804: Toby Maloney Made Half a Million Cocktails. Emma Janzen Was Taking Notes.

27:36And of course, the drinks and that machine you're throwing like, you know, Fernette into the frozen machine in 2011. That's like no one's really doing that. Yeah. There's so many things you can throw into a slashing machine if you think outside the box. And the one we learned that is the biggest do not do this is peanut butter. Never put peanut butter into a slashing machine. We did a peanut butter red curry sort of thing. And it was a nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. It clogged it up, I'm sure. Emma, I mean, when you think about the era in New York, because you've been covering this industry and you live in Chicago.

28:12And I want to ask you about Chicago, but like you knew about what was happening in New York in the 2010s. How do you describe that era? Yeah, I mean, magic is a good word for it. There was so much energy. I mean, at 2010, I was in Austin, Texas at the time, and I was working for the newspaper. And that's kind of when the whole cocktail movement was starting to trickle down to Texas, you know, from places like New York, from San Francisco. And it was just so clearly a paradigm shift at the time. So it was really exciting. And like everything was exciting, too. You know, like every little thing that bartenders were like, oh, and we could keg this cocktail and put it on draft and then we can get it to people faster.

28:56And, you know, there were all these like the energy was there and the momentum was still there also. And I think it was still so kind of novel in so many ways that it's not as novel necessarily anymore. So it was it was an exciting time. To see the invention happening. Yeah. In real time. Cascaging of cocktails. Right. Exactly. Things like that. Oh, man. Yeah. Barrel-aged cocktails. Barrel-aged cocktails. Remember those? Yeah. Maybe throw some bacon in there, too. Sure. Exactly. But, Toby, I want to go back even further to 2005 because I think that is an important period of time as well. It's only five years, but it was kind of light years away.

29:36You're at Pegu Club with Audrey Saunders. And, like, this is the center. I mean, we've got Milk and Honey happening five years prior to that in 2000. But 2005, Pegu, is when I think the media really started to understand cocktails and actually put it on the level with food and wine. What is it like working with Audrey Saunders? And tell me about the litmus test that she taught you. Yeah, it was a super interesting time of growth. I got to work with Julie Reiner just before at Flatiron. And her style and Audrey's style were very different, but it was just, I learned so much between finding ways to give people what they really want, even if they don't know it.

30:19And also Audrey's very structured way of looking at cocktails and thinking about cocktails and building cocktails and creating cocktails. So it was really both sides of the same coin with those two and just an incredibly interesting time to be in the cocktail world. Is there a moment that you can really put your finger on when like the craft cocktail movement in New York went mainstream? Because like Milk and Honey 2000, I mean, maybe it was in T Magazine and like on some cool blogs, but like blogs or whatever. It was not really part of mainstream culture. No, certainly not. And Sasha went out of his way to dissuade the press from ever writing about it.

31:08So, yeah, I would say it was probably Audrey Saunders opening the Pegu Club to great renown. And she gathered up all of these bartenders from other bars to create this murderer's row of bar keeps. And, you know, we trained hard. We put out the absolute best thing that we could. And it was a paradigm shift. And I think the public really did start to understand that bars could be more than just a bar. Yeah. And you could charge$12. Yeah, it was$10 or$12. And that was a big deal because at the time it's a$3 vodka soda, right? Or$2. And it's like a$1 beer in New York, even like you could find those prices like many bars.

32:00So like even$10, people are like, whoa. Yeah. It's funny when you say it out loud today. Yeah. Now in the land of 20,$25. But listen, like at this period, if you look at restaurant menus and grocery bills, like you have to charge 25 and you have to go into a fine cocktail bar and recognize that 25 is the cost of entry. Yeah. The party. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Emma, I want to talk to you about just like the media side of cocktails and bartending. You know, why is it important? And I want to ask you this because I think maybe some don't quite understand how significant this culture has been for the past 20 years in food writing.

