A Jigger of Blog

Yesterday I wrote about my experience at The Gibson on Wednesday night. One of the drinks that stood out on the menu was the Salad Days Sour.

Salad Days Sour

I can’t remember where I saw it, but in one of the early posts about The Gibson, I read about a cocktail that heavily featured celery and celery bitters. That cocktail is the Salad Days Sour, which is made with celery-infused Macchu Pisco, lemon, celery bitters, and burnt cinnamon. It’s garnished with a carrot twist and served in a cocktail glass. In our exploration of The Gibson’s menu last night, I’d say this was the most creative and adventurous drink on the menu.  Pisco is a Peruvian liquor made from distilled grapes that I’d never previously encountered. The drink had a very nice foamy head. It has heavy cinnamon, celery, and lemon flavors that work together in a very straightforward way. The burnt flavor to the cinnamon compliments the sour really well. I don’t recall exactly why, but in my notes I noted that there is a thick, creaminess to this cocktail reminiscent of drinks that use egg whites. This was one of my favorite drinks on the menu. [Emphasis added]

Two things — first I looked back at my notes today and realized I’d incorrectly attributed the bolded sentence to the Brunswick Sour. So I moved to the correct spot in that post, in the write-up on the Salad Days Sour. I’d written the post over the course of the day and I didn’t do a thorough re-edit before hitting publish. Oh well, that’s blogging.

Second, and more importantly, I went back to The Gibson last night. It turns out the reason the Salad Days Sour has “a thick, creaminess…reminiscent of drinks that use egg whites” is because it does have egg whites in it. That ingredient doesn’t show up on the menu out of fear that people might not order the drink if they saw “egg whites” in the recipe. I hope plenty of people ask the staff, after enjoying a Salad Days Sour, what in the ingredient list gives the drink its rich foam, so they can find out that egg whites aren’t a scary ingredient for cocktails.

I didn’t score a copy of it, but last night featured a redesigned menu. It was printed in larger, easier to read fonts and the quotes that introduced each section of the menu were removed. The drinks were largely the same (the Rhum Manhattan had walnut liqueur added as a listed ingredient). Derek Brown said they’re going to keep playing with the menu formatting for a while and will eventually end up with a much nicer menu than the heavy-duty paper it’s currently printed on.