by Shauna Lyon September 30, 2013 - The New Yorker
Illustration by Giacomo Bagnara.
In February, two bartenders from Belfast, Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon, took the revival of bespoke cocktails full circle with their feisty Victorian-era parlor. The rabbit of which they speak is John (Old Smoke) Morrissey (1831-78)—Irish immigrant, pugilist, Dead Rabbits gang leader, nemesis of Bill (the Butcher) Poole, U.S. congressman.
Back then the tip of Manhattan was a hotbed of gangland warfare; now an after-work crowd swarms the sawdust-covered taproom of an 1828 building, where young women dole out craft beer, more than sixty Irish whiskeys, and snacks, such as an improbably delicate bacon-wrapped sausage roll. (The “grocery,” which sells things like Shropshire blue cheese, is a nod to the Irish safe house, which often fronted an illegal bar.)
But only the refined parlor upstairs offers the baroque cocktail menu, a leather-bound fifty-eight-page book that is a primer on pre-Prohibition flips, possets, nogs, bishops, cups, cobblers, fixes, daisies, slings, toddies, juleps, and smashes. Suspendered barkeeps ladle grog from festive punch bowls into proper teacups—perhaps the Punch à la Taylor, with whiskey, clementine sherbet, and tamarind nectar.
It’s transporting and fabulous, and then you step outside, among the ghosts of Water Street. ♦
Back then the tip of Manhattan was a hotbed of gangland warfare; now an after-work crowd swarms the sawdust-covered taproom of an 1828 building, where young women dole out craft beer, more than sixty Irish whiskeys, and snacks, such as an improbably delicate bacon-wrapped sausage roll. (The “grocery,” which sells things like Shropshire blue cheese, is a nod to the Irish safe house, which often fronted an illegal bar.)
But only the refined parlor upstairs offers the baroque cocktail menu, a leather-bound fifty-eight-page book that is a primer on pre-Prohibition flips, possets, nogs, bishops, cups, cobblers, fixes, daisies, slings, toddies, juleps, and smashes. Suspendered barkeeps ladle grog from festive punch bowls into proper teacups—perhaps the Punch à la Taylor, with whiskey, clementine sherbet, and tamarind nectar.
It’s transporting and fabulous, and then you step outside, among the ghosts of Water Street. ♦
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