The Bartender’s Pantry

Description

A professional guide that surveys and celebrates the culinary ingredients in mixed drinks, with more than 100 recipes from the world’s most creative bartenders and the James Beard Award–winning author of Meehan’s Bartender Manual.

Jim Meehan’s achievements as a pioneering bartender at Gramercy Tavern, The Pegu Club, and PDT in New York City helped pave the path for this generation’s craft cocktail industry. Here, he’s partnered with artist and designer Bart Sasso of Sasso & Co. and Atlanta’s beloved Ticonderoga Club, award-winning author and journalist Emma Janzen, and renowned photographer AJ Meeker on an advanced handbook focused on the zero-proof components of cocktails that make or break the integrity of a drink.

The Bartender’s Pantry includes concise overviews of ten categories of ingredients—sugars, spices, dairy, grains and nuts, fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs, coffee, tea, soda and mineral water, and ferments—that cover each subject’s modern history in drinks, popular production practices, artisan processing methods, and common distribution channels before suggesting sourcing and service insights from experts in each field. The primers grapple with the challenges producers, distributors, and consumers each face as the ingredient moves through the food chain and into the bartender’s pantry.  

Each chapter features artfully illustrated recipes incorporating the featured ingredients that bring the reader into the kitchens of some of the world’s most revered bartenders, baristas, importers, and chefs. Their innovative takes on traditional recipes including horchata, matcha, Turkish coffee, sorrel, kvass, and ice cream are followed by full-page photos of over 50 cocktails that incorporate them including modern classics like the Gin Basil Smash, Earl Grey MarTEAni and Penicillin. 

Inspired by kitchen references like Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy and Harold McGee’s Keys to Good Cooking, The Bartender’s Pantry is an indispensable handbook for hospitality professionals, curious cooks, and anyone interested in how novel and traditional global beverages are connected to international foodways and our wellbeing itself.“The Bartender’s Pantry is vintage Jim Meehan—a clear, thorough, thoughtful, collegial foray into the world of drinks. And as a handbook devoted to the cornucopia of nonalcoholic ingredients that today’s bartenders draw on in their pursuit of deliciousness, it makes a fine guide to the kitchen pantry as well: it will give cooks at any level a fresh appreciation for the flavorful possibilities they have at their fingertips.”—Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking and Keys to Good Cooking

“The Bartender’s Pantry is sure to become a classic. The fascinating collection of recipes combined with Jim’s expertise and Bart’s brilliant illustrations artfully simplify learning for experts and novices of mixology and people curious about flavor.”—Nik Sharma, James Beard Award finalist, IACP Award winner, and author of Veg-Table
 
“I’ve learned so much from reading this book. I love the nonpedantic approach to scrupulous ingredient sourcing. Jim teaches us that sustainability matters, even in your glass, and that being thoughtful about selecting your ingredients leads to exceptional results. Yes, it’s a book for bartenders, but Jim’s lessons are based on the foundations of being a great cook. Reading it will make me a better cook.”—Sam Mogannam, founder of the Bi-Rite family of businesses and coauthor of Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food
 
“Welcome to the marriage of cocktails and cuisine! THE BARTENDER’S PANTRY will amaze and delight foodies, chefs, gardeners, and cocktail nerds. Jim Meehan’s bartending books are always indispensable, but this one is truly groundbreaking. If your idea of a well-stocked cocktail pantry extends to mint, lemons, cherries, and the occasional egg white, you’ll be amazed at what Meehan and his contributors can do with corn, oats, beets, yogurt, and sesame oil. Even salt and pepper are transformed into exquisite ingredients, and butter—yes, butter!—has a chance to shine. With his celebration of sustainability and inclusivity, The Bartender’s Pantry sets a new standard for twenty-first century cocktail books.”—Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist
 
“Jim Meehan has an intense thoughtfulness and rare beginner’s-mind-driven curiosity about ingredients, techniques, and flavor—the hidden work that makes his drinks as effortlessly enjoyable as they are innovative. It’s something I’ve admired about him since I first became obsessed with the same things, as an NYU chemistry major living down the block from PDT. Since few of us will ever get into the weeds of distilling the alcohol that goes into our cocktails, our choices in that arena mostly come down to careful shopping. But in The Bartender’s Pantry, Jim has condensed decades of experimentation and wisdom to give us the tools to control every other element of flavor in a drink, and, even better, to make nearly any tasty ingredient drinkable. Pick it up for the beautiful recipes and cool techniques, and you’ll walk away having gained the invaluable knowledge of the how and why of what makes them so good.”—Arielle Johnson, PhD, author of Flavorama Jim Meehan’s career spans two decades from Madison, Wisconsin to New York City, to Portland, Oregon, where he writes and works with hospitality clients, spirits companies, and product partners through his consultancy Mixography Inc. Jim authored the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award-winning The PDT Cocktail Book and the James Beard Award-winning Meehan’s Bartender Manual.

Emma Janzen is an award-winning journalist and author who writes about spirits and cocktails for outlets including The New York Times, PUNCH, and The World’s 50 Best Bars, where she also serves as one of the Academy Chairs for the USA.

Bart Sasso is a multidisciplinary creative whose agency, Sasso & Co, develops identity, branding, packaging, and commercial art for companies like Tip Top Cocktails, Schenker Beer Company, and many more. Sasso is also a partner and the creative director of Ticonderoga Club, a critically acclaimed, genre-defying tavern in Atlanta, Georgia.CN

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