What’s shakin, cocktail fans!
Welcome to Episode 165 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!
Thanks for joining us for this second installment of our Breaking Bloody series, where we’re determined to unlock the secrets of the perfect Bloody Mary. It’s a drink that spawned a category of its own. It’s ubiquitous at brunches around the world. There’s a veritable arms race dedicated to upping the ante on outrageous garnishes…and for all these reasons and more, we’re dead set on demystifying it for all our collective benefit.
Last time around, we talked tomatoes with tomato expert Craig LeHoulier, and this episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with bartender and drinks writer Brian Bartels, author of the critically acclaimed book, The Bloody Mary: The Lore and Legend of a Cocktail Classic, with Recipes for Brunch and Beyond.
In this bloody interesting conversation with author, bartender, and bar owner Brian Bartels, some of the topics we discuss include:
A little briefing on the state of the industry from Brian’s viewpoint, having launched his bar and eatery, Settle Down Madison in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The history of the Bloody Mary Cocktail – including a lengthy discussion of the two key players in its origin story: bartender Fernand “Pete” Petiot and vaudevillian George Jessel.
How the Bloody Mary spawned various riffs and spinoffs, including the Red Snapper, the Michelada, the Bloody Caesar, and of course, the Red Eye.
Why Brian considers the Bloody Mary as a bit of a “moving target” in terms of its formulation – in essence, why it’s such a slippery, variable drink, and yet nobody seems to have any problems with the inconsistency of recipes out there.
Some thoughts on brunch, and why Brian falls out of step with many professional bartenders by defending it as a bastion of conviviality in today’s world.
Some pointed and surprisingly optimistic projections on the future of the Bloody Mary,
A preview of Brian’s newest book project, The United States of Cocktails,
And much, much more.
Brian’s newest project, The United States of Cocktails, is now available at all major booksellers. It’s a tour of America that examines our various regional and local drinking cultures throughout our nation. Check out a few pictures below and order it from your favorite local bookstore.
This episode’s featured cocktail is the Red Eye, which is one of the many riffs and spinoffs of the Bloody Mary that arose during the early-to-mid-20th century. On the surface, it looks like a Michelada made without the use of citrus, but once popular culture got ahold of this drink, well, what we got was the monstrosity that Bryan Brown mixes for Tom Cruise in the 1988 movie Cocktail – a drink that not only contains beer, tomato juice, salt, and pepper, but also a whole raw egg and a handful of aspirin.
In truth, what we’re seeing here is the merging of the Red Eye with another classic hangover cure, the Prairie Oyster, which is a type of shooter comprised of either a whole egg or just an egg yolk, seasoned with salt, pepper, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce.
Obviously, a lot of these ingredients (whether you’re looking at the Red Eye or the Prairie Oyster) are playing the same flavor chords we see in the Bloody Mary, but if you polled ten people, I bet only one or two of them are going to be comfortable downing a raw egg.
Here’s that scene where the infamous Cocktail Red Eye gets assembled. En…joy…?
So, what you need to know about the Red Eye is that it’s usually something like a 2:1 mixture of beer to tomato juice seasoned with salt, pepper, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce – but rarely anything else. It’s very similar to its cousin the Michelada – except you’re not going to see fun Mexican spices or lime juice being used in the formulation. You could also think of the Red Eye as a lazy man’s Bloody Mary because it doesn’t contain any sophisticated ingredients, preparation methods, or garnishes. The whole idea is that you can build this drink without even really stirring it, and take a few good slugs to help dull your hangover.
But, luckily for us, our guest Brian Bartles was kind enough to provide a slightly more balanced and culinary recipe that he enjoyed at a bar in Omaha Nebraska called (fittingly) Early Bird.
To make what Brian has affectionately named the Red Eye to Omaha, you’ll need:
7 oz. Chilled Tomato Juice (Preferably Campbells, Sacramento or Knudsens)
7 oz. Cold, Crisp, Dry Lager
4 dashes Chipotle Tabasco
6 dashes Worcestershire
healthy pinch kosher salt
Combine these ingredients in (ideally) a chilled 16 oz. pint glass; stir, and sip. There’s no garnish here because let’s face it: if you’re hung over enough to need a Red Eye, then you’re too hung over to play around with fancy garnishes.
