I was describing this one the other day at pre-shift and afterward, Chef Fox muttered something to the tune of “Something fresh and something sitting around.” I can’t remember his exact words, but whatever it was it seemed to sum up the whole Rustic Canyon ideal. Take a seasonal ingredient and if you can’t use it right away, turn it into something that can stick around a while if need be. Then, forget about it, and when you need it, it’ll be there. Call it, the Slow Witted Food Movement.

After the post about Austin Hennelly’s stellar program over at Kato, I’ve started thinking more and more about ice and glassware. My drinks look like turds compared to his. We have crappy common ice and no space for glassware even if we wanted to launch some sort of assault on our beverage program. We have the typical rocks glasses, Collins, and two types of coupes, small and large. That’s it. No, really. Our head honcho was wandering around last night, Angel got absolutely ravaged in the well and our big boss man asked me “Do you think you should have another well?” Uh, where? Not sure if you guys know this but our bar is tiny. It’s a good and bad thing. Good because you don’t have to go far to reach for something, bad because it’s cramped. During service it looks like a bomb went off. The ice freezer for our BFRs barely fit into the space it’s in now. The only way anything could happen wold be expansion, a new bar design, which would cost tens of thousand of dollars. The main man did answer some prayers and asked me to think about anything we might need in order to keep the bar going for another decade. Well, ice and glasses. A pebble ice machine would be the big one. But where the hell would we put it? Glasses? Hell yes! Where the hell would they go? Every inch behind the bar is taken by something–bottles of wine, jars of some experiment–it’s all starting to bleed out toward the shelves in the lounge and even the space above the server area. I have no idea where our sexy glassware would even go.

But there could be room for a centrifuge too…One of those little Spinzall puppies? B.J. are you secretly creeping this blog?

I’d put our flavor profiles and ingenuity up against anyone, but presentation is a thing and after dissecting the drinks at Kato I spiraled into a mild depression about the Rustic Canyon Bar Program.

On another neurotic note, I didn’t get much response from the Confetti post. Maybe people were as freaked out by the character as Jo was. Not sure. He’s pretty bad and the story only gets more gruesome as the chapters continue. It’s definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever written. I’m also thinking maybe the first chapter was just plain bad. That happens. You write something you think is great but it’s awful. It’s hard to find that meter. Maybe I’m just lying to myself about it, who knows…I sent the story out to a lot of agents, maybe a half dozen and got lukewarm responses. They say you write for yourself anyway, but that’s just a lot of hoo-hah. I mean, yes, but I also do it to get better and someday see one of these damn books in print. That’s the goal. I said that once to a team of people curious about The Seasonal Bar. Jo was listening in on the Zoom call and let me have it when the meeting was over. “You told them all you want is to sell a few books and then sleep with it under your pillow? No, you want to sell as many copies as possible, right?” Yeah, she was right. I think Philip Roth said once he sleeps with his newest books under his pillow, he also got mad at me when I pulled out a stack of books from a duffle bag for him to sign. “I’ll sign four and that’s it” he said.

I’m not a fizzy drink guy, although I’ve been into Americanos lately. Angel is the fizzy drink guy in the family tree. He’s got the magic touch when it comes to this stuff. This is his creation. When I asked him what he wanted to call it he replied, “No clue.”

Clueless Angel

1.5 oz. Genever

1 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.75 oz. Blapperol

.25 oz. Curly Opal Basil Syrup

.25 oz. Fermented Mandoquat Syrup

Shake, top with 2 oz. prosecco, double strain into large coupe, top with a spritz of absinthe and a curly opal basil leaf. I’ll get into the weird ingredients later.