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When rebooted Vancouver, Wash., bar The Elbow Room was named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Bar in January, it was the first time the “Oscars of the food world” (which have been around since 1990) recognized a business in the ’Couve.
A bar in Providence, R.I., wound up winning the award. But Elbow Room co-owner Toby Maloney already has a couple anyway: one from 2015, when he was at The Violet Hour in Chicago, and another for his 2023 book with Emma Janzen, The Bartender’s Manifesto. Now he and Janzen are back with The Classic Cocktail Sessions: A Bartender’s New-Fashioned Approach to the World’s Most Beloved Recipes (Clarkson Potter, 320 pages, $35).
Where the first book explored cocktail philosophy, technique and tenets through the sui generis drinks invented at The Violet Hour (by Maloney and many other bartenders), the new book is all about, well, what the title suggests.
Classic Cocktail Sessions is still very much a book about process and aesthetics, applied to what you might call the core cocktailing curriculum. It covers 61 drinks (not counting multiple variations on the Manhattan, martini and Negroni). None was invented later than 2002, and each recipe details painstaking instructions for both mise en place and prep, as well as ingredients, proper glassware, shaking styles, garnish and booze choice.
“Just as you should know how to make a grilled cheese that comes out perfectly gooey and crispy at the same time,” Maloney writes, “you should be able to mix these drinks with aplomb.”
The book is a useful primer if you’ve never, ever made cocktails at home. But there’s more than enough nuance for the connoisseur. For instance, Maloney believes that all cocktails have a “narrative arc”: the way their taste, texture and temperature change—the story that they tell—as one makes and drinks them.
While Maloney writes that his own Manhattan is a bit like one “from your grandmother who never picked up a measuring cup or a set of tablespoons or teaspoons,” he’s a pro. For those of us who aren’t James Beard Award–winning bartenders, the book sternly encourages precision.
For instance, in that Manhattan recipe, do not go over the positive meniscus in the jigger, because even just a bit in a multispirit cocktail can throw off all the balance. Each of Maloney’s recipes also demand at least two straw tastes—one before you’ve even started mixing up the cocktail (to make sure you’ve put everything in the mixing glass or shaker) and another before serving for any necessary tweaks. The trick to that, in order to be sanitary, is to cover the top of the straw with your finger after dipping it to trap some of the liquid (and then use a new straw for the next taste, naturally).
The book’s extreme detail also provides some helpful vocabulary. I’m fond of making old fashioneds and Manhattans with two different whiskeys, but didn’t realize there’s a name for that: a split base. Maloney’s Manhattan (including in his “Freezer Door Manhattan” at The Elbow Room) has not only both rye and bourbon, but two different vermouths.
A split base is also the key to one of Portland’s greatest classic cocktails, Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s version of the amaretto sour, which replaces some of the almond liqueur with rye. That’s how Maloney does it too. “I get a cavity and a headache thinking about how poorly made this drink was in the ’90s,” he writes. Whereas now it’s “a delicious, well-balanced cocktail that will slay even the most die-hard ‘not too sweet’ motherfucker.”
It’s fun to nerd out on cocktail technique, take the time to test and perfect recipes, and impress a date or friends. Cocktails are also cheaper when you make them yourself. Of course, straw-tastes, cutting perfect orange peel slices, and eyeballing the meniscus is a set of priorities for a specific kind of night. And maybe you’re also out of Lazzaroni Amaretto (or never had it in the first place). Which is why Maloney also has a bar.
GO: Toby Maloney signs books (and slings drinks) at The Elbow Room, 1800 Broadway St., Vancouver, Wash., elbowroom1970.com. 4–8 pm Sunday, July 5. 21+.
