Old Fashioned at The Angel's Share

The Angel's Share is one of those secret bars that was all the rage awhile back except it's not really that secret. When you get to the top of the stairs up to the restaurant, just look to your left. The unmarked door that looks like it could be the bathroom is the bar. Inside, the bar is long & skinny with big, street-facing windows. It's cozy.

Roy & I went right after work in the middle of the week because like some other Grumpy Grampaws, we like the bar to relatively quiet, empty even. I ordered an Old Fashioned even though I didn't know what it had in it besides bourbon. Roy said that these guys had mixing skills for days so I thought, "I like bourbon. I'll just order whatever".

When it came to the table it looked like the picture above. Huge orange peel thinger, giant ice cube with a maraschino cherry frozen in it. It looked like a drink from a magazine. It looked like that Eggleston photo of the midflight drink sitting on the seatback tray. How did it taste? It tasted like bourbon.

I brought my puzzlement to Roy's attention but he didn't know what was in an Old Fashioned either. I continued on drinking while we talked about The Watchmen (remember liking it), text messages, a boyfriend's responsibilities (specifically picking your girlfriend up at the airport in the middle of the night), driving trucks longer than 18 feet long (no, thank you) & bike riding (should do more of it, probably).

We returned to the subject of the drink at some point & while I poked at some sort of undissolved sugar at the bottom of my glass, Roy urged me to ask our top-knotted waiter. I was too embarrassed to do that so I just wrote "Old Fashioned" down on a random piece of paper (not on one of my list compendiums secreted away in my too-big messenger bag) to be looked up on wikipedia at some odd moment later.

So, odd moment later:

IBA¹ specified ingredients -

* 4.0 cl. bourbon, Scotch or rye whiskey
* 1 sugar cube
* 2 dashes Angostura bitters
* 1 splash soda Water

The sugar is supposed to dissolved in the soda & bitters first. Add ice & then bourbon. Very simple. Maybe even the first "cocktail" according to the wikipedia entry.

So they got it wrong, I guess. I didn't care because having a bourbon on the rocks where the "rock" is a giant Ayers Rock of ice cube & the garnish is some unnameable insect from that Planet Earth series & the bar is secret, that is pretty rad.

Roy had red wine, merlot maybe. All I remember is that the waiter couldn't understand what he was saying & had to have him spell it. Strange.

Angel's Share
8 Stuyvesant St., 2nd fl, New York, NY 10003

¹ International Bartender's Association