Rum tasting update

Scott Steeves, a fellow rum lover and fellow blogger made it to the rum tasting, here is what he thought.

Making Magic Happen

The time has come: wedding season has officially kicked off at UpStairs. Beginning this past Saturday, UpStairs was host to a beautiful fall wedding. These occasions are especially near and dear to our hearts as they offer us as a restaurant united the opportunity to shine at what we do best: provide hospitality and sumptuous food.

Prior to joining the UpStairs team, I was personally involved in a fantastic catering crew back in my hometown of Oneonta, New York. The company is called Sunrise Specialty Catering, and its proprietors are Janet and Mark Quackenbush. From age 16 until the very recent past, I can barely remember a weekend were I wasn't involved in a wedding. To date, I estimate that I have been part of just over 400 weddings. Some are more memorable than others, but resoundingly each and every one has left an impression upon me that I will carry forever.

This past weekend was an incredible event to behold. As this was the first wedding of the season and for many of our new servers their first wedding at UpStairs, there was a palpable hum in the room as we sat down to our extensive pre-meal. It is, for me, delightful to see the servers exude a nervous energy that equals that of the bride and groom. Everyone wants so badly for the day to be a success at all costs.

It is in this respect that UpStairs excels. The empathy for the wedding couple is there. Each and every employee, from the host to the dishwasher, is fully cognizant of the implications of their actions and how they directly influence the outcome this most special day. From a front-of-the-house standpoint, I revel in the fact that my servers are so quick to assess the read of the room. We tell them from the inception to survey the room, to seek out the rowdy college friends, to look for the shaky grandmother and make sure she has a cocktail, and above all else to make absolutely certain that the bride and groom eat at their own wedding. I cannot express how awful I feel when the wedding couple doesn't eat but a few bites of the food they have so generously selected and paid for simply because they were nervous or compelled to talk to everyone in the room.

There is also something to be said for the extremely cheesy, but completely accurate analogy to snowflakes (i.e. that every wedding is completely different). Granted, the general order of events is almost always the same, but never is one group exactly like another. Herein lies the beauty of what we do in hospitality. We facilitate a good time. We promote an environment that fosters good cheer and frivolity. And we smile ... a lot. Not those plastic "Ken and Barbie" smiles that leave the jaw sore and face numb, but genuine inner smiles that resonate from the heart and translate to the visage.

At another point, I plan to post some of my more light-hearted stories and anecdotes from catering/restaurant past. For now, however, I have proven exactly how long-winded I can be, and will summarize. For anyone who knows me, I have a profound respect and admiration for Walt Disney. His reliance upon magic, wishes, and dreams to make effective realities amazes me. With every event with which I am involved, I strive to propagate that magical energy within myself, my servers, and everyone else involved. It is through that belief in a dream event that magic is achieved.

Here's to more magical events at UpStairs!

Hand picked music (is better than canned music)

In addition to being front of the house managers, we are also iDJs (it's like being a DJ, except the only thing you spin is that wheel on the iPod) for the Monday Club Bar, which we enjoy a lot. Before the age of iPods, we used to have a satellite radio system that played the same 20 songs over and over during all meal periods. Now we have playlists that progress from quiet piano music in the early hours to some good vocal and rat pack for the peak of lunch service, smooth jazz in the afternoon, Parisian jazz in the early evening and another peak of high voltage jazz for prime dinner hours, ending the night with a romantic soundrack. All of it sprinkled with a bit of Bossa-Nova and Samba, Flamenco, Motown, Afro-Cuban and Italian music, just for fun. We also like the Beatles a lot here, so you're likely to hear them on brunch. Ask Sheila about her Beatles stories, she's got a bunch of good ones, including the time she went to see them live at Suffolk Downs.
I love the feeling of walking into the Monday Club in the middle of dinner service and finding the dinning room and bar full, the lighting at the right level and the right music playing at the right volume. The right volume may be disputed by some, getting specially more difficult to find a common ground if different age groups are taken into consideration. The rule of thumb for me is to keep it at the same volume as the natural sounds of the dinning room ( guests conversations being the main guideline ). So on a Saturday night when I'm behind the bar I adjust the volume a few times to keep it at the perfect level.
And then there is always the case-by-case factor that is the golden rule of hospitality. The lunch crowd is more likely to request that we turn down the volume for a business meeting than our Jazz Wednesdays fans, while a family thanked us for playing only the good Beatles, as opposed to "the cheesy Beatles" one recent Sunday morning. A cartoonist put down on paper his rendition of our soundtrack, when he was celebrating a birthday with friends at the bar one night (the drawing can still be seen hanging from the Love-Letters chandelier), while a couple that comes in often on Saturday afternoons suggested we make our own compilations to sell, which we declined (move over Hotel Costes) but we appreciated the comment.
And just like that, a soundtrack of sensitive playlists contributes to the general culture of the restaurant and maybe even the life of the square. I don't think that satellite rotating the Earth in the cold, cold space would care if my jazz crowd were having drinks at the bar and a conversation about Coltrane.

