JE ME RESOUVIENDRAI David Szanto

DaviD Szanto Je me resouviendrai 52 cocktails of Québec Je me resouviendrai Je me resouviendrai 52 cocktails of Québec david szanto ÉDITIONS FRiGo © David Szanto 2010 for Joey Lamen— Éditions Frigo a stirring shaker, 4407 boul. St-Laurent #2 straight up. Montréal (QC) H2W 1Z8 Canada Tel: 514-312-8278 All rights reserved. No reproduction of this work, in whole or in part, is permitted without written authorization. Although this book celebrates and recommends the consumption of alcoholic cocktails, drinking liquor is not always the right choice for all people. Be smart, and when drinking, enjoy your cocktails in moderate moderation. cataloguing in publication data TK Preface Many years ago, my sister, Elisabeth, left Montréal to go study math and philosophy at university in Boston. On a visit home, she told us a joke she had heard, which appropriately enough merged the two subjects in which she was then immersed. It went something like this: René Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender looks up at him and asks, “the usual, René?” The philosopher ponders the question for a moment, then announces, “I think not,” and promptly disappears. I was thoroughly frustrated, at age fifteen, by this joke, never having encountered Descartes’ famous statement, cogito ergo sum, linking thought with being, and underpinning the scholary humour my sister had started to appreciate. But I was also frustrated, and scared, by the emerging distance between Elisabeth and me that the joke reinforced. She had gone back to the city where we had both been born (though lived only briefly), perhaps refinding a more comfortable sense of belonging there, and leaving me alone to develop an anglo-montréalais identity of my own. She had become clever and witty in that place, and though I would later adopt this joke as my own—including the mixology—it’s an appropriate time to think about where we have significance of its bar setting—it highlighted the reality that a come from, gastronomically, and where we are going. How would separation can grow between even the closest of siblings. a bartender interpret Québec if the province walked in, plunked Today, some twenty-five years later, cocktails and identity itself down on a stool, and placed an order? and place have become major themes in my life. In September To M. Descartes’ great statement, then, I offer a variant: 2009, I began a project within the graduate design program at bibito ergo sum. For it is perhaps by both thinking and drinking that Concordia University, centered on these ideas. The Bar N+1 was we can say and enact who we truly are. At least until the next round. an interactive installation, based on the notion that ordering and drinking a cocktail is a process of self-definition. By stripping —D.S. away some of the cultural baggage around alcohol and brands Montréal, August 2010 and interior design and music and lighting, I wanted to under- stand how we might express our personality through a cocktail order. I’m a martini drinker or I prefer it on the rocks, not too sweet or simply, the usual, please. The bartender who mixes up your order creates an interpretation of your expressed desire—not an exact representation of it. It is filtered through the bartender’s impres- sion of you in that moment, as well as through his or her own personality. Finally, by consuming, you alter yourself, even if only a little bit, and only for a short time. You are what you drink. Like my sister, I too went away from the city of my youth to study, but my travels and experiences brought me back to Montréal. My being needed to find its home base. I sampled (and made) many drinks along the way, adding bartender to my own identiy mix, and becoming fascinated with how an individual, or a place, might be represented by a cocktail. This book, then, is the Bar N+1, plus one: the next iteration of my project on cocktails and identity. As Québec’s food and drink culture grows—we’re seeing more and more bars and restaurants offering the latest in viii ix introduction What is a cocktail? There are shrimp cocktails and fruit cocktails, drug cocktails and Molotov cocktails, cocktails of toxic waste and cocktail sausages, and of course the cocktails that come in a glass—mixtures of alcohol that are drunk in a bar or in a living room or poolside. There are those who will say they do not drink cocktails (too strong, too busy, too sweet), prefering wine or beer. There are those who drink no alcohol at all, who have taken cocktails off their personal menu. And there are those for whom another time is conjured up, or another place, or another kind of drinker altogether, when the word is even mentioned. Dictionary definitions of the word vary greatly. Ulti- mately, however, a cocktail is a blend of ingredients, merged under specific circumstances, and experienced within tem- poral limits. Brought together in these ways, the cocktail has significance greater than its components, and its effects go beyond those of the individual parts. Depending on the venue, the maker, and the consumer, this significance may change, and rarely do the cocktail’s effects stay consistent with each subse- quent iteration. The province of Québec itself is a cocktail. A few parts farmers and processors and retailers, writers and researchers and anglo, a few parts franco, a few parts native. Additional elements, critics, celebrities and chefs and teachers. We are all gastronomes, migrating into the mix over time, have contributed new aromas in a way—we eat, every one of us, and there are precious few who and tastes. We shake ourselves up periodically, and ice is rarely in don’t share what they think and feel and like. short supply. The result: distinctive, sometimes volatile, occasion- To bring ourselves face-to-face with who we were and ally flammable. And very definitely intoxicating. who we will be as a province, and to believe in and support the Outside of Québec, we are often thought of as French. existence and evolution of our culture, we need to re-remember A nation of wine drinkers and pâté eaters, beret-wearing admir- who we are. We need to re-remember the ingredients of the ers of Piaf and Depardieu. Within our borders, we of course see québécois cocktail—both old and new—and recognize its unique ourselves differently. We are both proud of our cultural heritage flavour and value. So too do we need to remember, today, that the and disparaging of its humbleness and American influences. We flavour tomorrow will be subtly different, even if it is the same have enacted language laws, through substantial strife, directed basic drink that we are enjoying. at preserving and valorizing our culture. In the realm of food, When you walk into a bar and order, for example, a we challenge each others’ regional variations on tourtière and Manhattan, myriad variables will influence what you experience guédilles, tout the terroir of our maple syrup, establish pro- in the drinking. The brands of bourbon and vermouth, of course, tected denominations, and champion our local pork, apples, and and the type of fruit and/or twist that is added. But also the way dairy. Yet we also admonish ourselves for consuming fast food the bartender interprets who you are, either directly or through and snack cakes, bemoan the brevity of our growing season, and a server, and how your preferences should be responded to. The shudder at the baseness of the Marie Antoinettes and Lafleurs proportions, the chill of the glass, the stirring or shaking, the that we grew up loving. For our food we feel part pride and part time over ice, the pour, the garnish. Its presentation—on a nap- shame, and partly we feel nothing at all, thinking Québec simply kin? on a coaster? with élan? with a spill?—and the surrounding doesn’t have a gastronomic culture. environment. Are you in a dimly lit lounge dotted with fringed Yet our food heritage is rich, and complex, and as im- lampshades and sultry, exchanged glances, set to the sounds of portant to the preservation of québécois culture as the promo- a smoky-voiced singer and her four-piece band? Or a glass and tion of our official language (as well as all our unofficial ones). chrome airport bar, packed with roller bags and tense travelers, Québec is full of gastronomes—figures from the past and the faint scent of jetfuel tingling your nostrils? When you lift present, and from our history and our imaginations, who have the glass to your lips, in what state do you receive the first sip? contributed to the creation of our culinary character. They are It initiates a transformation, and all that has gone into making xii xiii the drink—the history and technique and symbolism, as well as culture, as illicit and poor-quality “bathtub” gin was made more the alcohol and mixes, the bitters, the juices—goes into you. It is palatable with sweeteners and strongly flavoured mixers. Dur- an alchemical infusion of culture and identity and memory and ing the post-War boom in North America, wealthy anglophone place. A cocktail. culture embraced the cocktail hour—both after work in cocktail The word itself was probably coined at the beginning of bars and in the home, pre-dinner. While vodka would eventually the nineteenth century in the United States, and has conflicted replace gin in popularity, drinks tended to the relatively simple: and clouded etymological roots.

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