Turning toward the bar, the gentleman to my left instructed the bartender, “Make him that drink you made me last night.” A few minutes later, I was sipping on a clever concoction of coconut, rum, and a hint of Laphroig. This contemporary take on a tiki drink was the delicious brainchild of Giancarlo Aversa, a bartender at what has arguably become Ann Arbor’s best spot for cocktails, The Last Word.

Open since February 14, 2012 and named after the classic drink that originated at the Detroit Athletic Club in the 1920’s, the bar occupies the space previously inhabited by Goodnight Gracie’s lounge near the corner of Huron and 1st Street. Gone are Gracie’s plush lounge sofas and garish faux-tinis. Instead, The Last Word presents a simple but elegant, dimly lit room and libations inspired by the Prohibition era.

My drinking companion that night was co-owner Paul Drennan, a veteran of the bar and restaurant business for more than two decades. “I’ve always had a passion for booze,” he says, which explains in part how a Scottish-born chef finds himself overseeing a cocktail bar and the adjoining music club, Live!

After a culinary career that saw him working in Michelin-starred institutions and took him around the globe, Drennan discovered that the kitchen wasn’t necessarily the place for him.

“Working in those environments, I took a lot from it, but it made me recognize I’d rather be in the front of the house,” he discloses. He came to work for a large hotel and hospitality organization, a career which took him to Ypsilanti in 1999 where he grew fond of the region. After another stint in New York, he ended up working at the MGM casino in Detroit opening the first iteration of those restaurants.

He and his colleague Robbie Schulz left the hotel to bring their expertise to the Alley Bar. They took their shared love of craft cocktails to what is now Ann Arbor’s favorite dive, offering mixed drinks alongside plenty of PBR. But they still longed to do something grander.

With the success of the Alley Bar, Drennan and Schulz entered the fold as partners when the Alley Bar ownership later took over Live! and the old Gracie’s space. The latter became The Last Word and gave them a chance to exercise their creativity and put great drinks to the fore.

It’s not necessarily uncommon to hear a former chef speak frequently about drinking. But it might be a bit less common to sense a true passion for the subject of spirits. Drennan traces it back first to his father introducing him to Scotch and later to a drink he had at the Ritz in London, “It was 1984, 85, I think. A bartender who was old school made me this gin fizz.” Almost three decades later, his bartenders are putting together entirely new cocktails, unquestionably among the best in town.

Creativity – the kind that Drennan and Schulz are encouraging – is critical to The Last Word’s early success. Schulz has developed many of the recipes himself, but all the bartenders are part of the process. “We believe the bartenders need to buy into the place. So they came up with the original menu,” Drennan says.

The menus are cleverly presented in small binders made from the covers of old hardback books and organized from lightest to biggest and most complex. Drennan and Aversa note the popularity of drinks across the entire cocktail list. Among the most requested to this point are, a Lavender Sidecar ($8), the Sangre de Fresa ($9), a refreshing mix of cachaca, Cointreau, lime, strawberry, basil, and balsamic, and the vodka- and rum-based Barbary Flip ($9).

Eventually, they’re hoping to employ a seasonal approach to the menu, changing drinks more frequently and exposing people to more options and more ideas. For the time being, they’re taking their role as educators seriously. Between shaking drinks, Aversa chimes in, “We do a lot of talking with our guests, a lot of brainpicking. Asking people what they’ve had before.”

Beyond interactions at the bar, Drennan and company have begun to add promotional evenings – half off whiskey on Tuesdays and tiki nights on Wednesdays – to their offerings both in the hopes of adding business on off nights and allowing people to experiment more.

Drennan adds that the clientele is constantly surprising them, helping the bar evolve, “You get the most unassuming people with a wealth of knowledge walk through the door, and you’re saying ‘Holy shit, where did you come from?’”

That only supports a notion about which Drennan is adamant – that Ann Arbor now has a vibrant cocktail scene, one that he’s particularly excited about. “We talk up Raven’s Club. We talk up Mani’s. Because everyone improves, and it improves the landscape of Ann Arbor,” he says, “I just want people to recognize Ann Arbor and really the whole state of Michigan. There’s a whole scene here now.”

