Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Maraschino March: "The Shibuya Crusta" from L'Abattoir

Tonight we head back to Gastown to once again visit Shaun Layton at one of my favourite places for food and drink in Vancouver, L'Abattoir. (You can check out my review here)

Shaun combined a few different cocktails to come up with this one, namely a Brandy Crusta and a Japanese. The former was originally a style of drink (much like the "Cocktail") using a spirit, lemon, Maraschino, Cointreau, bitters, and served with a large piece of lemon peel wrapped around the inside of the glass. The latter is simply brandy, orgeat, and Angostura bitters. Shaun is also adding sparkling wine to the mix and upping the amount of the bitters, like a Champagne Cocktail or Seelbach. Add all these elements together and you've got a fairly complicated, yet light, creative drink. Shaun manages to balance a lot of elements here, in particular using the orgeat to calm down the seven (as he says, "that's right, seven") dashes of Angostura - or perhaps the bitters calms down the orgeat? The Cava really ties everything together, and the Crusta-style of presentation makes this a truly enjoyable drink on all levels.

The Shibuya Crusta

20 ml Hennessy VS Cognac
15 ml Maraschino
30 ml fresh lemon juice
10 ml orgeat syrup
7 dashes Angostura bitters
Top with Cava

Add all ingredients to a shaker tin minus the Cava. Shake, fine strain into sugar decked flute. Top with Cava. Garnish with a long orange peel around the inside of the flute.



 Head down to L'Abattoir to check this one out, and do yourself a favour and stay for dinner and extra cocktails. 
Thanks to Shaun and & L'Abattoir for contributing!

[[ see "Oden's Muse" from Tavern Law here ]]
[[ see "The Hemingway Solution" from Vessel here ]]
[[ see the Maraschino March introduction here ]]
[[ see "The Division Bell" from Mayahuel here ]]
[[ see "The Unforgiven" from Russell Davis of Rickhouse here ]]
[[ see "Cherry Bob-omb" from Veneto here ]]
[[ see "Primer Beso" from The Refinery here ]]
[[ see "The Rubicon" from Jamie Boudreau at Canon here ]] 

3 comments:

  1. Three observations.

    1) What's up with these crazy em-el's? Where are my good ol' fashioned oh-zee's?

    2) I subbed bourbon for cognac and it's still delicious.

    3) Orgeat seems to have an incredible capacity to balance enormous amounts of bitters. (See also the Trinidad Sour.)

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  2. 1) I don't know! All these crazy non-American bartenders keep using those measurements =P
    1oz is about 30mL, so the above recipe basically translates to
    2/3oz Cognac
    1/2oz Maraschino
    1oz lemon
    1/3oz orgeat

    I actually ended up getting a very small mL measuring cup just so I can get all these recipes going at home.

    2) Have to give that a try too. Check out the Seelbach cocktail if you haven't,
    1oz Bourbon
    1/2oz Cointreau
    7 dashes Angostura
    7 dashes Peychaud's
    top with Brut Champagne (5oz is the official)
    garnish with a lemon or orange twist (I've seen both used)

    3) Agreed. Both the Fernet recipes from The Diamond and The Keefer from last month use a large amount of Fernet and completely balance it with orgeat, a la Trinidad Sour.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shaun did notice our comments on oz vs. ml, Travis, and says that the reason he always does his recipes with the metric system is because the US is the only country that uses standard. So if he wants to share a recipe with anyone not in the US, they'll have the same problem you're having right now. Standard is a stupid system anyway :)

    ReplyDelete