Are cocktails as underrated and underappreciated as the great Scottie Pippen? Maybe. Probably. Who knows? For those who aren’t aware, cocktail construction is both the easiest and most difficult part of the culinary experience. Easiest because sometimes all you need is fresh lime juice and half a brain in your head and you can bust out a great daiquiri. Difficult because coming up with something new and unique necessitates many modes of thinking, preparation, and foresight.

Guests come to me from other great restaurants and say the food was great but complain about how bad the cocktails were. I still rack my brain thinking of how this can possibly happen. I mean, all classic drink recipes are written down in books. All you have to do is read and measure. Very odd. It goes to show how hard it can be to create your own cocktail from scratch even though all the templates are out there.

Cocktail construction works on a few varying factors. Color is one. In most cases you have to use ingredients that all combine to form a nice color. Not all shaken cocktails can be brown. Clarity is another factor. No one wants a muddy looking stirred cocktail. Flavor is yet another. Combining certain products and produce together sometimes works and sometimes is a complete trainwreck. Duh. I mean, I try to eliminate cliche here. Let’s just say, none of it makes any sense. Some weeks I have full on feces touch and others I nail a recipe with the first try. The tiki gods are fickle.

The cocktail has the most limitations imposed upon it. It has to be in liquid form, that’s a given, which means certain textures are entirely out of the question. You can add some crunch or seasonings in the form of rims or garnishes or a quick sprinkle over the top, but a drink is still meant to be drunk. It’ll never achieve the same level as a dish.

The cocktail is finite. A drink on ice is only good for about four minutes or less before it over dilutes and turns to shit. A stirred cocktail served up changes from cold to room temp in a longer time period and do can still be enjoyed during the various stages of temperature which is part of the reason why martini and manhattan variations will always be king. Yes, dishes do go cold and ice cream will melt, but the cocktail is much more finicky in terms of how long it will taste good.

In kitchens, every ingredient is available whereas behind the bar we mostly use fresh fruit. Yes, I’m sure there’s super geniuses out there using fish and potatoes in cocktails. I’m not one of them. The elusive cauliflower cocktail I’m sure is still doable.

At Rustic we have no bells and whistles. No carbonation system, no centrifuge, no c-vap distiller. We have barely any freezer space, storage, or love for the work we do from our social media, yet I feel we do a fucking stellar job despite all of this. A little savvy and a good team palate can go a long way.

And yes, yet another issue in cocktail creation: It’s made with booze, so too much tasting of your concoctions and you’ll be under the influence. This is wy it’s hard for me to trust bar managers who come up with new cocktails but don’t drink. You have to taste. You just have to. Imagine a chef not tasting their newest dishes? Sounds ridiculous right?

Back to the title of this blog post. I’m listing all these foibles right off the bat here because just last night I scanned through Rustic’s Yelp reviews and only one person had one good thing to say about the drinks (It was a really really nice thing they said, however). Otherwise, they only spoke of the food. Even in my own most recent review of Birdie G’s, I forgot to mention the cocktails which were really fucking good (sorry Steph). Although my review was a little wacky, I thought mostly of the food which is weird because cocktails are commonly the first and the last thing to hit the table.

So, why? Is it just a disfunction of our own memory or are we focused solely on the food and nothing else? Could be both or none. There’s not as much work put into Rustic’s cocktail menu as the regular menu in terms of person power. Behind the bar there’s just me, Denise, and Angel. The kitchen has over a dozen people. I do a lot of the work a chef never has to do, like bringing boxes upstairs and putting orders away. On the other hand, I don’t have to deal with a lot of the crap chefs do like disciplining, firing, expoing, etc. Plus, coming up with a complete food menu is a more difficult task, in my opinion, compared to a cocktail menu. Ingredients go bad whereas liquor does not.

Yes, it’s two different worlds, and this post is beginning to be a little muddled. Running on a bit. Let’s end it by giving some appreciation to the dudes behind the bar more often in our food reviews and online comments. There are many out there who give me lots of verbal recognition. I love it, keep it coming.