What he doesn’t say is that The Last Word is a critical piece of that scene. Only a few months into doing business, cocktail aficionados have recognized it as the best of the downtown area cocktail outlets. For anyone in Ann Arbor looking for a good drink, it’s worth a visit.

Finding the bar isn’t hard if you know where to look – it’s tucked under Live!, around the corner on Huron, west of Main Street – though The Last Word doesn’t have a sign or a website yet. Drennan insists this isn’t part of any guerilla marketing effort as some have speculated online. It’s merely a reality of trying to get the bar open as quickly as possible and focusing on the building and the drinks before the marketing: “We’re not aiming to be a speakeasy – just a bar that makes great fucking cocktails.”

Still, since those emails generally involve a lot of self-aggrandizing, they’re often worth a chuckle or two. What follows may be a real email, or it may be us parodying an email.

What do you think of the text below: Real or Fake?

Todd,

More info below but Mako Vodka, a new vodka to the Detroit area, has a slew of beach-themed cocktails that I thought could work for a Memorial Day cocktail piece. I have drink images to go along with these and can send along a sample of Mako (it recently won a Gold Medal from the Beverage Testing Institute).

I know there are a 101 vodkas out there, but Mako is less about the crazy flavors and more about a mindset. The brand, which is named after the Mako Shark, is trying to cut through the clutter by reaching out to those who are into the nautical lifestyle whether that is boating, sailing, deep sea fishing, etc.

If Memorial Day weekend doesn’t work, there’s always Shark Week (everyone’s favorite cocktail occasion, maybe not quite yet, but it should be), Shark Week airs in July.

Thanks,
Courtney

Fun facts about the Mako Shark:

• Fastest shark in the water. A Mako can swim up to 60 mph when on the hunt.
• Nickname: “The Cheetah of the Sea.”
• Extremely adaptable. Can live in warm, cold, shallow or deep water.
• Slightly famous. The Short Fin Mako was featured in Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea.”
• Cool trick. A Mako will leap out of the water. Scientists are befuddled at why they do this. We think they want to check out the scene.

Fun Facts about Mako Vodka:

• The Mako shark may like all types of water, but Mako Vodka uses only pure natural iron-free limestone spring water.
• At 75ft, our stills are about the size of 8 Mako sharks lined up from head to fin. Mako Vodka is five-times distilled for exceptional purity.
• We add oven-dried, medium-roasted malted barley to our mash bill. Sure a Mako shark wouldn’t go for barley, but our fans love the taste.
• We’re also slightly famous. Mako Vodka was awarded a 93 rating, gold medal from the Beverage Testing Institute.

Summer Cocktails

Mako® Shark-in-the-Water Martini
1 part Mako Vodka
1/2 part Blue Curacao
1 part Sweet & Sour (or Fresh Lemon Juice)
Splash Cranberry Juice
Combine in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain. Garnish with lime wedge.

Mako® Raspberry Sharkbite Martini
1 part Mako Vodka
1 part Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur
1 part Sweet & Sour (or Fresh Lemon Juice)
Combine in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain. Garnish with lime wedge.

Mako® Blue Ocean
1 part Mako Vodka
1 part Blue Curacao
1 part Pineapple Juice
1 part Cranberry Juice
Combine in a glass with ice and stir. Garnish with lime wedge.

Mako® Harborside Chiller
1 part Mako Vodka
1 part Peach Schnapps
1 part Lemonade (or Sweet & Sour)
1 part Cranberry Juice
Splash Club Soda (optional)
Combine in a glass with ice. Top with Club Soda, if desired. Garnish with lime wedge.

Cocktail nerds hobbyists, like any nerds hobbyists, tend to get a little obsessive: learning the newest trend, finding the latest ingredient, practicing every technique, and of course, hunting down rare things. Whether it’s an original Star Wars figurine from Kenner or a bottle of rum that’s nearly impossible to get, there’s definitely an appeal to finding and, in the case of cocktails, drinking from the holiest of holy grails.