Fruit Pies

Today I had to bake a pie. I had to. I had no choice. The first thing I ever cooked for a group of others was a pie. I fed it to the staff. Thinking back I haven't heard any comments.
My grandfather loved pie, no cake, no cookies, pie. "Don't screw around now Emily, I want pie for my birthday and you know it" My mother bakes a pretty okay pie ( in all actuality I think her pie is the best, but I cannot admit this). Grandpa really enjoyed the fact that my mother liked to bake, and bring it over to his house for him, and my uncles ( grandma does not bake. Or cook anymore at all for that matter, she eats a lot of raw food, sort of like a raw-ist, but not really at all) He figured out the perfect way to make her bring more, get her to compete, with me ( she is one of the most competitive people you will ever meet, almost as competitive as yours truly!) So of course we had bake offs, never at the same time. On all occasions we were told that there was inconclusive evidence and we must try again. Grandpa was a sneak, but he sure got to eat a lot of pie.
Just a side bar, there was always an extra for my daddy, and sometimes the occasional for an uncle or two. :)

Working Sleepy

In every restaurant you see a lot of tired eyes, heavy feet, and the occasional bed head. Every person has a reason why they subject their bodies to daily abuse, and in our case stairs. The average person wouldn't work over fifty hours in a week and would probably have something to say if they were expected to move tables after midnight on a Wednesday. I am not saying this to be a martyr I am saying this because I love my job, and I know many others, some sitting in this office with me that feel the same.
We cook and serve others because it's special to take care, of friends, of family, of strangers. There is a reward to making others feel good, satisfied and fulfilled. It is a sentiment found in all people in the hospitality industry. We are trusted with a persons evening, their memories, and most of all their bodies. Food should be magical, something you touch, you smell, not something that gets the job done. Of course we all spend nights eating microwave popcorn or Ramen noodles. I have heard KFC come out of some staff members mouths. But I hope the world will remember how good it feels to eat something good, really good. So we can always have some one to take care of.

Agricole Rum

This summer's rum tasting was way better than last year's. Last year about 15 people came, this year we sold out the Jewel-box bar with more than thirty people, a couple of them last minute walk-ins. The line up of rums was better too. Last year we sampled rums from all over the world but this year we decided to concentrate on Martinique rums. These rums are classified A.O.C. Martinique and controlled by the same organ of the French Government that assures the quality of wines from Champagne to Provence. We had on board Ben Jones, distiller at Clement and J.M., both equally recognized houses in Martinique. Ben knows how to work the crowd and by the end of the night we had a group of happy people, which is why we do what we do.
The tasting started with a shooter of orange sorbet and Clement Shrubb Orange Liqueur as an amuse-bouche. Emily, once again saved my life and made the sorbet with almost no notice.
The format after that was the same as last year, four small plates paired with 2 rum cocktails and two rums neat. The first cocktail was made with Clement Premiere Canne, their silver rum. I mixed it with honey, cucumber and lemon juice, which made for a fresh and light cocktail with the great aromatics of the rum and the cucumber inviting a taste of the peppery rum, and the zesty swing of lemon juice and dark wildflower honey. We paired it with Steve's house-cured salmon with cucumber, cherries braised in honey and creme fraiche.
Next, was time for the Clement V.S.O.P. to shine on its own, we served some ice on the side, just in case. This rum, though very light, is a serious sipping spirit. The ageing process calms down the rum's original spice and start to give way to earthier aromas, still very complex. Just like the rum, Steve trusted excellent asparagus to very little tweaking, just enough to transcend it from excellent to perfect: some sesame seeds over Yuzu emulsion.
The next rum to be featured was J.M. Blanc, J.M's equivalent of Clement's Premmiere Canne. The main difference is that J.M.Blanc is not watered down to 80 proof as most other rums and it has a real kick to it. I decided not to neutralize it's kick but to play off of it, so I simply mixed it with my house-made ginger beer that most people have already tasted. If you haven't, here's still time to get your dark-and-stormy with dignity (dark-and-stormies are like white pants: the hip factor expires at the end of Labor Day weekend). Anyway, that cocktail was really sharp, a high summer cocktail and we paired with some raw Ahi, caramelized bananas and a clove spread that played nicely with the clove tones of the ginger beer.
It seemed like it couldn't get any better, but lo and behold, it did. J.M. 1997. That's right, a single vintage rum. Even cognacs don't usually come in single vintages (with a few great exceptions, of course) so you can imagine how exciting it was to be able to close the tasting with a spirit that may redeem rums for ever from the curse of Cuba-Libres. Emily's nutmeg flan with pineapple caramel was excellent, light and creamy.
We had our friends from Receita-de-Samba playing bossa-nova in the Monday Club after the tasting and most people stayed around the bar for another round or two. I couldn't decide between a dark-and-stormy and a caipirinha so I ended up having both. Ben Jones lingered with friends over some J.M. 1997 while the band played Gilberto and Jobim tunes. That night, for a few of us, Cambridge was somewhere between Fort-de-France and Rio de Janeiro.

