Three Cocktails To Pair With Your Favorite Deli Foods
Bartenders create craft cocktail recipes inspired by traditional Jewish foods
When one thinks about eating a meal at a deli, brains tend to conjure up images of corned beef piled high on rye bread or bagels with cream cheese, lox and thinly sliced onion. Sitting at a formica table, maybe there’s a plate of dill pickles in the middle, slung down with extra gusto by a server who has been hard at work balancing steaming bowls of matzah ball soup. For beverages, perhaps you imagine heavy mugs of coffee, tall glasses of iced tea and celery soda, or a frosty egg cream.
The Full Sour at Freedman’s, LA
When Freedman’s debuted in Los Angeles last year, locals and Jewish food enthusiasts from around the city showed up for innovative takes on traditional food. There, latkes are shaped like waffles and topped with smoked ocean trout. Whitefish is toasted into crispy cigar shapes. All of this is served in a wallpapered room reminiscent of a grandmother’s apartment in the Upper West Side of New York. And behind the vintage bar made from antique living room cabinets and a fireplace mantle with a custom built counter, a bartender stands ready to make classic cocktails including the Pink Lady with gin, apple brandy, grenadine, and egg white. Their new “Cel-Ray” Sour is made from gin, lemon juice, cucumber, Tio Pepe and egg whites with fresh ground pepper.
Since opening, they’ve had their Full Sour Martini on the cocktail menu—based on a 50/50 martini with aquavit, dry vermouth, pickle juice and Regan’s bitters. We watched as owner Jonah Freedman stood behind the bar building a Full Sour Martini. He stirred the drink and strained it into a chilled glass. When asked about special dishes for the holidays, he replied, “Every day is a Jewish holiday here.” This martini was created to go well with all of the braised meats and smoked fish on the menu. For the ultimate pickle experience it can be paired with the Half Sour salad, a mix of lightly fermented Kirby cucumbers with creamy avocado, green goddess dressing and loads of fresh herbs.
Full Sour Martini
1.25 oz. Krogstad Aquavit
1.25 oz. Dolin Dry Vermouth
.75 oz. pickle juice
1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters
Combine in a mixing glass over ice. Stir.
Strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a pickle slice.
The Seeded Rye Manhattan at Mamaleh’s, Cambridge
Mamaleh’s in Cambridge offers all day dining and a take-out marketplace for smoked fish and meats, matzah ball soup, potato pancakes, and more dishes inspired by Jewish lineage around the world. The cocktail menu, developed by co-owner Evan Harrison and his bartending team, grew out of a few pop-up dinners with deli-inspired ingredients. For example, to pair with a beef tongue Rueben, Harrison had made a Manhattan with Kümmel, a caraway flavored liqueur. So when it came time to create an entire cocktail menu inspired by Jewish food and deli culture, Harrison came up with a set of guidelines to structure their offerings.
“We have come up with a three-tier definition of what makes a drink deli,” explains Harrison. “The first one being place of origin. If it comes from egg creams or soda fountain culture, from the soda jerk aspect of deli culture. Second, if it has an ingredient that comes from a drinking tradition that is part of the Jewish diaspora. That would be Manischewitz, Slivovitz, or another alcoholic beverage that you would associate with Jewish culture. The last one is to pull flavors from deli food, rye bread or even the Sephardic ingredients like sumac or plums.”
The 866 features grapefruit, a favorite deli item for grandmas and anyone who feels nostalgic for nibbling on segments scooped out of a half grapefruit. The Pushcart Spritz has celery bitters. The Bourbon and Cherry Phosphate is made with Four Roses bourbon and house-made cherry phosphate. “We try to make drinks that have cool stories,” says Harrison. “One of the bartenders was reading an article about taco trucks in LA. There was an aside about pastrami tacos in Boyle Heights. So we made a pink peppercorn pastrami spiced rim mescal margarita with Aperol.”
Mamaleh’s also boast the largest collection of traditional Eastern European plum brandy, Slivovitz, in Massachusetts. They make a cocktail called the Meier & Frank with Clear Creek Slivovitz, Amontillado Sherry, Averna, and smoked beer syrup. It’s the Seeded Rye Manhattan that may be the most deli-inspired version of a classic cocktail, utilizing rye whiskey, Vermont Montenegro and the Kümmel caraway liqueur. The name, explains Harrison, is a play on deli food and New York cocktail history with seeded rye bread being an ingredient at every deli. It tastes like a Manhattan infused with rye bread. Order it with a Ruben or their customer favorite 50/50 sandwich with hot corned beef and pastrami on marbled rye.
Seeded Rye Manhattan recipe
2 oz. Rittenhouse Rye
.5 oz. Cocchi Vermouth di Torino
.5 oz. Amaro Montenegro
4 dashes Combier Kummel
1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass. Stir to dilute.
Strain into a chilled old-fashioned glass.
Garnish with lemon oil, float lemon swath on top of drink.
COOL HUNTING always gets permission to use the images we publish; however, as an independent publication, we cannot afford to continue fighting unfair claims of copyright infringement, so the images have been removed from this post.