The French liqueur known as Amer Picon is one of those sorts of things for cocktail lovers. Invented in the 1830s, the original Picon was a stiff drink at nearly 80 proof. According to Wikipedia, at least, that changed in the 1870s, and the version that came to be popular in American cocktails around the turn of the century through Prohibition was closer to 25 or 26% abv. Indeed, you can find bottles up for auction or for sale from the WWII era at 26%. In that form, it came to be used in several classics, most notably Picon Punch, the Brooklyn, and the Liberal. Its unique bitter orange flavor was more or less lost to history when the company that produces it changed the recipe again in the late 20th century, eventually bringing it down to 18% abv.

And oh yeah, one other tiny detail: It’s hasn’t been imported to the United States in a long, long time.

Two weeks ago, fate smiled on me when Jeremy, a long-time reader of what is now the Sugar House’s blog, generously elected to share, among other things, two bottles of Picon. He managed to acquire from overseas Picon Club and Picon Biere, the two contemporary Picon products, both of which are commercially available in France and England.

So I found myself in the middle of a pretty awesome tasting of bitter liqueurs from around the world, and I took some notes:

Suze
Unrelated to the other liqueurs, this was an addition to the tasting notable both for its relative rarity and its unique, gentian-heavy flavor. As I later learned, Suze was originally 32% abv with a very little sugar. The bottling we tried was 15% with 200g of sugar per bottle, so much like the Picon, its recipe has changed quite a bit over time, and it even varies between Switzerland and other European markets. This version has a very distinct flavor: While gentian bitterness is a potent force in the overall taste, there’s an unusual combination of dirty earthiness and a sharp menthol flavor. Most unusual. It’s quite striking all around, starting with its intense yellow color.

Picon Biere
As promised, this is a distinctly orange, distinctly bitter liqueur. I expected it to be a bit sweeter than it was; indeed, it’s a surprisingly bright in terms of flavor. Despite the low alcohol, it still asserts itself appropriately, which is important considering its primary purpose – being added to wheat beer or cheap Euro lager to add flavor and finish. Easy, easy drinking.

Picon Club
Rather than being an addition to beer, the newer product Picon Club is designed for use with cocktails or wines. It’s darker and stronger not in alcohol but in color and flavor. Primarily, there’s a burnt caramel flavor with heavy orange peel, and there’s a sort of fruity coffee undertone. Downright delicious.

Torani Amer (and a homemade Amer Picon replacement)
One of the alleged replacements for Picon has been Torani Amer, an American product bottled at a much higher proof. While the added alcohol has some advantages, this was weakly flavored, thin, boozy, and boringly bitter (one note) compared to the actual Picons. There was practically no orange flavor at all. By comparison, Jeremy’s homemade Amer Picon, which follows a recipe outlined by bartender Jamie Boudreau, was distinctly far more balanced with more fruit flavor. That said, while the homemade replacement had the heft and power that’s allegedly closer to older Picon recipes, the modern day Picons were, I think, the most clearly influenced by orange.

Cio Ciaro
This Italian amaro is often cited among the best possible replacements for Picon commercially available in the United States. Tasted alone, I’ve always found it remarkable how much orange flavor shows through the sugar and bitterness. Tasted next to the Picons, it’s still delicious but is barely tinged with orange. Definitely a great product, and it absolutely works in drinks like a Brooklyn, but it’s not even close to a direct replacement.

My sincere thanks to Jeremy as well as Dave and Chuck from the Sugar House for letting me participate so I could enjoy these liqueurs and share my notes.

There was pleasure and even inspiration to be had from watching people coming together for the 2nd annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar and from talking to people who were just discovering that interesting things are happening with food in Detroit. And it was legitimately fun to see old friends hanging out, new friends being made, and small business owners connecting with one another over pickled turnips and tequila at the Sugar House.

The sentimental fool in all of us has to derive some sense of satisfaction from watching much of Detroit’s gastronomic community enjoy not just each other’s products but each other’s company.

