The New Manual for Ingredients Inspiration
Jim Meehan’s newest book is essential reading for bar pros seeking to expand their ingredients repertoire.
I know I’ve been writing about a lot of books these past few months, but that’s because there are just so many great ones that have come out this spring and summer.
The book that is perhaps the most notable cocktail book so far this year is The Bartender’s Pantry by Jim Meehan (with Emma Jansen as coauthor), the influential bartender who’s best known for having cofounded PDT, one of NYC’s most seminal bars of the past two decades.
Meehan has written two books previously, The PDT Cocktail Book and Meehan’s Bartender Manual. But unlike those previous volumes, in this one he acts more as a compiler of other people’s knowledge than as the main source of it.
The Bartender’s Pantry comprises more than 50 cocktail recipes (and about an equal number of recipes for syrups, cordials, infusions, and other ingredients to use in those cocktail recipes) from a who’s who list of bartending and culinary legends. Take a look at the recipe index and you’ll likely recognize the vast majority of names: Julia Momose, Julie Reiner, Audrey Saunders, Kevin Diedrich, Jillian Vose, Sam Ross, Wylie Dufresne, and many, many more.
It includes several modern classics (Earl Grey MarTEAni, Penicillin, etc) and many others that, if not quite modern classics yet, are notable signature serves from their respective venues (Porchlight’s 7&7, Llama Inn’s Llama Del Rey, etc). Ever wanted pandan pioneer Nico de Soto’s own recipe for pandan syrup? It’s in here, along with a cocktail employing it, L’Alligator C’est Vert.
Those recipes are organized by (non-alcoholic) ingredient category rather than the more common categories of cocktail style or alcohol type, and the ingredients maybe aren’t the first to come to mind when thinking about cocktails—coffee, tea, grains and nuts, dairy, etc.; 10 categories in total.
Each section begins with an overview of the ingredient category’s modern history of use in drinks, plus tips for sourcing, storing, and preparation, with insights gathered from experts in each respective field. (Often, these insights come from books, occasionally giving this one the feel of a research paper.) As a book, The Bartender’s Pantry perhaps has as much in common with some of Harold McGee’s food-science books or Arielle Johnson’s guide to flavor as it does with most conventional cocktail-recipe books. (And, indeed, Dr. Johnson, a fermentation expert, contributed a recipe for kombucha to this book, and McGee is quoted frequently throughout.)
At its core, this book is about transforming non-alcoholic, typically culinary, ingredients into beverages.
(Note: this is only half of the recipe index.)
The book will influence how you consider what goes into your cocktails—on a couple of levels. Seeing other bartenders’ creativity with what can flavor a drink will likely spur your own experiments. We all know the bacon-fat-washed whiskey from Meehan’s former bar, but what about a butter-washed gin for use in a martini? What about a ferment made from bread? Or a caffe corretto made with Turkish coffee and a Turkish spirit? For days after getting this book, I was looking at every food item that passed through my hands and thinking, “How could I use this in a drink?” There was nearly always an answer if I thought hard enough.
And on a deeper level, the book encourages bartenders to constantly seek out the best ingredients possible—and to consider the forces behind growing or creating those ingredients. Meehan writes in the book’s intro:
“My life experiences inform the way I perceive ingredients as a bartender. Every time I taste a coffee or fruit or spice, I wonder if it’s really the best version I can find, or if I need to search further to source something more appropriate for the application at hand.
“Today, the practice of continuously evaluating the quality of ingredients and understanding their origins drives my work as a bartender. I am not alone in this: the sentiment, I believe, is driving today’s cocktail zeitgeist. We’ve moved beyond rejiggering recipes from the “Golden Age” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Now, bartenders are blazing new paths by prioritizing transparent sourcing, environmentally sustainable farming, and worker rights alongside the way ingredients taste or function in a recipe. Bartenders are increasingly caretaking the narratives of these ingredients—past, present, and future—in addition to coaxing out their best qualities in the glass.”
A caveat: This book is clearly aimed at pro bartenders who are likely to have access to more ingredients (alcoholic and non) and equipment than the average person does, and more experience with and patience for advanced/complex techniques such as forced carbonation, etc, than many casual at-home drink-makers would. Although the cocktail recipes are fantastic for showcasing the ingredients they’re meant to spotlight, many call for more than one infusion or other preparation that’s time-consuming or impractical to make at home.
These are the types of drinks that I, a fairly advanced home drink-maker, am very happy to fork over 20 bucks for at a bar so I don’t have to make them myself. More than once, I read an ingredients list and thought to myself “Maybe I’m not necessarily the target audience for this book just yet.” But plenty of recipes are still accessible, and the others are just as inspirational as they are aspirational.
Just to give an example of what I mean when I say these drinks are relatively complex: A recipe for kvass (in the breads and grains section, of course) caught my eye, since it’s a type of low-alcohol soda-like beverage I encounter often in a supermarket I frequent, a ferment made with rye bread. It’s fairly straightforward to make, but requires a few days to ferment to the correct degree. And then it’s used in a cocktail (Castle on a Cloud) that sounds delicious but which, in addition to some fairly typical cocktail ingredients, also calls for Becherovka (which most people don’t have laying around their home bars, not even me) and also an infusion that calls for seven different spices and takes two days to infuse. I’ll make the cocktail at some point, I’m sure, but I know I’m in for a process when I do.
That said, the how-to instructions delightfully illustrated by Bart Sasso (a designer and the owner of Ticonderoga Club in Atlanta) go a long way in demystifying the processes. Better yet, every cocktail recipe has a photo illustrating its intended serve. (I’m told they were all shot in Meehan’s own home.)
Fun fact: The book took five and a half years to come to fruition, says Meehan, meaning it was created largely during the time of the pandemic that no one was gathering or traveling, and I’m told that Meehan, Jansen, and Sasso had never been in the same room together until the party and panel discussion at Porchlight celebrating the book’s release. (You know, kind of like the band The Postal Service, whose members famously created their album by FedExing DAT recordings to each other, hence the band’s name. Isolation spurs genius, apparently.)
The book does, perhaps, reflect the pandemic’s first year or two: a time when we relied most on reaching out to our community of friends and colleagues, near and far; a time when many of us were considering to a greater degree what we were adding to our pantries and how those items came to be, in both logistical and cultural terms. And it serves as a great reminder not to forget the lessons learned then.
The Sidecar
Seriously, I can’t say enough good things about the Porchlight Book Club Series. It’s more than a typical reading and signing; it’s a chance to actually chat with the authors over cocktails, a booze-and-schmooze. A ticket gets you a copy of the book and the specialty cocktails on offer for the event.
And in unrelated news: I’ve known about this for more than a month and I’m so excited to be able to talk about it, finally, since it has officially been announced: Dear Irving is opening a third location, this one at 55th and Broadway. Meaghan Dorman tells me the intent is specifically to appeal to theater-going crowds, positioned as it is between the Broadway theaters and Lincoln Center. Her bars tend to have a lot of alums who make it big in the performing arts world, so it’s kind of a perfect confluence. She recognizes the need for an elegant space in the area for before and after shows, somewhere that patrons would feel comfortable going to all dressed up. I know it’ll be my default venue for post-Met Opera drinks.