Urban Bar: Manhattan on the Rocks

photo: Eric Diesel

Anyone who's gone drinking with me will confirm that, fittingly for a New Yorker, my default cocktail is a Manhattan on the rocks. However, as we've concentrated on this month at Urban Home, we are now officially bi-coastal, and it is with no small awareness of the irony of it that I report that the Manhattan is a cornerstone of Los Angeles cocktail culture. Perhaps that's fitting in ways not just beyond the perfection of rockin' rye meeting sweet vermouth but symbolized by it. We all know that Los Angeles grew up around the movie industry, but not everyone knows that the American movie industry started in New York City -- even more ironically, right here in good ol' Astoria. Pretty much everything that conspired to make LA the place it is today harkens back to the movies, and the movies harken back to NYC. Why wouldn't bar culture distill that into a glass?

I've noted before that Los Angeles is about the drinkingest town I've ever been to. Perhaps it's the aura of glamour imparted by the movies, which are never farther than a table conversation away. Perhaps it's that you can buy wine and booze in both the drug- and grocery store, without pretense to medicinal thimblefuls of brandy. Perhaps it's simply, as our friend and fellow boulevardier Sean hypothesizes, that if you can only have one drink due to the drive home, you want the drink to be of the highest caliber.

Probably for all of these reasons and more, bartending is an artform in Los Angeles such as I've encountered nowhere else -- and yes, that includes New York. New York is a town of great dive bars, great speakeasies, great gastro-pubs, great wine stores, even great drunks. But whereas in New York City, the pace means that you may find yourself in a bar at the end of a day that never stopped; in LA, you built your day around going out. Owners and bartenders know this, and they  combine it with everything from car culture to set design to create spaces that are completely realized worlds, isolated from the street only by walls and vision.

One such is Jar, which will be known to fans of food tv as Suzanne Tracht's restaurant. Both times I've visited this beautiful room, I've noticed that I was eating and drinking next to tv actors. But the famous face who draws me to Jar is the owner, whose food, based on chop house classics, is rendered with the highest caliber of culinary talent. At the bar, they mix LA's exemplary Manhattan. In honor of the two cities in which we make our urban homes, here is my original, and practiced, recipe for a Manhattan on the rocks. It isn't Jar's, but I am confident as both a New Yorker and a Los Angelino that this will be among the best Manhattans you will ever taste.

MANHATTAN ON THE ROCKS

2 ½ ounces Rye Whiskey

¾ ounce Sweet Vermouth

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

2 preserved cherries

Orange peel

1. Ice down an old-fashioned glass and set aside.

2. Place a drop of commercial vegetable cleaner in your palm.  Rub the orange all over with the cleaner. Rinse the orange under cool water until it feels clean. Dry the orange with a paper towel.

3. Use a peeler to remove a long strip of orange peel. Be careful only to get the orange colored peel, and not the bitter white pith.

4. Fill a shaker with ice.  Drizzle ice with 2 dashes Angostura bitters.  Add the orange peel.

5. Add Rye and Vermouth in that order.  Shake vigorously, until shaker top is too cold to touch.  Set aside to settle.

6. Drain the glass; refill with cracked ice. Place the cherries into the glass.

7. Strain cocktail into glass, flicking wrist at the end of the drain to top the drink with accumulated foam.

8. Serve immediately.