That’s all a long way of saying that the holiday season is off to as fine a start as one could hope for.

In case you missed either event, we’ve put together a little slide show of both, which begins with a special holiday greeting card, Gourmet Underground Detroit style.  Best wishes for a wine-soaked end to 2011 and a pork-filled 2012.

Mocha Flip

• 2 oz El Dorado 12 year aged rum
• .5 oz creme de cacao
• .5 oz coffee syrup*
• .5 oz milk
• Whole egg
• A chunk of dark chocolate
• Chocolate bitters (optional)

Dry shake the first 5 ingredients. Add ice, shake, and double strain into a cocktail glass. Dash chocolate bitters on top. Use a microplane or grater to grate some dark chocolate over the top of the drink.

* – Make coffee syrup by combining equal parts brewed coffee and sugar in a bottle larger than the combined volume and just shaking (for a long while) to combine. It’ll last in the fridge for quite a while. Use a lighter roast or cold brew to minimize bitterness. (A coffee liqueur could be used instead of this, but it’d have to be exceptionally high quality or homemade. Use Kahlua in cocktails at your own peril.)

But last January or so, I had some ideas for drinks based off of coconut ranging from mixing it with rum and Aperol to using it in an egg white foam atop bourbon and chocolate bitters with fresh chocolate for sort of a German Chocolate Cake flavor.  I found earlier this month that I, much to my surprise, missed having coconut syrup around.

So I made more and decided to start making drinks based upon it again. Of all the cocktails I’ve made recently, this is surprisingly my favorite, a nicely balanced drink that really only hints at coconut. The absinthe rinse is crucial: Minus that component, this particular recipe comes off as a just a touch flabby. Somehow, the absinthe highlights the citrus without adding much of the characteristic anise/licorice flavor. Pretty much awesome.

I’m calling it the Drunken Angel.  Here’s the recipe.

Drunken Angel

• .75 oz aged rum (not too flavorful – in this case, I used Appleton 12)
• .75 oz white rum
• .75 oz lime juice
• .5 oz yellow chartreuse
• .5 oz coconut syrup
• Absinthe
• 1 egg white
• Peychaud’s bitters

Combine all the ingredients save the bitters in a shaker. Dry shake. Shake with ice. Swirl a bit of absinthe in a coupe and discard any that immediately puddles. Double strain the drink into the coated glass. Gently dash the Peychaud’s over the top of the drink, trying to concentrate several  dots in the center. Use a toothpick to draw the bitters out into a nebulous, heavenly shape. Discard the toothpick, pick up the glass, and get your drink on.

To make coconut syrup, heat up equal parts sugar and water to create a 1:1 simple syrup. Give it a stir and don’t let it boil. As soon as all the sugar is dissolved, add unsweetened, unadulterated, flaked coconut to the syrup and let it sit for about a half hour to an hour until your kitchen smells like coconut.

The funny part, of course, is that it was simply the promise of what this bar could deliver that drew the hype: During all that coverage, the Sugar House wasn’t even open.

All that changed last Tuesday when manager/bartender Dave Kwiatkowski unlocked his door on Michigan Avenue and served up drinks at the bar’s soft opening. Naturally, I did what any dedicated gourmand lush in search of a cocktail would do: I dropped everything, took a vacation day at work, and decided to capture in photos how the day would ultimately unfold.

(Once you click on the image below to launch the slideshow, you can use the mouse or the arrow keys to cycle through the images.)

Cocktails have become an almost revered form of public alchemy, and there’s a sexy mystique that has begun to surround particular bars, drinks, and the bartenders who make them. At 11pm, when the lights are dim and the gentle mist of a twisted lemon peel is giving your drink that perfect final note, that’s not an entirely unreasonable conclusion.

But as with any small business, the details that create that mystique are a bit less glorious. Dave has rather famously been dealing with red tape for eighteen months, and he had to complete a lot of construction in order to open.