32:44But in the in the recent era, in the past couple of years, five years, it's it's it's not been diminished because I want to respect your work. But like it's almost been set aside a little with the writing about cocktails and writing about bartending. But I think there's a reason why it should exist forever. It's important. Yeah. I mean, I feel like drinks writing has always been kind of like the black sheep to food writing. Maybe I was trying to think it was like, is it underdog? Is it black sheep? Like, you know, which animal is it? And what color is the animal? But I think the to your point, like you can look at a cocktail, you can look at bar culture, you can look at bartenders and and learn something about a culture or about a moment in time the same way that you can with food.

33:33Right. There are just as many interesting stories, especially when you, you know, you go back to the raw material also, like you can trace it all the way back to farmers. Right. So you can talk about the culture and politics of the people who grow the grain that then some distiller takes and makes into a beautiful spirit that then gets passed on to a bartender, you know, that then gets translated down to the drinker. And when you look at different drinking cultures around the world, you learn something about those people that way. And so I do agree. I think it is still important to be telling these stories, especially through like the human lens.

34:11Right. Because I think a lot of drinks writers also like I certainly did when I started out. I thought it was all only about the drinks. I thought it was all about the drinks and only about the drinks. But then when you expand that lens and you look at it through the people. Yeah. It becomes a lot more important. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the work at the farm at the production level. I mean, you're an expert in agave spirits. You won a James Feud Award for your work there. And, you know, the way agave spirits are produced in Mexico, I mean, books can be filled with this information. And let me ask you about that specifically.

34:44Like, focusing in on agave right now in 2026, I've heard from drinkers, like, it seems like a lot of people are into mezcal. and like yeah this is becoming for whatever reason i don't drink myself so i don't quite follow it that closely but tell me about the movement right now in agave yeah i mean um it it has really boomed over the last 10 years because my book came out 10 years ago yeah um i'm just about to start working on the second edition to come out next year and um you know when i started there was, there was, you couldn't just Google mezcal and find much of anything. And now there are, you know, it'll pull up a million articles or something like that.

35:27People, I think tequila helped open the door for mezcal and other agave spirits to come in. And then once people started to kind of get a sense for, you know, it's the terroir, the diversity of flavors within the category, it's so compelling. And it's one that you can come back to time and time again. And And again, not just like look at it through flavor, but look at those stories of where it came from and who makes it. And it makes it an absolutely fascinating rabbit hole. And I think that's part of the reason why so many people have like come around to falling in love with it. I mean, it's like with the decades of wine writing, that part of that ecosystem is the terroir, is the producer.

36:04See the liquid in the glass is discussed. But if you're being sold wines, it's usually talking about a country or a person. Yeah. Tell me, Toby, about your relationship with, like, origin and going to see these spirits being made. I mean, have you done this work yourself? Sure. Spent a decent amount of time in Mexico going through different agave distillates. Also in the Caribbean, gone to a bunch of rum distilleries. And it really is eye-opening to be in the place, and especially with a bunch of other bartenders who were really thoughtful and into it. And, you know, seeing what the, there's terroir, sure, but there's also like air war, which is like what the actual air is.

36:57and the smells and all of the things that are going on around you in the distillery. And, you know, at a certain elevation in Mexico where there's some super cool mezcal and, you know, right by the beach in the Caribbean, those two things are so different and you can really taste how that has, what that brings to the spirit. So cool. This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm rocking with it, okay. Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours.

37:42Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription, or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN-recommended brand of emergency contraception, and it won't impact your future fertility. That's Freedom to Be. Use as directed. Well, we have to get to the book, The Classic Cocktail Session. It's a follow-up to The Manifesto. It is a prequel to the...

38:19Prequel. Let's go there. I guess the context is with Manifesto, we ended up writing two times the size of the final published book because one thing that they do at the Violet Hour was teach technique through classics. And so we had classic case studies in that book in addition to drinks from the Violet Hour. And so through the editing process, decided that that book should really just be about Violet Hour and let's teach these techniques through the house cocktails. And so we were kind of left with all of these classics. And at one point we were like, hey, we've got like 25 of these kind of like already written.

