Bartender Jim Meehan Heads to the Kitchen Pantry for His New E-book

It took somewhat over 5 years for bartending icon Jim Meehan to jot down The Bartender’s Pantry: A Beverage Handbook for the Common Bar, printed on June 11. Co-authored by spirits journalist Emma Janzen, with illustrations by Bart Sasso and images by AJ Meeker, it represents Meehan’s third guide, following the 2017 James Beard Award-winning Meehan’s Bartender Handbook and The PDT Cocktail E-book in 2011. 

A number of components factored into these five-plus years of writing for Meehan, comparable to a worldwide shutdown, a number of pivots and a inventive block. Nevertheless, the consequence could also be his most formidable work but. 

Planting the seeds

The idea for The Bartender’s Pantry gestated for even longer than the 5 years it took to publish. The concept first took root when Meehan was in a cocktail bar earlier than a presentation in Philadelphia throughout his final guide tour. 

“I noticed a bottle of flash-pasteurized lime juice defrosting on a bar, and I used to be like, ‘What’s that doing right here on this bar [that is] presenting as a cocktail bar?’” he says. “I assumed again to my years once I moved to New York and noticed Dale DeGroff converse, and in 2002 the message was quite simple: making drinks with fresh-squeezed juices and premium spirits would vastly enhance drinks made with industrial bitter combine and simply rail spirits.”

“The grumpy Gen Xer in me was like, ‘it is a pretend information state of affairs,’” he continues. “However the new-age dad in me was like, perhaps they did not get the message, and perhaps — in 2017 — they do not know about Dale DeGroff. Possibly they do not know about this message that I bought from him.”

This sparked a complete different host of concepts in Meehan. 

“I additionally began desirous about how we had been already within the age of tremendous juice and we’re very a lot within the age of local weather collapse and alter,” says Meehan. “And so, the thought of utilizing types of preserved fruits or greens or spices shouldn’t be merely a query of high quality or value anymore, as a lot as they’re a query of conservation in some senses.”

Sarcastically, regardless of the give attention to fashionable developments, these are a few of the identical strategies that had been pioneered by DeGroff a long time earlier as he rose to prominence together with his cocktail program at New York Metropolis’s Rainbow Room, which revived curiosity in basic cocktails made utilizing easy, recent substances.

“Dale’s quite simple, binary recent juice versus bitter combine, [and] premium spirits versus rail [approach] — due to the complexities of our age and the expansion of our trade — wanted a extra nuanced kind of survey,” he says. “And in order that was the place the guide started.”

The bar-chef motion

Meehan was additionally starting to see lots of his colleagues create their very own canned cocktail strains and witnessing, in real-time, an industrialization of the craft cocktail motion. 

“Lots of the those that I had seen who had been transferring on this course got here up on the lounge aspect of this cocktail motion,” he says. “And for me, I did assist open the Pegu Membership [in 2005], which was very a lot on the lounge aspect, however I used to be additionally the top bartender at Gramercy Tavern [at the time].”

After Pegu Membership and Gramercy Tavern, Meehan opened his personal bar in New York Metropolis in 2007 — PDT (Please Don’t Inform), the influential East Village cocktail bar hidden behind a scorching canine store. 

“I believe a part of what I used to be making an attempt to deliver to PDT was not [to] open a contemporary speakeasy. My focus was bringing the hospitality and culinary aspect of the restaurant world into the bar world,” he says. “Particularly, the issues that I had been impressed by, [like] farm-to-table eating places and nice eating service, not [in the] fancy sense, however extra just like the Danny Meyer service that I would been doing at Gramercy.”

Whereas writing the guide, Meehan drew inspiration from these early restaurant days.

“Locations like [Chicago’s] Alinea or [New York City’s] Eleven Madison Park or Drink in Boston or Slanted Door in San Francisco…there [have been] so many cooks who determined {that a} cocktail program can be a part of their restaurant,” he says. “And so I assumed I’d function individuals who had labored in these eating places and the kind of recipes that you’d discover in bar packages the place they really have the entry of a pastry chef or somebody on savory who might help them develop it, assist them with prep, assist them with sourcing, after which deliver the ethos of sourcing and preparation in a restaurant to the guide.”

The Bartender’s Pantry takes a ​​culinary method to cocktail making. However Meehan emphasizes that it’s not “cheffy.”

“I believe that I used to be making a really robust effort to jot down a culinary guide, not a cheffy guide,” he says. “There’s some cheffy drink books on the market that seem like a few of the cheffy chef books. It is its personal class of books that I really gather and actually get pleasure from selecting by way of. However I needed to jot down one thing that was extra sensible.”

A chapter referred to as “The Pantry” makes up the majority of the guide and separates cabinet staples into sections like sugars, spices, dairy, fruits, teas, and ferments — with every protecting the way to supply and retailer the substances, in addition to strategies and instruments that will apply. After every pantry class is fleshed out, the guide consists of recipes that function these substances — greater than 100 in complete — from bartenders, cookbook authors, cooks, and notable drinks specialists, amongst others. 