Even on opening day, there wasn’t any real time to celebrate. Since he had no idea when his license would ultimately be approved, he didn’t already have all the right ice on hand, so friends brought him nice, perfect cubes of ice, and they shopped for a box of rye whiskey to help him open. He had to drive to the various liquor distribution hubs around town and collect his initial inventory – except that the distributors had run out of a number of things, including commonplace items like Sazerac rye. And so on.

Still, the daily routine of opening a cocktail bar is about what you’d expect: Dave, bartender Chuck Gellasch, and their bar backs juicing ginger, lemons, and limes; making syrups; mopping floors; stocking shelves; filling ice bins; et cetera.

Having gone largely unadvertised, the first hours of the Sugar House’s first day carried a modest, pleasant pace with a trickle of Slows’ employees, Dave’s friends, and neighborhood folks stopping in for a drink or six. There wasn’t any fanfare – Dave didn’t even have time after his prep work to change into the bar’s signature vest and tie ensemble – there were just good drinks, good folks, and a good night.

He’s still bringing in furniture, hanging artwork, and rounding out his selection of spirits, but all indications are the hype is worth it: The drinks are simply fantastic. But was it worth the wait and the hassle for Dave? It should suffice to say that I’ve never seen anyone so genuinely happy to be fetching a mop or stocking a shelf with bourbon.

Though its exact origins are a mystery, the Cuba Libre was invented near 1900 in, you guessed it, Cuba. Washington Post spirits writer Jason Wilson takes a deeper look into the history of this simple mixture of rum, cola and lime. Today we know the Cuba Libre as an even simpler bar standard of rum and Coke that’s hardly useful for anything but getting wasted. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Quality ingredients and a straightforward addition of bitters will produce a far tastier and certainly a more historically correct version of this classic drink. Rise up!

Recipe

1-1/2 to 2 ounces rum: While most rum is made by fermenting and distilling molasses, a byproduct of the sugar refining process, Trinidad’s 10 Cane rum is created from the first pressing of Trinidadian sugar cane (basically a Rhum Agricole). 10 Cane is distilled twice in small batches in French pot stills and then aged for 6 months in vintage French oak barrels. The result is light, golden rum with mild flavors of pear and vanilla ideal for premium cocktail mixing.

There are plenty of options though. Dark, aged rum will obviously impart its unique flavor characteristics and cheap, white rum will lay a more neutral base. 10 Cane is a good in-between choice.

Juice from half a lime: There is no substitute for freshly squeezed. You can throw the spent lime half into the drink, you can garnish the finished cocktail with a fresh lime wheel, or both.

Cola: Here is where you can really turn a basic rum and Coke into a more elegant drink. Fentimans Curiousity Cola is made by brewing and fermenting herbs and milled roots over seven days. After cola flavoring is added, the soft drink has a depth that blows every other mass produced cola off the shelf. It will make a sexy-hot Cuba Libre.

Premium colas like Virgil’s and Boylan can also be used. Even Coke will make a decent Cuba Libre as long as attention is paid to the other ingredients.

1-3 dashes Angostura bitters: If using Fentimans cola, the bitters are optional or can be cut to only a dash. Any other cola will call for at least two dashes of bitters to help balance out the sweetness.

1-2 teaspoons Allspice Dram (optional): Rarely do we extol the splendor of drinks that aren’t available in Michigan but St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram is a bottle we’ll order from out of state. Traditionally known as pimento dram (pimento is the West Indies term for allspice), this liqueur made from Jamaican pot-still rum and allspice berries is cherished for its extraordinary flavors of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg. Not only does it add island flavor to Caribbean cocktails and tiki drinks, it works well in a wide variety of holiday desserts. It will elevate a Cuba Libre — particularly one made with Coke.

Preparation

Squeeze the lime half into a Collins glass. Add 3 or 4 ice cubes. Pour in the rum and top with cola. Add the bitters and optional Allspice Dram. Do a quick, gentle stir to incorporate the ingredients.

I always understood that on an intellectual level. But my most recent trip there felt so completely different from any other I’ve made.

