah, me too. And I really dug into the book yesterday when I was prepping for this interview, and I had to write Aaron a quick note to say this book is wonderful and it makes sense. He thought of it and you collaborated on it because it is – there's choices that you make.

4:58And I want to go over some of the specific entries that really struck me, but this is just a real sliver of what you're writing about. But first, you know, Robert, is there a spreadsheet? Is there a list? Is there a Google Doc? How are you deciding and how did you know when to stop? Because, you know, I don't know how many entries you can tell me, but there's obviously a time you need to like say this is it. Yes. When it first started, they asked me to send a sample list of about like 200 things that would be in the book. And quite frankly, I've been writing about this stuff for so long. That did not take very long.

5:37It took all of one hour because I knew what had to be in the book, what cocktails had to be in there, what bartenders and bars. And then after that, you know, the last 100 was just sort of elective, you know, just selecting what I wanted to be in the book, what I wanted to include. And if you look through it, there are some quirky choices. And I'm sure some people will say, well, why isn't this person in the book or why isn't that cocktail in the book? Well, that's because it's my book. Love it, Robert. I love that stance. And I feel like you're probably going to get some notes, not angry because it would be weird to call you out, but probably some questions like why wasn't this person in?

6:15Have you gotten those already once the galleys are out? No, not yet. I'm sure that will come. Hopefully it won't. But they told me how long the book would be and it would be longer than most of my other books. But I kept adding entries. We were adding entries up until the book going to press. I love it. What was the last one? Well, this is funny. My editor on this book is Kim Keller. Yep. Kim's great. Love that. And late in the process, she actually came to me and she said, do you realize that there actually is not an entry for cocktail in this book? And I said, no, I left that out. So it was intentional because it was.

6:50No, no. It just was staring me in the face. It was the Encyclopedia of Cocktails. Never occurred to me that there should be an entry called cocktail. OK, so two comments on that. First, you have an entry for cocktail writer. Yes. Which I think is hilarious. Yes. paraphrase that for us. So cocktail writer is a kind of writer that didn't exist 20 years ago. And now there are quite a few. There are dozens that make a living at this and are rather prominent. I was trying to think how to handle that. I didn't think I could give all the prominent cocktail writers their own entry in the book because I'd run out of room and then some people get left out and they get offended.

7:27So I decided I'd do it as a category. And I do believe I touch upon most of the prominent ones out there. So, and it's a rather long entry. It is a long entry. I love it. It's nice to like mention media. And the other is like, where's the Robert Simonson entry? Well, I wrote it. So that's what I thought. I mean, I have a little bio in the back. I guess that's my entry. I thought maybe you would throw yourself in there and you would like switch into the third. But I mean, I'm joking, but it's just a really fun read. And let me ask you this about cocktails. Is it possible to enjoy cocktails and not drink alcohol?

8:06Do you mean enjoy reading about cocktails? We can say it that way. I mean, obviously, if you don't drink alcohol, you can't drink cocktails. But, I mean, is there a way to appreciate and understand and enjoy? And have you come across people who don't drink but are into cocktails? I have met people who do not drink anymore, and they are still curious about cocktails. They like the topic, and they like to talk about them. I'd like to think they could read this and find something interesting. It is a history book after all. Some of the history is old and some of the history is just in the last 20 years.

8:35And, of course, we have this new culture now where there are a lot of mocktails, a lot of non-alcoholic cocktails. And bars and bartenders are making a concerted effort to include everybody under that tent so they can all have a good time in the bar. Yeah, it's a good point about the N.A. cocktail, the mocktail. And that's certainly using a lot of why, you know, a lot of the energy that, you know, around cocktails is put into those. Why we love cocktails, you know, barware, glassware, presentation, the way it's written on a menu, being in a bar, the music, all that stuff. That can be all done without alcohol.

9:09Absolutely. Absolutely. OK, like stepping back, I used to edit you. I was an editor at Punch. That's right. And I really enjoyed editing you. You had really clean copy, which is obviously what editors love. But also you had this wonderful series that I got to work on a few, and it really dove into these old, like, legendary bartenders. And I wanted to get a sense with this series, you know, what draws you to the old timers in the industry? Yes, I forget whose idea that series was, but that was a lot of fun because I spend most of my time talking to young cocktail bartenders. Cocktail bartenders like to talk and they like to be in the media.

