Fizz Ed: Paul Feig x The Rake Cocktail Column
You can either ruin a bartender’s night, or you can learn to make the Ramos Gin Fizz at home. Our cocktails columnist will teach you all the right moves...
If you love cocktails, you love bartenders. Great ones are artists, masters of good times and perfect elixirs. But even those who aren’t world-class are rock stars who deserve our praise and generous tips.
“Oh, mixing drinks isn’t that hard,” you say dismissively, you arrogant bastard.
Have you ever bartended? I don’t mean at your house for a small dinner party. I mean, down-and-dirty drinks-making in a busy bar. I guest-bartended once to promote my Artingstall’s gin. I’m the king of the martini in my home, but the second I was thrown to the wolves who wanted their drinks right away, I became like the amateur chef who gets excoriated by Gordon Ramsay for chopping an onion too slowly. My hands turned into bricks, my brain went haywire, and I quickly became an object of extreme pity and frustration to the unlucky barbacks who were put in charge of me. Within an hour I was sitting on the other side of the bar, nursing a dry martini and my bruised ego.
Professional bartending is all about production and precision. You must produce a lot of great drinks in a short amount of time and you must be friendly and personable while you’re doing it. (At least if you want to get tips. No one really enjoys a salty bartender.)
There are certain drinks I’m hesitant to order, since they’re more complicated to make than other cocktails.
It’s because of this that there are certain drinks I’m hesitant to order, since they’re more complicated and time consuming to make than other cocktails. Things that require pouring and shaking at least keep the bartender’s flow going as they get into that amazing rhythm you see the best mixologists hit at the peak of the evening — their arms and hands a blur as they move like Gene Kelly in an MGM musical, spinning to grab a bottle, flipping it bottom-up to pour a measure into the shaker, stirring with one hand while the other expertly shakes another drink. They’re like figure skaters in an Olympic routine that results in beautiful libations. To then hit them with an “I’d love a Pousse Café and my friend would like a Colour- Changing Sunset Margarita” is like chucking a tyre iron into the spokes of a passing Tour de France cyclist. (For the uninitiated, a Pousse Café is a five-layered multicolour drink that requires the slow pouring of different liqueurs down a mixing spoon into a cordial glass, which takes for ever. As for the Colour-Changing Sunset Margarita, I’ll let you look that one up.)
But what if you really like a cocktail that happens to be complicated? Well, you can be the thorn in the bartender’s side on a busy night or you can learn to make it at home.
Tipsy and I fell in love with the Ramos Gin Fizz on a trip to Munich with my friend Steve Higgins and his family. They were obsessed with the drink, and the hotel we were in was more than happy to make it for us. But that was the only place in the world where the bartender was happy to hear us order one. We almost got thrown out of a bar in Paris once because they tried to make it and had so much trouble frothing the egg white that the bartender brought the shaker to our table and made us shake it ourselves.
The real secret to the Ramos Fizz is dry shaking, which means shaking the ingredients without ice in the shaker first. This gets the egg white ready to foam with the ice and results in the frothy delight that the Ramos should be.
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Ramos Gin Fizz • 2 oz. Artingstall’s gin
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