“When we were thinking of new ideas for the menu, I was looking for new products. I met this guy at Tales of the Cocktail who makes these really fun bitters called Bitter Queens. I just knew we had to have these in the South End. He has some basic orange bitters, but he also has Thai spice bitters, Chinese five-spice bitters, eucalyptus, and he gives each one a persona. For example, Thai spice is ‘Bangkok Betty.’ For this cocktail, we’re using the eucalyptus bitters, which is ‘NorCal Nancy.’ Bitter Queens is out of San Francisco, so it’s their hometown bitter.
“Jenna and I were talking about trying to do a cocktail that was a stirred pisco drink, because you rarely see pisco that’s used in any way other than shaken with citrus and usually an egg white. This is our take on a martini with pisco. We ended up deciding to go with a split between pisco and gin.
“There are times when Jenna and I are banging our heads against the wall for months trying to make a cocktail work. This was one of those cocktails where the first time was perfect, which never happens.”