9:50So it's very easy to approach them and interview them. But the old guard, the old style bartenders who came up in the late 20th century, that is not their style. That's not what they're used to. I think someone once told me that in the old days, the only time a bartender ever got his name in the news is if he was arrested. And so they're not used to that kind of thing. And so it was sometimes difficult to approach these people and get them to sit down for a simple interview. and if you interviewed them, their answers would sometimes be one word, two words, one sentence. But it was a lot of fun.

10:27You have to admire the old skills that they have, the people skills, and also once they get to warm up, you know, they have tons of old yarns and stories about like the way things were done back in the day. I remember, I mean, a couple that come to mind, You had a great talk with a bartender in Hilton Head, South Carolina. What was that one like? Yeah, he had like a beach bar. Yeah. And so you would go to this particular beach. I think it was a public beach. Might have been private. Yeah. And he had like the thatched roof. It had this very tiki aesthetic. And he was known for the frozen drinks, very elaborate frozen drinks and fruity and multiple colors.

11:08And I think there were like 100 or 200. Yeah, I remember the big menu. He even had a cocktail book, a self-published cocktail book. He gave me a copy. Oh, wonderful. I was looking at these things like I'm never going to make any of these. It's just mind-bogglingly difficult, you know, for whatever result it is. But there are people like that all over the country. The question is just finding them. It was like a piece of string I found in New York anyway. Once you found one, they'd say, well, you have to go talk to Jim, you know, over at this steakhouse. And then Jim would say, you have to go talk to Bob over at this hotel.

11:45And that's how it would happen. Oh, my gosh. A couple—was it 21 Club? Did you talk to somebody at 21 back in the day? Yeah, one of my favorite bartenders, Tara, Tara Knight. She now lives in Italy because that 21 Club is sadly no more. It's really sad that that went away. She made a great martini, and of course they were famous for South Sides. She was a rare old guard bartender who did have opinions about the modern mixology. So that was interesting to have conversations with her. Did you talk to the bartender at Farrell's? At Farrell's? You mean the place in Brooklyn? Yeah, I feel like... No, I'm kind of scared of that place.

12:19I was going to say. I mean, I'm scared of that place. Pat, Pat, do you know about Farrell's? Have you been to that place? So I moved into that neighborhood a few years ago. I moved in December 2020. And one thing I noticed right off the bat is they were the only bar in the neighborhood that was completely jam-packed inside in December of 2020. Yeah, during the COVID. That's Barrel's. Yeah, thanks. I mean, you can hear— That's Barrel's Bar and Grill. That's in Windsor Terrace. Windsor Terrace. And I think it's been there about a century. If you remember the writer Pete Hamill— Yeah, of course. —his father used to take him there.

12:53Yep. And I love the old architecture inside. It's beautiful. It's got the mirrors and the wood paneling and everything. But it's definitely a neighborhood bar. Yeah. And it's for the old guard in the neighborhood. And you don't necessarily feel welcome if you go in there. It's like a lot of firemen, a lot of cops, that kind of thing. Yeah, I've been there a few times. I think George Motz does a pop-up for his burger pop-up there once in a while, too. Oh, well, maybe that brings a different crowd. I remember during COVID, remember when everyone had to serve food in order to keep open? Yep, I remember that.

13:26And they introduced a hot dog. It was like the first time. I did go back because I wanted to say, you know, I had a hot dog at Farrell's. Yeah, they don't have it anymore. We could talk about the old timers all day and maybe love to have you back and talk about more. What is an old timer funeral like? Have you been to a funeral for an old time bartender? No, I haven't. I mean, I've written about, sadly, a lot of the old time bartenders from the cocktail revival have passed recently. Yeah. And they're in different cities. So I don't know what that would be like. I would assume that there would be refreshments served.

14:00and that it would be more like a New Orleans-type funeral, kind of a celebration as opposed to something sad. Yeah. Well, I would, you know, maybe one day you could write about that. I would read your take on a funeral for one of the legends. Yes, that would be very interesting. Let's talk about a few more entries. I want to ask you about a few specifics, some bars, some bartenders, and one is the book Julian's Recipes. I'd love to get a sense. This is the second cocktail book ever to be written by a black bartender, and you give it lots of lines, and that's great. Let's hear about this important work.

