*
OK SO GET ON WITH THE FUCKING BIO ALREADY
Evan Martin, winner of the prize for first recipe submitted, is the bar manager of Ba Bar, a Vietnamese-influenced cafe and bar on 12th and Cherry in Seattle, the booming little neighborhood where the lines between Capitol Hill and the Central District bend and twist into a vortex flow of tipsy delights. Ba Bar opened last summer just a few blocks away from where Canon now sits, and a few blocks more from Tavern Law and Barrio.
Beware the Ba Bar to Barrio Booze Bustle...Beware the Ba Bar to Barrio Booze Bustle...
Evan came of age as a bartender at Naga in Bellevue, WA. I don't want to say Evan started bartending young, but when he was first starting, the customers at Naga would often point to Naga's then-bar manager Andrew Bohrer and say to Evan, "hey kid, can you tell your dad I'm ready for another Grey Goose chilled?"
Andrew eventually became disgruntled with the unrelenting ageism and left Naga, at which point Evan assumed control of the bar. And let me just add, it feels good to be making up stories about bartenders again.
Evan also works for Novo Fogo Cachaca. He does ambassadorial type of stuff. I don't know what his title is. What do you expect me to do, research this shit? If you want me to make up a title let me know.
One of Evan's most brilliant and legendary publicity campaigns for Novo Fogo was a little something people like to call, "Pour Novo Fogo From An Interior Balcony At A Crowded Tales Event Down To The Lobby Where The Munat Brothers Attempt To Catch It In Their Mouths." And this looked EXACTLY like this:
(Note to spirit companies: The Munat Brothers are available for further consultancy work in this vein. Fees are negotiable).
OK, SO GET ON WITH THE FUCKING DRINK ALREADY
Good idea. Here is the recipe for Evan's contribution to Le Mixeur Sharky: Nine Stories, inspired by and named for a story J.D. Salinger first published in Harper's magazine in 1949.
Down At The Dinghy
1.75 ounce Voyager gin
1 ounce fresh grapefruit
0.67 ounce Pear-Riesling Shrub*
0.5 ounce Chamomile-Gentian Liqueur**
Shake and strain into double old fashioned glass over cubed ice.
Top with 2 ounces Schweppes soda (high sodium soda).
Garnish with fat grapefruit peel and pickled pear slice.***
*Pears cooked with white vinegar and riesling, a little lemon zest and juice, sweetened with sugar, further flavored and fortified with Pur Spirts Pear Liqueur.
**Homemade Suze!!!
***Evan has a friend who make that shit!!!
OK SO GET ON WITH THE FUCKING STORY ALREADY
Down At The Dinghy is the shortest short story in the collection of stories known as Nine Stories. It's also possibly the sweetest. Which is why I gave it to Evan. He's sweet. It's also been described as one of Salinger's least dramatic stories. Which is why I gave it to Evan. He's a low-drama sort of guy.
The plot is simple: A four-year-old boy named Lionel, with an almost life-long penchant for running away when things happen that upset his sensitive soul, is once again upset. And so, he once again has set about the process of running away from everything he knows, this time by sitting in the stern seat of his father's dinghy and working the tiller. Poignantly enough, his vessel of escape is tied to the pier and stripped of its sails.
His mother, Boo Boo Tannenbaum (born Boo Boo Glass, of the Glass family featured in many of Salinger's works, including others to come in Nine Stories), goes down to the dinghy to try to learn what upset him, and to help him untie the emotional knots created by the actions and words of the adults surrounding him, and to bring him back home to her. Eventually, she does.
Evan explained to me that given the nautical theme, it seemed appropriate to create a drink with Voyager gin, what with its name and glorious label picturing some great big ol ship of some sort (editor's note: we don't know anything about boats). Also, Lionel is a big fan of pickles. Before heading down to the dinghy, Boo Boo, perhaps naively, believes a pickle might cheer Lionel up and searches for one in the fridge, only to learn that he has already eaten them all. Once Lionel has accepted his mother back into his life, she suggests that when they go to pick his father up from the train station, they stop and get pickles. And THAT, my friends, is why Mr. Evan Martin created a drink that would be complemented perfectly by a pickled pear. Let the Peter Piper jokes...commence!
And so, with that drink and story and bartender deftly described, there is nothing left to do here but include a quote from the story and put up a picture of Sharky. And so let's do that now...
Lionel slowly sat back in his seat, watching his mother, and reached behind him for the tiller. His eyes reflected pure perception, as his mother had known they would."Here." Boo Boo tossed the package down to him. It landed squarely on his lap.He looked at it in his lap, picked it off, looked at it in his hand, and flicked it--sidearm--into the lake. He then immediately looked up at Boo Boo, his eyes filled not with defiance but tears. In another instant, his mouth was distorted into a horizontal figure-8, and he was crying mightily.Boo Boo got to her feet, gingerly, like someone whose foot has gone to sleep in theatre, and lowered herself into the dinghy. In a moment, she was in the stern seat, with the pilot on her lap, and she was rocking him and kissing the back of his neck and giving out certain information: "Sailors don't cry, baby. Sailors never cry. Only when their ships go down. Or when they're shipwrecked, on rafts and all, with nothing to drink except..."
Comments