39:04Let's just throw the rest together and like see what happens. Of course, it was not nearly that easy. No. Never is. It was foolish to think that that would be a simple thing. But once we started to think about it through the lens of prequel, right, you learn the classics before you learn the other stuff. Yeah, yeah. But we put the other stuff out first. So let's go back. Like, let's teach the same techniques in a different way using only these recipes that everyone already knows, already thinks they know, they love. So what defines a classic, Toby? I mean, this is the golden question. What we decided was it had to be between 1862 and 2002, which is Jerry Thomas's first book and Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail.

39:45So we're only going to pick cocktails that came out between those two dates. it had to be instantly recognizable to the vast majority of people, bartenders specifically. It had to be delicious. Yeah. And. Yeah, I think it was those three. Yeah. The kinds of drinks that you could think of off the top of your head, right? That would be on a menu of classics in any bar around the world. If you can't, if you couldn't, and distinctive. So like if you can't remember what's in the drink, it's probably not going to be in here. Toby can't ever remember how to make a remember the main. Yeah. For example.

40:29And so it was like, that's not going in there. Remember the main is not there. No. Absolutely not. No, we're not remembering it. What about a green point? Is a green point in there? That happened after 2002. There you go. Like just just fact checking here. I mean, this is crazy. I'm like the green point must have been from sometime in the 1900s. But no, it was a modern classic. Yeah. Yeah. It's a Enzo from Milk and Honey. That's right. So tell me, let's get into some classics and this wide period of time, like long period of time. Let's go way, way back. Emma, start with one of the earliest classics that you feature in the book.

41:00Yeah. I'm not good with timelines. Old fashioned. Old fashioned. Yeah. It's the first cocktail. Sure. Ever invented, right? Spirit, bitters, sugar. Yeah. We've got other. I'm bad with timelines. Yeah. I'm bad with timelines. Or the oldest. Old-fashioned Sazerac, in that kind of world. Yeah. Vucre. Vucre, right, is a Manhattan in an old-fashioned have-a-love-child in the sultry, jazz-filled streets of New Orleans.

41:36So those are parts of the mother drinks that we talk about in Manifesto 2.

41:45And I think one of the big differences between this book and other, you know, Bartender 101 is that what we're trying to do is we give you, we don't give you the original recipe for anything because we're not there anymore. And what we have technique-wise and ice-wise and ingredient-wise. Ingredients. Livers, bitters. Doesn't matter so much. So what we do is we give you what we think we like, but then we want to give everyone agency to mess around with a little bit and tweak it and see if a little bit more acid or a little bit more sugar or a couple extra dashes of bitters or these sorts of things to personalize these classic cocktails.

42:35And I think that that's of utmost importance is to make the drink the best for you, not necessarily the best for the person writing the book. Love that point of view. And like the idea of the session, like you're having sessions. Emma, talk about the way you were working together with Toby and the way you were having these sessions towards these recipes that weren't like maybe the copy paste of the classic that originally appeared in a text. Yeah. I mean, I think in the very beginning, we loved this idea of going drink by drink and really like homing in on how do you make this drink that everybody knows and it's been maybe made a certain way for a really long time, something that does appeal to like a modern palate.

43:23And so that was really interesting and challenging. And at one point we had two recipes for every drink in the book to kind of show people like, you know, this is just by changing the ratio of a Negroni, you have a kind of a totally new Negroni. of course like we didn't live in the same city at the same time so we were not actually like our goal was to get the vibe of us hanging out at like a place like mother's and the windows are open and it's a sunday and like the jukebox is on and and we're hanging out um but in reality it was more like toby giving me two specks for every drink i would make them and then kind of give feedback and we'd workshop them together so it was like okay well this one is a little too far outside of what I think, you know, it's two dashes of bitters too far.

