It all began in 1995. While studying literature by day as a college student in Madison, Wisconsin, I worked in bars at night to pay for school. After seven glorious years and a couple of liberal arts degrees, I moved to New York City to further my studies as a bartender. Although the style of bar I’ve tended in Manhattan compared to Madison represents a Tale of Two Cities, my work ethic and approach to the profession remains thoroughly Midwestern.
A year after I arrived, a visit to Sasha Petraske’s famous speakeasy, Milk & Honey, centered my focus on cocktails. In 2004, I introduced myself to Audrey Saunders, who added me to the opening roster of her pioneering bar, the Pegu Club. My learning curve soared working under Dale DeGroff’s protégé and alongside St. John Frizell, Toby Maloney, Brian Miller, Sam Ross, Chad Solomon, and Phil Ward. I worked one night a week in SoHo and spent the other five rounding out my skill set behind the bar at Gramercy Tavern.
In 2007, Brian Shebairo hired me to help him open a bar in my neighborhood. A singular New York City experience, to enter PDT, you descend four stairs on St. Marks Place into a hot dog stand, hook a hard left into a phone booth, pick up the receiver, and dial. Moments later, the back of the booth opens and you’re whisked into a shoebox-shaped lounge. The dimly lit, taxidermy-adorned bar is typically brimming with customers who sip cocktails from ice-cold coupes and nosh on deep-fried hot dogs and tater tots.
The dogs came before the drinks. Brian opened Crif Dogs, a New Jersey-style hot dog stand, six years before acquiring the adjacent space and connecting the two with a vintage phone booth and a portal between the counter and bar. Serving Crif Dogs at PDT turned out to be one of our best decisions. The East Village-friendly fast food provides a perfect foil to the handcrafted cocktails, grounding the experience by providing earthly and ethereal offerings together.
A few months after we opened, the concept evolved. We expanded the eleven-drink laminated card into a leather-bound book filled with twice as many creative concoctions. In addition to more drinks, a handful of the neighborhood’s top chefs began supplying condiments for our dogs. From the beginning, I chronicled the stories behind each offering, hoping that the opportunity to share them all together might present itself.
After gazing at Chris Gall’s famous fish, a NYC Subway Art installation, while riding the 6 train in 2009, I contacted Chris to see if he’d consider illustrating a cocktail book. I wanted to bottle the look, feel, and attitude of contemporary cocktail culture classically, with a playful sense of humor. Our goal is for the artwork, alongside the stories, to transport you like sipping a well-made cocktail.
Hopefully, paging through this book will demystify mixology, spirits, and cocktails and inspire you to pick up a shaker. However, just like going out to a bar, I intended this book to be used for entertainment purposes. If preparing these drinks at home or hiring a cab to PDT seems like a stretch, flip through the book and enjoy Chris’s illustrations. We taste with our eyes first.
JIM MEEHAN