If we hope to truly understand the Bloody Mary, we need to get a handle on its origins. Lucky for us, Brian is a great storyteller and is willing to help us wade through the sometimes loosely conflicting accounts of this beverage’s creation.
This story actually starts in Paris, at a famous drinking establishment known as Harry’s New York Bar (where the Sidecar and the French 75 were invented). There, a bartender named Fernand Petiot is said to have begun serving vodka with tomato juice as early as 1923, and possibly even earlier than that. In 1925, Petiot would move to America and began tending bar at the prestigious King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel a few years later. It was then, in the early-to-mid 1930s that the template for Bloody Mary was perfected: vodka, tomato juice, lemon, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper. It’s a distinctly more culinary take on the drink than the proto-version that may have been served at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris a decade earlier.
If there was an early 20th century analogue to Comedy Central or Saturday Night Live, it would be Vaudeville. This variety show genre mostly consisted of a series of unrelated comedy, burlesque, dancing, magic, and theater acts and drew huge audiences from the early 1900s all the way through the early 1930s.
Among the actors who achieved fame in this genre was George Jessel, who set the standards for the types of over-the-top lifestyles that many current day Hollywood celebrities lead. In one of his three memoirs, Jessel recounts a story about staying up all night drinking at a bar in Florida in 1927, then rummaging around to see what was left to drink the next morning. As the story goes, he combined vodka, spices, and tomato juice and then promptly spilled the beverage on the dress of socialite Mary Brown Warburton, who allegedly reacted by saying, “now you can call me Bloody Mary, George!”
There is widespread speculation as to why this claim to the origin of the Bloody Mary only emerged several decades after it was supposed to have occurred, which casts definite doubt upon Jessels story. But let’s face it: Jessel was an entertainer, and his story definitely has that going for it.
In the middle of the 20th century, the Bloody Mary spawned a number of riffs or variations. Most of these either modified the alcohol source, the acid and spice profile, or both. The following represent probably the most popular Bloody Mary variations, most of which remain somewhat popular to this day.
The Red Snapper – Until after World War II, vodka was often scarce in the United States. As such, many chose to use gin in its place. The Red Snapper cocktail is a gin-based Bloody Mary where nothing really changes besides the base spirit. This drink may have been a somewhat unsuccessful re-brand of Petiot’s Bloody Mary, since the owner of the St. Regis Hotel at the time had a wife named Mary and wasn’t fond of the cocktail’s name.
The Caesar – The Caesar is a Bloody Mary variation that deploys clam juice, either as an ingredient in a house-prepared mix, or via a packaged tomato juice product like Clamato. The briny, umami character of the clam juice helps to thin the tomato-based mixer and add depth of flavor to the drink.
The Michelada – The Michelada is a Mexican-style Bloody Mary variation where beer is substituted for vodka. Generally, the citrus component of this beverage is lime (instead of the traditional lemon), and Mexican-inspired spices are often used in the drink or on the rim of the glass.
The Red Eye – The Red Eye can either be viewed as a pared down, beer-based Bloody Mary, or a lazy Michelada with no citrus. It contains beer, tomato juice, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce (or a substitute). The idea of the Red Eye is to be able to assemble it without as much care or finesse as the Bloody Mary, and its generally accepted function is to act as a hangover remedy.
Simple and easy – I’m not a fan of big garnish displays. Lemon and a celery stalk. I don’t like the big pickle.
Definitely the 3lb fried chicken on top of 8 other skewers of different garnishes at Sobelman’s Pub & Grill in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s such a labor-intensive build that they serve you a pitcher of Miller Lite while they’re making it.
Lemon
Celery Stalk
Hot sauce, for sure. I’m not the horseradish type, although I do like freshly grated horseradish.
I like A1
Growing up in the Midwest, I didn’t experience Old Bay. But once I started experiencing it on the East Coast, I realized Old Bay was my jam.
I’m guilty of creating both. I prefer the thinner version sipped through a straw, although those go down really fast, so one has to be careful.
This episode was produced by Cera Baker, with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed, Bloody Mary insights by Brian Bartels, and a little bit of interview magic by yours truly. This has been a Modern Bar Cart production, copyright 2020.
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