44:11So let's dial it back kind of thing. Versus like there were others where it was like, okay, well, this is very straightforward, which in some cases was not a bad thing. Some of these in here, I don't think we changed much at all. Like Julie's and Audrey's recipes, like they're perfect as they are, you know, and they were invented a lot closer to where we are now too. So like they required less of like, yeah, looking through that lens. And so ultimately I just test, I tested everything. And then we picked kind of like a middle ground for every recipe. And then I tested all of those again. And that's kind of what you have there on the page.

44:49Did you guys disagree on specs? Sure. Yeah. Sometimes. How did that work out? One of us would wear the other one down with emails and comments in Google Docs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The right side of the Google Docs was getting heated. Oh, yeah. It was such a mess. Always such a mess. It's the fun part about collaborating in the Google Docs. Exactly. It is. I mean, this idea, how do you test a cocktail recipe for those listening who maybe haven't done that? I mean, it feels to me like, I mean, there's definitely a level of science happening, of course, like food science. Like you're acid adjusting, perhaps.

45:28You're maybe using modern techniques. But how do you know when it's right? Well, I think what's so cool about that is, and we say this in the book too, there are no exact right or wrong answers, right? Because it is subjective in this case. I don't think in so many instances. so there were so many times where um and i tested all of the cocktails for the violet hour book too so like i know toby's palette pretty well and like the the palette that he like passed down to most of the bartenders at that bar um and so there were definitely cases where like maybe a drink felt a little on the sweeter side to me or on the boozy side because your palette runs boozy and sweet um but i know that's his palette right so i wouldn't be like well this is not good like i would never be like your recipe sucks because like first of all that's impolite like it's super impolite yeah um second of all i would never i would just never um because he's the he's the maestro yeah um but does that make sense so it's so it's very much like that's why we want to we want to teach people how to how to get the right texture temperature aroma because those are things that are um not as subjective right like if you've got a daiquiri and you're not shaking it properly and it comes out kind of flabby or kind of flaccid.

46:49Those are the kinds of things that we're trying to teach people how to look for and how to adjust. It's less about, well, how much bitter do you have in there? How much sweet do you have in there? It's more about finding what is the sweet spot for your palate. So there were many times where I was like, yeah, this isn't necessarily how I would do this recipe, but it's got integrity and it's teaching somebody something about one of these techniques. And so that's how we would land on that. Well said. I mean, I think mouthfeel and temperature and these are really specific metrics that are objective.

47:21You know, you have the right way to do it. But then the flavor profiles can vary. The flavor profiles can definitely, the pH and the bricks and all of these things can change for your own palate. But one of the biggest differences is if you're making drinks at home, you have ice that comes out of your freezer. If you're making drinks in a bar, you have ice that's sitting in a bin. And if you're making drinks at home, you're most probably using like a little hand squeezer for your juice. If you're making drinks at a bar, you're using a sun-kissed juicer or something. And so there's a lot of, there's a huge difference in how the drinks could come out if you're not paying attention specifically to technique.

48:01Because everything is different all the time. And I think that's something that's like that makes our relationship super cool because like working together, because those discoveries I don't think would have happened. They wouldn't have happened if like you had just given me the recipes and I would test them out and put them in the book, you know, without like learning the technique. Right. Like there was a moment during Manifesto where you were like, your ice is just too cold. And it's, oh, it's because it's coming straight out of your freezer because you're not tempering it. So if we weren't having those conversations, like those lessons wouldn't have ended up in here.

48:44Like somehow we managed to bridge the gap between, like truly translate like this craft that happens at the bar for people who are doing it at home. Which is like, was so fun, first of all, like really fun. And I think it's really useful for people. Yeah. Toby, what's the legacy of the Violet Hour? How do you like to describe it? I mean, the legacy is the hundreds of bartenders who went through there and spent time and, you know, went on to open incredible bars and do incredible things. Now they're influencing people and they're training people and it goes on and on and on. You miss working there?