14:37Yeah, he's a very interesting guy, Julian Anderson. He bartended for 60 years at one place, the Montana Club in Helena, Montana. Wow. And I think it was like, you know, from the early 1900s until about 1960. He just – he never retired, and he was kind of a local legend. I found out about this book through a friend of mine named Martin Duderoff. He has authored some cocktail apps, and he is the librarian at Cocktail Kingdom, if you know that company, the Barware Kingdom. Absolutely. The Uri Barware. I mean, the mixing glasses that everyone has. Yeah, he knows a lot about cocktail history, and he told me about this.

15:18And I was unaware of it because we all know the cocktail book by Tom Bullock, the St. Louis bartender who wrote the first cocktail book by a black bartender in America. And I think most of us assume that was the only one until recently. But he told me about this and it happened a few years after Tom Bullock. And I actually managed to get a copy online. Wow. It's quite fascinating. It's a slim little volume, but of course, you know, very socially significant. in this industry. Absolutely. Let's talk about Tiki Tea. A bar in Los Angeles, it's on the east side, just got nominated or recognized by the Spirited Award.

16:00They gave it one of their timeless awards, which means it's a timeless bar. That's great. Let's talk about why do you include that bar? Oh, you have to include that. If you're going to include the classic Tiki bars, that's one of the standard bears, the people that kept the torch going when Tiki almost died in the late 20th century. Have you ever been? Absolutely. Yeah, small place. I don't know how many people you can fit in there. A little sweatshop, maybe 25, yeah. Yeah, and it's just got this wonderful atmosphere. It's got all the tchotchkes on the ceiling, and there's a certain drink that if you order it, everybody has to shout.

16:31I forget what they shout, but they shout something. There's something. Yeah, yeah. And it's just wonderful. My brother used to live down the road, so I had plenty of opportunities to go there. I love those bars where there's a continuum where you can see how cocktails used to be made what cocktail culture used to be and what it is today It's interesting you write about Los Angeles there's a lot of Los Angeles in this book you know, Sed Moses is in the book and his empire building and of course the Varnish and what was happening in the early to mid 2000s at the Varnish and the revival there talk about Sed and Los Angeles as we know it as a cocktail real epicenter Yeah, they didn't have much going on about 20 years ago.

17:14Said Moses was this guy who had made a lot of money on Wall Street as a hedge fund guy. And then he started buying up properties in downtown L.A. and converting them into bars. And he's the guy who brought Sasha Petrasky, who is the single most important person in the history of the cocktail revival, brought him out to L.A. to open a bar. And that was the varnish, which they did with Eric Alperin. And that really kicked it off. I mean, said Moses opened many other bars, but the varnish was that was the milk and honey of L.A. And it sparked everything. Famously in the back of a roast beef restaurant.

17:46Yeah, they make French dip, French dip. Of course, a French dip restaurant like hidden in the back when clandestine bars were certainly being recognized as a cool thing. Yeah, it's a speakeasy. Speakeasy. More people. I think we should talk about more people. And you mentioned Sasha Petrosky and you let's hear a little bit more about Sasha's legacy. Yeah, Sasha was a New York guy and he he wanted to open a coffee shop, actually. But he ended up opening a a cocktail bar called Milk and Honey, just a small hole in the wall in a former tailor shop on the Lower East Side. And he was he brought back seriousness to cocktails.

18:26Cocktails were not taken seriously at the time. This was about 2000. And it was just a small den. There was jazz music played. The bartenders, you know, dressed formally in suspenders, bow ties, whatever. He brought everything with a napkin. There was a glass of water with a slice of cucumber in it. And basically he was telling the world, we're putting the spotlight on cocktails and on cocktail bartending. This is a respectable trade. And this is a respectable tradition in America. Cocktails are American. They go back more than 200 years. and nobody had done that before. And I think it opened a lot of people's eyes.

19:06And for that reason, he may have the longest entry in the book. He does. It's worth reading. It's beautifully written. Let me ask you, Robert, about the pre-Petrosky era of cocktails, the 90s. I mean, the Sex and the City certainly was roaring at that time. And we know about the Cosmo. But what was it like before this seriousness and this real culinary side of cocktails was being taken seriously, not just by media, but by consumers. Well, I kind of remember that. I mean, I wasn't writing about cocktails then, but I was always interested in cocktails and I wanted to go to a place where I could have a good martini.

