Spoilt for choice?

by Alice Lascelles

I spent a very pleasurable week drinking my way around NY last week - I'm sure there will be a few more blogs on things I loved about it, but the first thought relates to a visit to the ever-excellent Milk & Honey where I encountered what I shall christen, for want of a better phrase, the 'capsule spirits selection'.

Happily settled into our delightfully gloomy booth, we turned to give our orders to our bartender. 'Dry Martini, please, with an olive,' I said, before asking what gins they had. 'Plymouth,' replied our bartender, unblinking. Just Plymouth? I asked, incredulously. Just Plymouth, he replied with a hint of a grin.

Now, I don't have anything against Plymouth, in fact I rather like it, but I've grown so used to backbars groaning with a panoply of different gin brands, I couldn't believe my ears - particularly coming from a place like Milk and Honey. My initial reaction was that this mono-brand backbar was a bad thing - what if I want London Dry? or something flavoured with fruit of the boab boab tree? or micro-distilled in Scotland with bog myrtle? The customer is always right - surely!!!.

But then I thought about it, and then thought about it some more as I sipped my icy Plymouth Martini with an olive and a dish of extra olives on the side, and eventually I came to the conclusion goddamit, I liked it. I liked the fact the bar had decided to stick its neck out and serve the gin it thought was the best, and to hell with what fussy customers think. It made me more curious about their drinks, rather than less. It gave me more confidence in them. It was almost perversely luxurious. And, you know, I even kinda liked being bossed around a bit (albeit very charmingly).

It's not an approach that would work in every bar once you've taken into account clientele, the necessary evil of pouring deals etc (and there's always the possibility that they had simply run out of everything else), but I would very much like more bars to pin their colours to the mast like this. It works in a restaurant - you don't choose your steak or your fish from a dozen different options, you trust the restaurant to serve the one they think is the best - so why not a cocktail bar?

Likewise I'd like to see a return to more minimalism on cocktail menus - a regularly changing list of around 8 like you get at 69 Colebrook Row is a delight, while a 30-page tome is simply a bore that gets in the way of conversation and more importantly prolongs the time between taking your seat and the moment that first icy drink hits your veins.

As Milk and Honey NY proves - small is indeed beautiful.