49:25It was a really special bar. Yeah. Yeah. You go back? I go back to Chicago as often as I can. Yeah. And I now I go see the people, you know, I go see Kyle Davidson and Carly and bartenders who used to work there. And now my favorite bars are the bars that they work in. The alumni bars. Yeah, exactly. That's that's nice. You know, this this book is is special. And I think, Emma, just what you were saying previously about the testing is like this is a very specific skill set. And it's not easy. I mean, when you're looking at a manuscript deadline and you've got like 50 drinks in front of you, how are you feeling?

50:11I'm tired. I'm tired. Hungover. No, it does sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. It's like, how am I going to get through all of this? But it's also just delightful because I'm learning along the way too. yeah the way um toby teaches me and now i know everything that's in his head and then i get to you know help put it on paper because that's the other cool part about our um our process is um every co-author project that i've done has been very different in terms of um how much you know what exactly i'm doing what i'm bringing to the table sometimes i'm doing all the writing sometimes i'm not doing much writing at all um like the cool thing about toby too is like it's not it wasn't just being passed down to me we were both in these google docs writing together yeah um and so like that made them extra messy which was really beautiful and and i think that's how we got like they're just there are still lines in in the book that i read and i'm like oh my god that's fun like i know that like toby did that and i just maybe polished a word here or there like i feel like i've completely gone off the rails to your question but um no it's it's real it's human i love it i love hearing about a collaboration where um both are in the google Docs.

51:26Those are the best ones. He's such a good storyteller. And so my job was to help make sure that came through on the page. We've gone this far without talking about NA. It's a topic I'm very interested in and the evolution of not just bartending but craft beer and coffee, etc. Is there room for NA in your book? We chose not to go there with this one. Fully aware of how big the movement is. And I I think part of that reason is because we are seeing the quality in that space get so much better that in most cases there's an NA spirit option that you can literally just sub in for its boozy counterpart.

52:15And almost any of these recipes and it's going to taste good. So I think, you know, this being like that's the message, right? Like if you are a non-drinker, there are still quite a few in here that you can make the same way by just subbing in a different ingredient. From the bar side, I mean, are people still drinking now? Sure. It's a very different landscape than it was in the early aughts. But, you know, it's our job as bar owners and bartenders to not be like, oh, this new generation doesn't like huge, warm shots of Fernette and super boozy gin martinis. Like what we need to do is we need to be out there finding things that excite people to drink and make sure that everything's delicious and wonderful at the bar.

53:10So bars aren't going to close anytime soon. No doubt. They're absolutely open for business. And New York is a great place to see that in Living Color. But like when you're looking at one of your new bars that you're opening or your existing bars and thinking about an NA menu right now, what are you looking for from your staff and when you're developing? Is it just a carbon copy of some of the classics or is it like a new new lane? I would say it's a new lane. I think the days of just putting orange juice, pineapple juice, and grenadine together with a little bit of soda water is that those days have passed.

53:51So great cocktail bars have great syrups. They have great juice. And so I think it is, of all the places, a pretty easy way to get great, delicious N.A. cocktails. They're not going to be cheap. that the big thing about them is NA spirits are oftentimes more expensive than regular spirits. And if you're putting together a drink with one of these syrups that has fresh herbs in it, and it took a bartender a couple of hours to make all of these things, and the juices labor and all of these things, that a good cocktail and a good mocktail are both going to be pretty similar in price. so there you know if you're drinking n8 either just have the soda water and bitters for that price or go big and get the deliciously well thought out n8 cocktail but yeah i've said many times in the show i think it's a it's a really great indicator when you see an n8 menu with the pricing is the same yeah like it's just an indicator you know your industry is not it's not gouging it's not taking advantage um when the cost of goods is low you're gonna pass that on and it's gonna be a less expensive drink but i think when you see four or five ingredients and it's like 18 for an na 22 for an na i'm like you should order that if that's gonna be great your mood it's gonna be great it's gonna maybe open up your palate it's gonna like take you to a place that maybe you haven't with that previous era of orange juice and grenadine or even like 10 years ago when it was like, you know, X product and like pineapple juice.

