Cocktail lovers, foodies and civic-minded Angelenos joined Jonathan Gold to celebrate and show support for Zócalo Public Square on October 10. After photographs on the red carpet, under the ornate red-lit rafters of the Grand Ticket Concourse at Union Station, guests gathered to eat, drink, dance, and chat. Eight of L.A.’s best restaurants – Church and State, Comme Ca, Cut, the Gorbals, Osteria Mozza, Palate, Providence and Rivera – graciously served gourmet tastings, including steak tartar sliders, bacon-wrapped matzo balls, clam fritters, pork terrine and more. Bartenders from Cole’s Red Car Bar, Doheny, Seven Grand, and the Varnish concocted custom-paired drinks, including Manhattans, Mamie Taylors, and absinthe. Cava and Cora Apple performed songs that recalled the 1940s, and DJ Pajaro provided music.

The revelers grew quiet only when Jonathan Gold took the stage with his fellow panelists. Before they began the night’s talk on Los Angeles cocktail culture, Gold said of Zócalo, “I’m not sure what the city would do without it.”

The cocktail moment

The cocktail moment began in the middle of 2008 and never stopped, changing the way we drink in Los Angeles. Cocktails “have become in a lot of ways the most vivid part and the most constantly evolving part of cuisine in our cities,” Gold said, due in large part to the panelists. Cedd Moses, founder and chief executive of 213 Downtown, has “as much to do with the resurgence of downtown Los Angeles as any developer,” Gold said. Moses’ group of bars – including the four at Union Station that night – have transformed cocktail culture in the city. Moses grew up with cocktails – his grandmother drank mint juleps until summertime, when she switched to bourbon branch waters.

Two of the panelists developed menus at Moses’ bars. Eric Alperin opened the Varnish earlier this year, a speakeasy that serves, Gold said, “absolutely perfect cocktails, some of which are classics you could have had in 1895, and some of which Eric made up that morning, and it’s often hard to tell the difference.” Vincenzo Marianella was a founding bartender at the Doheny, and just opened Copa D’Oro in Santa Monica, where he specializes in using fresh, local ingredients in cocktails. Marianella also developed cocktails for Providence, whose chef, Michael Cimarusti, was also on the panel and, according to Gold, was one of the first chefs who took care to match cocktails to cuisine as well as others match wine. Gold called Providence “one of Los Angeles’ best restaurants, if not its very best restaurant,” and noted that he had never seen a paired cocktail “in all my years of dining,” until Providence.

The Ramos Gin Fizz

An impromptu live demonstration launched the panel – Alperin hoisted a cocktail table onto the stage and began mixing Gold’s favorite drink, a Ramos Gin Fizz. “It’s a famous New Orleans cocktail, and it requires a very, very long shake,” Alperin said. Alperin, along with three other bartenders, took turns vigorously shaking the drink-made with gin, lime, lemon, simple syrup, an egg white, and a drop of orange flower water – for about twelve minutes before pouring the frothy white cocktail into a highball glass. (Moses noted that when he tried to add the drink to the menu at Seven Grand, bartenders couldn’t give it a long enough shake on crowded nights.)

Gold met Alperin over the Ramos Gin Fizz at Cole’s Red Car Bar, weeks before Alperin launched the Varnish. “It seemed like the kind of place that would have a good Ramos Gin Fizz,” Gold said. “I ordered one and the bartender had a look of fear on his face.” Alperin responded, “It’s lucky I was there.”

“I ended up talking to him for almost an hour,” Gold said. “We were just two guys at a bar with old fashioneds in our hands talking about drinks.”

Alperin presented the drink to Gold on bended knee; Gold deemed it “gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.”

The first pairing

Cimarusti credited Marianella for inspiring him to pair cocktails with his food. In the three months prior to Providence’s opening, Cimarusti said, Marianella spent every day testing the cocktail menu. “He’s as passionate about bartending as I am about food,” Cimarusti said.

Cocktails combine particularly well with food because they “can be modified and adjusted to be specifically calibrated for a certain dish,” Cimarusti said. “A sommelier’s only got what’s in the bottle.” Marianella noted that the strength of the alcohol can make cocktail pairings more of a challenge than wine, although, as Cimarusti said, there’s always the virgin cocktail pairing.

The American art

The cocktail, the panelists agreed, is the first wholly American culinary art and the country’s first real cuisine, beginning with Jerry Thomas’ cocktail guide in 1862. “It’s a book from 1862 so modern that it actually includes jello shots,” Gold joked. “Though he didn’t call them jello shots, jello shots is what they were.” Their heyday might have been the 1890s and the years following Prohibition, he said, but today’s cocktails both embrace the past and move forward.

Still, Alperin and Gold reminisced about one famous cocktail from the past – the Flame of Love martini, created by Pepe Ruiz at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, at the behest of Dean Martin. “It isn’t actually that good, in my opinion,” Alperin said, adding that it’s mostly for  the show of lighting on fire four orange peels. Still, Frank Sinatra was so impressed that, after his first taste, he ordered 200 of them, prompting Ruiz to enlist the entire kitchen staff in making Flame of Loves. Alperin, who is trying to find Ruiz for a documentary film, said wistfully that no matter how good the bartenders of the cocktail moment may be, “We can’t make 200 cocktails on call.”

Perhaps they’ll pull it off at Zócalo’s next fundraiser.

Watch the video here.
See more photos here.

*Photos by Aaron Salcido.

*Thank you to our generous sponsors for making this event possible. Along with the restaurants and bars listed above, Zócalo would like to thank Beefeater Gin, Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth, Chivas Regal 12, Chivas Regal 18, Pernod Absinthe, Perrier-Jouet Champagne, (RI)1 Rye Whiskey, Eternal Water, Telemundo  and lynda.com.

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