“The Prep Kitchen” part follows this with illustrated deep dives into bar staples, specialty cordials, and spirits infusions. 

“‘Handbook’ was a phrase that was very a lot bulletin-boarded and prime of thoughts as I used to be scripting this guide as a result of it gave me a way of what depth I wanted to enter on all these topics,” says Meehan. 

Pivoting residence

Key amongst causes the guide took so lengthy had been problems because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the worldwide shutdown stymied Meehan’s progress, it additionally helped to form the guide.

“So, I am in communication with all these contributors on the time about their recipes, I’ve scheduled the photograph shoot, the guide is due, and I principally must pivot within the sense that I’ve to shoot the guide in my home,” he says.

And so the guide shifted from a principally restaurant bar-inspired cocktail guide to a kind of community-minded, homestead-y one with undercurrents of social justice. 

“The guide [took] fairly a home flip within the sense that it was solely written, examined, and photographed in my residence through the pandemic and between the call-outs and reckoning in journalism and in eating places, with the simultaneous George Floyd protests, which had been very distinguished right here in Portland, [Oregon]” says Meehan. “There is a kind of racial justice, social justice fairness sub-current that I believe, if you happen to learn the guide carefully, it undergirds labor, which wasn’t a part of the proposal.” 

“There have been issues that occurred through the strategy of scripting this guide that had me radically rethinking what I used to be going to jot down and what I assumed was essential,” he provides. 

With this home shift, the guide absolutely took on the pantry thought — Meehan credit his writer, Aaron Wiener for the guide’s title — with a nod to the historic function that girls have performed in meals prep, manufacturing and recipe constructing.

“What was actually troubling and illuminating to me as I wrote this guide was in that includes drinks like horchata, tepache, kvass…there’s little or no scholarship concerning the historical past of those drinks, and there is clearly no particular individual or particular place,” he says. “One of many the explanation why I believe these recipes will not be celebrated in the best way that different recipes are is as a result of they had been innovated by and continued to be remodeled generations by girls.”

“Lots of the individuals whose recipes are featured are girls and are girls from different cultures,” says Meehan.

Early within the guide, Meehan addresses the truth that we have been conditioned to imagine that drinks making, particularly when featured in cocktail books, ought to be actually fast and straightforward, and may’t have too many substances. This guide shouldn’t be that.

“A part of why these recipes contain far more work than perhaps squeezing lemon juice or carbonating water is as a result of girls’s labor has by no means been valued and residential labor has by no means been valued,” he says. “And so if it took a complete day to make a batch of one thing fermented or that required a variety of processing work within the type of peeling or seeding or drying, that was [seen as] nice as a result of girls did that.”

Getting an help

Whereas scripting this guide, Meehan found that what he needed to create was vastly completely different from something he had labored on earlier than. It was for that purpose, for the primary time, that he reached out for assist.

“The primary guide was my bar’s [PDT] guide, which I used to be clearly the appropriate individual to creator. The second guide was my philosophical bar information, which I used to be the one individual to jot down,” he says. “This guide, I clearly say from the onset, relies upon the recipes of others and the analysis I’ve achieved from all these different individuals. So I am working extra like a journalist right here.”

Despite the fact that the pandemic had slowed issues down and made him pivot, Meehan was nonetheless capable of {photograph}, supply, recipe-test, and do intensive analysis for the guide. He then discovered himself caught. 

“In spite of everything I’ve learn, [I asked myself] what are the two,500 phrases I’ll write about spice, based mostly on the 5 books I’ve examine spice and all these individuals I’ve interviewed and featured?” he says. “My thoughts was simply spinning and I had so many different individuals’s concepts in my thoughts that I felt like I had misplaced the sense of confidence that I may do it.”

“I wanted somebody who may assist me discover my voice in order that I may inform this story, which I knew I had in me, however was actually scuffling with,” he says. 

Meehan then referred to as Emma Janzen, the award-winning journalist who co-authored the Bartender’s Manifesto with Toby Maloney and The Manner of the Cocktail with Julia Momosé.

“We met at Tales [of the Cocktail], and I made a fairly hardcore try to be like, ‘Hey, I most likely sound like a loopy individual with all these concepts proper now, however I need assistance and I believe you will be this individual.’ And so she agreed to become involved,” he says.

The Bartender’s Pantry addresses loads past cocktail making, together with the significance of neighborhood, sourcing ethically, and constructing connections by way of food and drinks. 

“There are a variety of issues I am subversively pushing for on this guide,” says Meehan. “One in every of them is a transfer in direction of a broader data and curiosity in our drinks and in our meals that may hopefully make us extra approachable and tailored to having the ability to discuss to one another once more.”