The Lucky Lilly
Posted: August 29, 2011 Filed under: Bar Stories and Cocktail Recipes | Tags: bar tending, cocktail bartending, cocktail recipes, mixology, tequila recepies Leave a comment »My favorite twist on the margarita.
A recipe taken from All Star Lanes, Holborn, London.
I’m at work one night, it was early around 7pm. Abdul my bar manager was at the end of the bar talking to lady named Lilly. He stood at 5’6 animated Mancunian (from Manchester). He was trying to impress Lilly with his bar tending skills, “what’s your favorite fruit?’ he asked her. “I like Pineapples”, she replied holding his stare, I like Pineapples and Teqila”. And so forth was born the “Lucky Lilly”. And because Abdul got lucky with Lilly later that night.
3 pineapple slices
10 grinds of black pepper
dash agave nectar
2 ounces Herradura Tequia Resposado
Muddle Pineapple, Agave and pepper.
Add tequila
Shake & strain into salt and pepper rimmed martini glass.
Garnish with a pineapple wedge and enjoy.
Cracked Thumb
Posted: August 19, 2011 Filed under: Bar Stories and Cocktail Recipes | Tags: cocktail recipes, gin julep, julep, mixology, plymouth gin Leave a comment »An English rose’s twist on the American classic Julep. The Cracked Thumb is one of my favourite concoctions of all time. Fun to make, refreshing and classically contemporary…I took this recipe from All Star Lanes cocktail bar in Holborn, London where I worked for a year during my ‘Landan Dayz’
Ingredients:
2 ounces of Plymouth Gin
1/2 ounce of Elderflower presse
half a peeled lemon zest
8 mint leaves.
Method
Take a small chilled tin
Add lemon zest, elderflower presse and mint leaves, gently muddle for a few seconds.
Take an ice-cube and crack it in hand with the back of a spoon, repeat process until tin is full.
The process on cracking the ice mimics the ice used in the classic julep dating back to 19th century America. The chipped ice dilutes the drink perfectly.
Add gin and stir in tin, bringing lemon and mint to the top of the tin and mixing the drink. Add mint and lemon garnish.
Bar HumBug
Posted: February 21, 2011 Filed under: Bar Stories and Cocktail Recipes | Tags: bar stories Leave a comment »
Get a job in a bar.
To my advantage, my mother lived in a flat on Whiteladies Road, a busy strip bursting with people wanting to be seen. And perfect stumbling distance past the burger stand back to my doorstep.
Bar Humbug. My playground when I was 18. It was here I first learned what a Zombie was. Shook my first cocktail. Had a whole new world of experience open. At worst, a dark underbelly at best a celebration of innocence in it’s final stages.
One night…
Drunk on innocence and lots of rum. After hours, doors locked, bottles open. I mixed drinks naked in nothing but my boots. I think it was round the time I first experimented using cocaine. I remember my head full of questions…thinking, what will it do to me? Why can’t I be naked? I felt free? Inebriated or liberated? When I had fixed my drink I put my clothes back on and went home.
I cried behind that bar, laughed behind it, the smell of limes, cutting the big fat juicy ones on a cold Sunday morning with the light shinning through the window showing the dust, left over ash on the wooden bar top. The backdrop of movie from my youth.