Name that drink

People love polyjuice and butterbeer. I don't know if that's how polyjuice is spelled but at this point, it doesn't matter. Harry Potter happened in Harvard Square and now it's over. What I mean is we had a huge festival in the square with three Harry Potter themed bands playing in Harvard Yard, which made a usually steady summer night in the square turn into complete madness. Marci can tell you more about the event than I could since she was the organizer, besides I only read one of the books and she is a real enthusiast.
What I did notice was that at least one person from every table in the restaurant ordered polyjuice or butterbeer. At the bar too, people were taking pictures of their polyjuice. Some of the people who couldn't get at table or a seat at the bar came in just to buy butterbeer to go, which I sold by the quart!
That made me think that one could spend more time thinking what to name a cocktail than actually experimenting with ingredients and it wouldn't affect the overall satisfaction of the person who ordered it. It's a scary thought. We're at the peak of the new golden age of cocktails and in the early 90's the names of new drinks slowly started to turn back into grown-up's stuff. During the three previous decades, the names of cocktails revealed the overall relaxed attitude about mixology, which at times can be refreshing but in the 70's it turned into, you know, disco. And the names of the cocktails were relaxed too, Sex On The Beach is from that era and it's a relatively mild one. I couldn't publish most of those names in this blog.
This leads me to our program at the restaurant. The list I inherited from Lolly Mason had a few pre-disco classics, like the Side-Car and El Presidente, and a few original creations. Lolly's most famous drink, the "Jackie O" is still on our list and is one of the prettiest cocktails I've ever made. When the effervescense of the freshly shaken drink meets champagne, I want to take pictures.
The current list is made-up of original drinks only. That means a lot of naming happens when we change the list, most of it good. Brooklyn Haze is a variation of the Brooklyn cocktail, with the addition of hazelnut liqueur. I think it's a pretty good name; Reiser (our wine director) named it. The Aprile, a Meditarranean concoction of Aperol, Grapefruit and Rosemary was named after my friend April Watchel (Aprile means April in Italian).
Another less fortunate cocktail named after a living person was the Momma Sonia, named after Frank Queris' (the drink's co-creator) mom. The drink was good and we had a good story behind the name but it didn't take off so I pulled it from the list. If you like the classic Bronx cocktail, order a Momma Sonia next time you come in.
I just started working on the drinks for the Fall '07 list and that means some of the more summery drinks will have to come off the list. The Aprile will come off as will the Paulista, named after the natives of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Misty Kalkofen of Green Street has a drink called Carioca on her list, named after the natives of Rio de Janeiro, which I like a lot, by the way. The Lolita will stay as it has become the Monday Club Bar's signature cocktail. The house-made strawberry liqueur and champagne combination is all that the name implies...
By the way, a local newspaper awarded the "Venus In Furs" the best named cocktail in Boston, if you don't know what it's named after, you can ask me next time you're at the bar.