55:29And that was it. But like four or five components is much different. I have to ask you, Emma, about this project. You photographed the project as well as wrote and developed the recipes with Toby. Super rare to have that. Like, what was that process like for you? It was terrifying. Is this the first time you've done it? No, it's the second book I've shot. I also did all the photos for Mezcal. Yeah. but I hadn't really picked up my camera since before pandemic, like the big one and to do cocktail photos. I used to shoot all the time also for InBuy magazine, for recipes that we ran on the website when I was the digital editor there.

56:07So it's something that I've done for a really long time. And Toby was super into the idea of me shooting this. And I was like, no, let's find someone who can do it. You know, and I feel like you just encouraged me to not, like, not be a pussy about it, basically. I was like, how can I say this? I'm going to up and do it. Yeah, I'm going to up. And so, yeah, it was very much like getting back on the horse after not being on it for a very long time. Super gorilla style. I knew I wanted to shoot in bars so that, you know, it would feel so it's not just like here's just the drink. Yeah, it's not about just the drink.

56:54Right. It's about like, where are we drinking the drink? How are we enjoying it? And so kind of just started to hit like hit the ground running. We started in Chicago, asked some friends like, hey, can I come in and take a few pictures of, you know, drinks that are not on your menu? And they're like, yeah, that's great. Thank you. And then there were other times where I was, I would just show up at a place. Lone Wolf was one of those in Chicago. And because I was like shooting around the corner and popped in and I was like, can I have an espresso martini, please? And they were like, yeah. And he like starts to put it in like a rocks glass or something.

57:30And I was like, do you have any coops? And he was like, well, yeah. I was like, OK, cool. Thanks. and, you know, like took the picture and then ran into the guy at Friends of Friends, like almost a year later. And he was like, you're the chick who ordered the espresso martini in the coop. And I was like, oh no. Here I was thinking that I was like, like chill enough that no one would like be suspicious about what was going on. But the rest of them were like more formal. We went down to New Orleans, shot at Cure and Canaan Table. We went out to San Diego, shot in some bars there. basically just trying to think of like scenes and bars where I knew the aesthetic would feel like it's within the same universe even though they were shot in so many different places.

58:14I love it so much. I think documentary style cookbooks and drinks books is the best. Yeah. And like also the way that you're you know the barware the glasses are are unique at these spaces and you can't do that with a prop style shoot. It's a one-of-one when they serve you the drink in their own gear and and i like like editorially you feel cool doing it this way because like that's what drinking is is like going to a bar yeah so like why fake it and bring in your own like purchased yeah and i feel like like our approach and our tone is also really it's just kind of like raw you know it is very natural we don't i mean sometimes we get fun with pros and stuff but like that's also because it's how you talk like that's it's not like there was a review of someone was like oh this guy feels like he's trying really hard he's like no oh, actually, that's just like, we just like to fuck around, you know, like we like to play.

59:04And so like, yeah, walking into a bar and being like, can you put that in a cube for me? Because it's a really pretty corner and the light is perfect right now. And like, I'm going to try and get the shot, you know? So fun. Yeah, that's good. I feel like it just like it worked like soul wise. Yeah. And you get to shout out some great bars too. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice part about it too. Yeah. On This Is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. bars edition. Are you ready? Yeah. Sure. I'm going to have you each take these.

