Holland Razor Blade

Last month I was in Seattle visiting my friends Rossanna and Tiago, and as usual, a good portion of our time was spent eating and drinking.  The thing I've realized of late is that cold-weather towns inevitably have the best bars.  Portland, Seattle, Boston... even Minneapolis -- which, if you saw my tweets, you know I wasn't altogether thrilled with in most respects -- definitely holds its own in the booze department.  And I'm not just talking about having two or three really fantastic bars; I'm talking about the average level of alcoholic intelligence across a broad spectrum of places.  (This is specifically where L.A. falls short -- sure, we have a few really fantastic bars, but you have to seek them out.  Mostly what we have are the kinds of joints that have one kind of bourbon, two kinds of gin, and fifty-eight varieties of flavored vodka.)

Anyway, I'm getting off track.  Point being: Seattle has many great bars, and according to many people (or at least my friends), Canon is the king of them all.  Having now been there three times, I am more than willing to believe this.  You could get a mild buzz just scanning the massive shelves behind the counter, reading off the names of every bottle of liquor known to man (as well as some that I think the bartenders might have invented themselves).

Since Canon is the type of place where you can literally just say, "Surprise me!" to the bartender and end up with an amazing drink in front of you, I decided to solicit a suggestion.  I've long been curious about Genever, the Dutch spirit that's kind of a cross between gin and bourbon, so I asked the bartender for a Genever-based recommendation.  And this is how I ended up sipping a Holland Razor Blade, and then, upon my return to L.A., buying myself a bottle of Bols Genever so I could whip one up myself.

This drink is definitely a case of -- well, if not "less is more," then at least "less is plenty."  It's about as simple as a cocktail can possibly get (I might not even have ordered it if I'd realized how few ingredients it has, given my strong inclination toward ridiculously complicated drinks), but it doesn't taste simple at all.  And what a name, right?

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Recipe (from Food & Wine):

2 ounces Genever

0.75 ounce simple syrup

0.75 ounce lemon juice

pinch of cayenne pepper

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the genever, simple syrup and lemon juice and shake well. Strain the drink into a coupe glass and sprinkle with the pinch of cayenne.

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Some notes:

- Bols Genever is not the easiest spirit to find.  They don't have it any of the BevMos in Greater Los Angeles (as far as I can tell), but K&L Wines in Hollywood and Bar Keeper in Silver Lake both carry it.  K&L also ships.

- The coupe glass is another great bar staple, and also one that's not easily found.  (In fact, I still have yet to acquire any -- the glass I used is similar but not quite it.)  Most standard martini glasses range from 5 to 7 ounces in capacity, which means that if you make a drink like this one that tops off in the vicinity of 3 ounces, you're going to have some awkward empty space at the top of the glass.  Coupes are usually more like 3-3.5 ounces, so they're perfect for little drinks that pack a punch.