Genever Say Never

One of the things I always enjoy at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans are the Spirited Dinners, so I was happy to see that this year Tales on Tour added an evening of Spirited Dinners in some of Vancouver's best restaurants. It was hard for our group to decide on one but finally we chose Genever Say Never held at MARKET by Jean-Georges and led by Jay Jones. I love genever so I was especially happy!

Originally Agostino Perrone, one of the bar talents at London's Connaught Hotel bar, was meant to team up with Jay, but due to a medical issue was not able to travel. Dayne and I loved the Connaught while in London last fall so we were disappointed that Agostino was not able to be there but Jay called and told me personally that he would be making Perrone's creations and I think they all turned out beautifully.


The cocktail pairings for the evening all used Bols Genever (natch). First up was the Yellow Submarine by Agostino. Bols Genever, Galliano L'Autentico, Fino Sherry and Celery Bitters. This was paired with a celeriac and lemon panna cotta. I have to say that the panna cotta was amazing and the color was so beautiful!

Next up was Jay's Kopstootje Kocktail. Kopstootje means "little head butt" and it refers to the tradition of leaning over and slurping genever from your filled to the rim glass. This cocktail used Bols Genever, Coriander, Lemongrass, Anise and Brasserie L'Achouffe "La Chouffe" Golden Ale. It was paired with juniper scented Sooke salmon with grapefruit and anise. I loved the flavor of the ale in the cocktail and the salmon was amazing!


The Stranger cocktail, also by Jay was our "main course" libation and used Bols Genever, Courvoisier VSOP Cognac, Cherry Brandy, JJ Bean Eastside Espresso and Angostura Bitters. The entree was butter poached squab and roasted carrot, coffee essence and cherry. This was my favorite cocktail of the night, it's got everything I like and it went very well with the dish. 

For dessert we had sous vide pear, roasted almond milk and vanilla fromage blanc sorbet (yum). The paired cocktail was Angostino's Galliano's Cup- Bols Genever, Galliano L'Autentico, Sauternes, Lemon, Yuzu, Orgeat, Pear, Sage and Peychaud's Bitters. This one came off a bit sweet for me but I thought the flavors were very interesting and original.


All in all another fun Spirited Dinner and a chance to taste the creations of two great bartenders! If you went to a Spirited Dinner at Vancouver Tales which one did you attend?


I apologize for the (lack of) quality of my photos, there was a bit of drinking involved...

Three Cheers for Tales of the Cocktail

I guess it's an annual trip now- this year was our 3rd time attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. Each year the event gets larger and more people that we know show up. There are so many new people to meet and see others we've met in years past. Oh, and there are cocktails! Eye openers at breakfast, Pimm's Cups at lunch, multiple tastes during seminars, happy hour, pre-dinner libations and night caps. There are many, many cocktails.


One of my favorite things is the Spirited Dinner where cocktails are paired with a multi course meal. This year we picked the Tiki drink dinner at GWFins. It was absolutely the best dinner of the 3 years! The food was amazing, the drinks were amazing and most of our friends chose to attend too so the company was amazing! Oh and I won the coolest limited edition Smuggler's Cove grog mug!!


We attended some great seminars such as Sugarcane Spirits and Drinks from the 1600's and attended many complimentary tasting rooms like Martin Miller's Gin and Absinthe. I also attended The Wormwood Society's blind absinthe judging which was held in the Absinthe Museum, very fun!

There were delicious meals at Coop's Place, Cafe Adelaide, Luke & The Napoleon House as well as some yawners at Galatoire's and The Bourbon House.

On the last day we rented a car with our friend's Lauren & Paul and headed out to the old River Road to tour a few of the plantations that still survive. The drive out was so interesting as we crossed over large swamp lands and drove through intense mining areas. It was a landscape that I hadn't seen before and was happy to experience.

Our first stop was at the Laura Plantation which dates from 1805 and is being restored bit by bit.
This was a full on working plantation with large gardens, sugar cane fields, slave quarters, etc. It wasn't for showing off but for conducting business and the family history was very interesting. Laura Plantation is also where the original "Tales of Uncle Remus" were written based on stories told by the plantation's slaves.

these are some of the slave quarters at Laura Plantation

The other stop we made was to Oak Ally which is famous for their 600+ year old oak trees which welcome visitors- it's a magnificent sight! This plantation was the opposite of Laura as that it was always a private home and although they did grow sugar the main house was not used for business.


I highly recommend to anyone heading to New Orleans to make the short trek out to River Road and visit a few of these awesome plantations!

More pictures of booze, food, crazies and various southern things can be found here!

That Whooshing Sound

It seems that everyone else in the blogosphere has already published their recap of Tales of the Cocktail 2008 in New Orleans -- back in July. Not us! No, we choose to do things in our own sweet time, or as I like to say, we lead from behind.

Wendy made me promise to write up our last trip before we went on a new one. I didn't actually manage to do that, but mostly because I kind of feel the same way about deadlines as did the late, incomparable Douglas Adams: "I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

Now that the LHC has come online and the planet has failed to get swallowed by a man-made black hole, I guess I should quit procrastinating and write a bit about our trip.

Wendy wasn't able to join me the first night, so I was forced [forced I say!] to go out with Keith and "Old Two-Livers" Rocky. After hitting an opening reception for Tales, we went to Cochon for dinner. Two-Livers apparently has a couple of stomachs too, but Keith and I tried gamely to keep up. We finished the night at LaFitte's Old Absinthe House, which is amazingly inconsistent in quality of drink (and bartender) but which was doing a bang-up job that evening.

Although I went to a decent Tales seminar the next day ("Artisan Spirits"), I was really mostly looking forward to Wendy's arrival. She showed up in plenty of time to join me at the slightly-dizzying Carousel Bar for part of a muffuletta that I'd brought back from an enjoyable lunch at Napoleon House with Rocky, Keith, Anita, Cameron, and a few others. Then it was off to Cocktail Hour and, more importantly, the Spirited Dinner at Restaurant August, where Charlotte Voisey was the "bar chef" for the evening. Although August is a great place -- Wendy and I had eaten there the year before -- and Charlotte tends to make tasty drinks, I have to say that this year things didn't really gel right. I know it's hard for the mixologists to pair against food they haven't tasted, so I won't be too judgemental, but there were really only one or two pairings that worked well, and several of the cocktails were not to the taste of some of the admittedly non-cocktailian members of our table. One thing that utterly failed was the tomato tart for dessert. Ugghh.

On Friday I had made the mistake of scheduling two whiskey seminars: "Whiskies You've Never Tasted" and "Rye Nation". While both were good, my palate was utterly destroyed by the end; I could not force down another drop of brown and was in serious need of citrus. I think Wendy did much better scheduling "Rum, Ron, Rhum" for herself! We headed out to the Swizzle Stick Bar, where Michael took great care of us as always, and then went to Emeril's for dinner; I actually enjoyed it much more than I expected (no Bam! though).

The highlights of Saturday were a brunch at Brennan's that ballooned from 2 to something like 15 people, an afternoon walking cocktail history tour of the French Quarter (where Wendy and I somehow managed to get separated from a group of 20+ people on foot, but still beat them to the last stop), and a meal at Herbsaint. Finished the evening with another stop at the Swizzle Stick Bar.

...and on Sunday it was time to go home!

Our pictures of Tales and New Orleans this year can be found here.