For my thoroughly awesome job, I was sent to Chicago to interview two of its finest chefs – Rick Bayless and Stephanie Izard – for a couple of upcoming magazine articles. I tried to prepare the best I could, of course. But no amount of pre-work could have readied me for how genuine and personable they are. I suppose I should have expected it – I’m sure there’s a bumper sticker somewhere that reads “Chefs are people too” – but for whatever reason, their celebrity had sort of created this mental distance between me and the notion that they had, you know, actual personalities. Duh.

These chefs could open restaurants anywhere, I’m sure, but they fit in Chicago.

We’d arranged to have some photographs taken of both chefs, so I was also meeting our photographer for the first time, a Chicago-based food and lifestyle specialist named Huge Galdones. All I knew previously was that I liked his portfolio and my colleague had chosen him for the project after comparing him to others.

It turns out he’s one of the friendliest guys pretty much ever, and we grabbed some dinner after our work was done. Interestingly enough, it turns out we also had a mutual friend via food and wine circles.

Along those lines, when dining at Girl & the Goat the night before, I ran into a former Detroit area resident who had moved to Chicago two years ago, who in turn introduced me to a couple of the bartenders at Goat, both of whom were knowledgeable, interesting, nice people. While aggressively consuming their alcoholic wares, I also got to know a woman at the bar who had friends in southeast Michigan and who, upon learning why I was there, shared all of her dishes with me so I could try more of the menu.

So after two days, all the people I’d met – from bartenders to world famous chefs – were universally kind, thoughtful people. And the whole Small World thing was in full effect. I might as well have been hanging out at Astro in Detroit for how at home I suddenly felt.

After Huge and I had eaten dinner, I closed out my trip by hiking out to Bar DeVille on Chef Izard’s recommendation. I’d already been to the great cocktail bars that are decorated by interior designers. I wanted something a bit simpler, and she came through with the perfect suggestion. I drank (a Vieux Carre, a Weller 12 year, two beers, and two unnamed cocktails) while He-Man DVDs played on the TV and Nirvana and Raekwon blared over the speakers. A local liquor rep sat down next to me and unloaded a day’s worth of bad luck and a few jokes as though we were Norm and Cliff in some sort of weird hipster reboot of Cheers.

The whole night was like a big blanket wrapped around my soul. A bourbon soaked blanket. But a blanket nonetheless.

Having a better time on that trip would have been pretty much impossible. Unsurprisingly, it heightened my appreciation for Chicago. But after some reflection, I realized that (aside from the exquisite, incomparable food experience at Girl & the Goat) all the things that I really loved about my trip are exactly the things I love about Detroit and about Michigan – the people I’ve met, the small town feel where everyone somehow knows everyone else, and sharing good drinks and good food with good people, whether they become friends for a night or a lifetime.

Considering the ever-expanding Alinea empire and the success of Gabrielle Hamilton’s new book and the ongoing success of her restaurant, it seems there’s more than enough room for both of these approaches.

The same is true of cocktails. The New York Times just published an article a couple of weeks ago highlighting the contrast between the push for more infusions, more ingredients, more complexity and truly simple, refreshing summer cocktails. They published a list of recipes, and at first glance, each of the drinks looks delicious.

What puzzles me are the people who are so desperately opposed to one approach or the other.

Back in 2007, Alain Ducasse said he preferred “to be able to identify what I’m eating” and that a preponderance of molecular technique would mean “we would be in trouble.” A blog post over at Epicurious last year basically slammed molecular gastronomy though the author admitted she hadn’t been exposed to many good examples. And it’s not hard to find people railing against avocado and ligonberry infused spirits. Or something along those lines.

Conversely, I’ve seen interviews where some of these guys look at conventional approaches with a future-versus-past attitude that borders on disdain.

What gives?

I’m a firm believer that every tool has a purpose and that anything that tastes good has a place in this world. Simple, complicated, old school, high tech, rustic, innovative — who cares? Different chefs or bartenders will have different approaches and different visions, but none of them are inherently invalid.

To me, there’s not really much to say on the subject other than there’s always reason to appreciate any technique, any ingredient that helps make us smile at the dinner table, at the bar, or at a restaurant. Who could really argue with that?