spencer finch

the manhattan project

To be honest I am not an expert. The last time I tasted a Manhattan cocktail was as a teenager, when I mooched from my grandparents on their porch in Vermont. Although they were both over 80, they remained slaves to the 5 o ’clock ritual, and after two of these smoky mixtures must have been, I now realize, pretty plowed by dinner at six. They were both native New Yorkers (well, the Bronx) and cocktail hour was perhaps the great institution of their daily lives. I still equate it with urban civility and the languor of retirement. I can still see the cocktail tray placed on the cocktail cart, with two amber-filled cocktail glasses, and one, sometimes two, sets of dentures beside them. It is one of the few reasons to look forward to old age.

Since I achieved the age of legal consumption, it never really occurred to me to order a Manhattan. My progression through alcohol has been, I am ashamed to say, a passive one—habits formed by chance. First, beer, and then exotic sweet drinks like the Polar Bear. Little adventures in foreign cuisine led to sake, ouzo, aquavit, and, once, flaming sambuca. Later on, I forced myself to develop a taste for Scotch because it looks so good in a glass. Could my taste for wine have developed at art openings? Perhaps. More recently, Bacchus smiled upon me and I crossed paths with the person who mixes the best martini on the planet. He has, in fact, invented a new twist on the old standard—the kumquatini. The unassuming kumquat brilliantly synthesizes the form of the olive with the content of the lemon. (Don’t try to make this at home, since it will shortly be patented, and you will be sued.) So with this kind of excitement on the cocktail front, I just never considered the Manhattan; it always loomed distant but familiar on the menu, a liquid version of sweet-and-sour pork.

But lately I have been on an eponymous food and drink jag. Philly steak sandwiches washed down with a Singapore Sling and a California roll on the side, for example. So these days, when I find myself in the capital of the universe at cocktail hour, I reach for a nice Manhattan cocktail. My accountant once suggested I turn my bad habits into tax deductions; so I’ve created a little survey. Since each tasting was performed while under the influence, the results are necessarily subjective and unscientific. Judging a drink, however, comes far more easily than operating heavy machinery, so I stand by my results.

I ordered all the drinks straight up. Since the main ingredient is rye, bourbon, or whiskey, one can tell just by observing the density of the color how weak or strong the drink is. (The martini demands single-sense judging.) Even though I developed preferences over the course of this extended bender, at each place I simply ordered a Manhattan and left it to the bartender to make the decisions. Some would ask “bourbon or rye?” and I would choose rye (Canadian whiskey) since that is the traditional ingredient. When I sidled up to the bar at Kaffee Haus in Chelsea, I learned that the only thing worse than a bartender with a stupid opinion is a bartender with no opinion. This character flaw led me down the trail to one of the worst Manhattans of the survey, made with scotch whiskey and dry vermouth (basically a Rob Roy). I’m sure that if I had ordered it “mit schlagg” I would have met no resistance. On the other hand, one very respectable drink, at the Cooler, resulted from the bartender’s suggestion of Jack Daniel's (I was surprised, too). And at some places, like Toad Hall, the bartender has a default recipe that is based on excellence rather than expedience.

I finished the survey with no grand conclusions, except that New York City is still a great bar town and price and quality vary dramatically. And the 30 bars I have looked at here are just the tip of the maraschino cherry. In a town where we all seem perpetually on the go, and passing time is practically unheard of, cocktail hour is just the sort of institution that deserves some plugging. So at the risk of promoting the demon drink, I must say that a cocktail and conversation remain a source of enormous pleasure, and this town sure looks better when you’ve got a little buzz on.

images will be posted soon