Set 'Em Up, Joe... In A Bag: Cocktails To Go

NYC’s mayor, Bill DeBlasio, has been criticized pretty roundly for his handling of the COVID-19 situation, but one thing he indisputably got right was allowing restaurants and bars to make cocktails-to-go legal throughout the city for the foreseeable future. Owning more booze than I could possibly drink in a lifetime, and with a clutch of top-notch cocktail books at the ready, I wasn’t planning on using this particular service, though I was certainly glad it existed.

But yesterday was the anniversary of the day my wife and I met, and we traditionally celebrate our “first-date-aversary” by going out somewhere special. We obviously didn’t have that option this year, but we had the next best thing: a full takeout dinner from the NoMad, which is only one of the best restaurants in town, including salad, main dish (their phenomenal chicken), side, dessert… and optional cocktail pairing. I was prepared to make the drinks myself — I make a pretty mean daiquiri, and we had a bottle of rum that I was itching to finish off. But when the choice is between a homemade daiquiri and Leo Robitschek’s signature Start Me Up cocktail (bourbon, rum, honey, lemon, ginger), a staple of the NoMad since it opened… well, the choice was obvious.

The drinks were at room temperature in hermetically sealed plastic bags, I suppose to preserve freshness and prevent spillage. They looked, in that state, a little like gravy, or some kind of biological sample. But when I poured them into rocks glasses with a few ice cubes, they looked much more appealing.

And how did they taste? EXACTLY the way they’d taste if Leo himself was in our kitchen, whipping them up in person. Sheer genius! Leo has loomed large in our legend, having been a part of many celebrations for both us and our daughter. I actually celebrated her birth with one last pre-parenting blast at Eleven Madison Park, where Leo was the head bartender at the time. So it was nice to have him there for another milestone, even if we couldn’t see him in person.

I’d still like to whittle down my booze collection a bit with homemade cocktails during our enforced bout of home drinking, but I’m pretty sold on this cocktails-to-go idea. Next stop: Middle Branch, a stone’s throw from our home and the home of ace barkeep Lucinda Sterling. Will report back.