19:40You know, I mean, I wasn't interested in, you know, having whatever, a woo-woo. A pink drink, yeah. Yeah, a pink drink or a kamikaze. So I would go to some of the places like Temple Bar, which was open then and then it closed and then it reopened again. You could get a good martini there and then some of the hotel bars. But that was the era of the teeny craze where they put everything in a comic. Yeah, Bevelman's comes to mind. Yeah, you could still get the classic there. A lot of those classic places have closed. We still have Bevelman's, thank God, and that's in the book. But the oak room in the plaza is closed and probably closed for good.

20:13And they kept remodeling the Algonquin until it didn't mean anything anymore. Yeah, they washed it away. Yeah, so it was difficult to find those kind of cocktails. The people who were practicing it seriously were few and far between. mean really interesting to talk about pre and post sasha petrosky back to ben woman's as an aside are you are you following like how gen z ben woman's is and how yes it's very annoying now it's hard to get in all the young people want to go literally so easy to go it was a beautiful place you could always get a spot there and you could take people from out of town and and really impress them i've done i did this many times and and now it's like it's a list You have to go in the afternoon if you just want to walk in, and that's what I do.

20:55My son recently turned 21, and this was actually his idea. He wanted to have his first legal cocktail at Bemelman's. Oh, great. So he got dressed up. He went there around 3 o 'clock. He had never been there before. He didn't know what you can get and what you can't get. For some reason, he wanted to get a revolver cocktail for his first cocktail. Which is a more recent creation from San Francisco, a whiskey drink. But they did not have that on the menu or know how to make that. So he ended up having a Vesper. Oh, he had a Vesper. That's close enough. Yeah, I think it was pretty classy. Pretty classy.

21:27Is he going to follow in his father's footsteps? Is he writing about spirits and cocktails? No, he is a film studies major, but maybe he'll—he did work for a documentary maker. If you remember Fourth Row Productions, they made a documentary called Hey Bartender 10 years ago. Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. He was an intern up there. So who knows? He may end up in my business, but in a different way. Yeah, cool. A couple more names I want to go through. Harry Craddock, what does he mean to cocktail history? Harry Craddock's reputation, he was a bartender who worked at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London for many years.

22:00But really his importance is in publishing the Savoy cocktail book in 1930. So 1930, a significant year, was prohibition in America. So he preserved all these recipes in one book when these recipes and this knowledge was being lost. So when all the young bartenders started making mixed drinks again in the 21st century, that was an important resource. A couple more names I want to bring up. One is Julie Reiner. I feel Julie has a modern history in New York, but maybe not so modern anymore. I mean, she's been in the industry for two decades. What does she mean to the industry? I think she means a lot.

22:36She's one of the leaders. She's one of my neighborhood bartenders. I live in Burham Hill, and she has Clover Club and Landa in the area. She first started bringing craft cocktails to the masses. I mean, Milk and Honey was this special little hole in the wall. You know, maybe 20 people could go in there. It's not mass market. You can't just walk in. Her place, Flatiron Lounge, you could just walk in and get a really good cocktail. And then she co-opened Pegu Club after that. And she is rare in this industry in that she still runs bars. She's still a bar owner, and that is her business. A lot of other people have gone on to consultancies and brand ambassadorships and things like that.

23:17One more name from New York, Eben Freeman. I feel like I'd love to see that name. I think Eben meant a lot, especially for like, you know, 2005, 2010, around that era. What does he mean to the cocktail industry? He was a great innovator. He was, for better or worse, I don't know if he likes the term or not, but the molecular mixology movement of the aughts and the early tens. But he was smoking cocktails. He was creating cocktails in solid form. He was fat-washing cocktails. A lot of the innovations that we take for granted now, he started. Yeah, I feel like at Taylor in particular, when he had cocktails there, that restaurant and bar, you know, it is a dated term, molecular gastronomy.

24:02But certainly him and Sam Mason were doing some really cool things that I think still today you see some of those on menus. I mean, you see like smoked cocktails. I mean, I feel like that was the first time I ever had a smoky cocktail was Eben Freeman. Yeah, very influential cocktail, even though it only lasted, I mean, Bar, Taylor. Even though it only lasted two years. Yeah, it only lasted two years. I remember he had like bazooka, a spirit, you know, flavored bazooka, you know, bubble gum. And I don't know. I kind of, again, I'm not in the cocktail world myself drinking anymore. But I think it could be really interesting to see an Eben Freeman pop onto the scene.