59:36So I'll start with you, Toby. Campari or Aperol? Aperol. Campari. Split. All right. Dive bar or cocktail bar? Dive bar. Is both not an acceptable answer? Stupid question. I'll take that. I'll take that one. That was dumb. I wrote that late at night. Dive bar in the afternoon cocktail bar. Thank you. I love that. That's a better question. That's a better answer. Thank you. Okay. Best bar city in America right now that is not New York or Chicago? New Orleans. It's always New Orleans. Yeah. But Portland, Oregon has some incredibly cool bars. San Diego has some incredibly cool bars. Like it's. I also love the energy in Kansas City right now.

1:00:22Cool. There's some cool cocktail bars down in KC. That's great. Yeah. That's really, really good to hear that. I like that. A classic you could drink every night for the rest of your life. Bucre. What is that? Just to explain. It is fancy old fashioned has a love child with a Manhattan in the sultry jazz filled streets of New Orleans. Margarita. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's a Texas. Kila, lime. Maybe we have some young listeners. All right. A few more. A classic you secretly find a little boring.

1:01:04a remember the main or an income tax or a blood and sand anything with orange juice in it God the blood and sand fuck orange juice fuck orange juice oh my God the blood and sand it's like scotch and orange juice with cherry herring with cherry herring oh yeah I used to drink those yourself um secretly boring Manhattan yeah Pop to mind. Yeah. Just not. Not. I don't know. It doesn't excite me. A garnish that bartenders overdo. Anything fucking dehydrated. Dehydrated citrus. 100%. And the clothespins. Still can't handle things. The to-be clothespins? Yeah. Still can't handle that. The clothespins were really an era.

1:01:49But the dehydrated. Is that why? Why don't you even do it? Because it doesn't give any aroma. Yeah. It doesn't add anything to the cocktail. and... I still think they're ugly. And they're not all that great looking. They're actually pretty. Like, they're kind of wrinkly and... Yeah. I get it that they're shelf-stable and it's cheap and whatever, but I hate them. I love this. Last great cocktail someone else made for you.

1:02:17Last night, I had a cocktail. Does it have to be like... I had this cocktail at Mother's Ruin that was gin and Aperol and passion fruit. And it was just delightful. Yeah. The Chicago Cocktail Classic was last weekend. And they had bartenders from all over the country come in and make drinks and whatnot. And the first one I stopped at was Lady Jane from Denver. And they had a stinger made with underberg. And it was so good that I couldn't put it down. And that was the only one that I drank the whole thing. And I'm sorry to all of the other bartenders whose drinks I didn't try because it was so delicious.

1:03:02I love that. Yeah. Can I add one more? Yes, please. Because yesterday it was pretty toasty out. I was walking through Williamsburg and I went to Echo Lake and had the daiquiri frappe. And it was perfect. Love to hear that. So Paul McKee made me a really spectacular cocktail. That's great. Back to you, Toby. The drink you're most proud of that isn't in this book.

1:03:29Um, that I've created. Yeah, sure. So there is a drink that I made at Violet Hour many years ago called the Pobre Isabel. And it was Pisco, pear brandy, green chartreuse, lemon, some Peychaud bitters. It's one of my favorite drinks that I ever created. That's cool. Emma, to wrap this up, the bartender whose book you're waiting for. And it maybe could be a collaboration or just in general, someone you think should write a book. Oh, dear. I mean, I've already lined up the next two co-author projects with that specific thing in mind. I'm super excited that Kenta Goto's got a book coming out this year.

1:04:13Like that is one that like I have absolutely wanted to like have his recipes in at my fingertips. And it looks gorgeous. And so I'm really pumped to see that one come out. I wish it had been a different year since we're going to be showing up against him. Yeah. For all the awards. For all the awards. I'm absolutely excited to see it as well. Yeah. Same. I think we'll definitely have him on the show. I think we're publishing that here, and it's a beautiful book. So it's a great shout out. It's competitive, right, to get those awards. Yeah. Yeah, but you guys published a great one. Thank you. Thanks.

1:04:48Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks very much, Matt.

1:04:56This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell.