The New Cocktailians

Sometimes it seems as if the best cocktails in Los Angeles have all been designed by a cabal, pretty drinks dosed with cucumber or grapefruit; tinged with elderflower; powered by extrapotent gin; sharpened by the bitter orange-peel tang of Aperol, a northern Italian aperitif you probably hadn’t heard of 18 months ago but which seems to flavor two-thirds of the new drinks in town. And at a certain level they are designed by the same few guys, a contingent of ronin bartenders — guys like Alperin, Vincenzo Marianella, Matthew Eggleston, Daniel Nelson, all friends, all loosely affiliated with the informal craft guild organized by Edison’s Marcos Tello — who roam from restaurant to restaurant as consultants, creating superior drink lists for their clients but often remaining in one spot just long enough to make sure that Red Bull and Grey Goose are banished from the premises.

If the cocktail scene in Los Angeles had a face, it would probably belong to Marianella, a tall, slender Friulian guy who once played professional basketball in Milan, and whose combination of dolefulness and good bone structure causes women to stop in the street and stare. (I spent a single morning roaming the Santa Monica farmers market with him, and I got at least half a dozen e-mails later that day asking, you know, who he was.) Marianella learned technique working in cocktail bars in London, and when he opened the bar at Providence, chef Michael Cimarusti challenged him to taste. If John Calthorp and Alperin are the Rolling Stones of the scene, the ones who achieve their dark effects through strict adherence to classic form, Marianella may be closer to the Beatles, effortlessly spinning off drink after drink in style after style, his only signature a kind of wistful, minor-key sunniness.

Anne Fishbein

How do you like them apples? Mark Peel lines up Johnny's Cups at Campanile.

Anne Fishbein

The finished cup

Location Info

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The Hungry Cat

1535 N. Vine St.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Hollywood

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Musso & Frank Grill

6667 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Hollywood

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• Cedd Moses
• National Basketball Association
• Los Angeles Lakers
• Eating Out
• Main Dish Recipes

Back at the Varnish, there has been a Remember the Maine, which is kind of a variation on the Manhattan tinged with cherry and absinthe, a long look at a Stinger, and something called a Palma Fizz, which I can only describe as what Coca-Cola might taste like in heaven. I have had a long discussion about ice. Marcos Tello and Matthew Eggleston have come behind the bar, which now resembles the bartender equivalent of the NBA West all-star team. (“Does that make Petraske Phil Jackson?’’ I ask. “No, no, no, you don’t understand,’’ Alperin says. Sasha is Kobe. Cedd is Phil Jackson.’’) And as I prepare to pay the check, I notice that the three are engaged in the competitive sport of every great bartender since drinking began: the attempt to layer crème de violette and green Chartreuse and Aperol and crème de menthe and God knows what else into a delicate, many-layered drink. If Maddenball ever wants to branch out from football into the fine art of video poussé-café, I’ve got just the guys they need.

Where to Drink Now: The New Cocktailian's Guide

BAHOOKA

One of the last of the original generation of tiki joints, which some assert are L.A.’s real contribution to the cocktail universe, Bahooka is the kind of place you’d expect to find near a scruffy tropical seaport, all rusted nautical gear, stolen street signs and scarred dark wood, lit like a Navy-base bar and with more bobbing tropical fish than you’d find in a Jacques Cousteau special. Lifeboats hang out back — after the bar closes on weekends, you’ll always find a giggling kid or two waving from inside of one. The drive back home from Rosemead seems halfway to Samoa some nights, especially when you’re on the outside of a Monsoon or a Jet Pilot, a Shark’s Tooth or a Cobra Strike, and the mostly deep-fried cuisine isn’t something you’re going to be happy to have eaten the next day, but Bahooka is one of the better places in the metropolis to stoke a craving for demon rum. Because is there anything more romantic than two straws in a single Flaming Honey Bowl? I thought not. As a bonus, it is very close to the Glendon Hotel, where the KoGi taco truck sets up shop for a couple of hours early on Saturday evenings. 4501 N. Rosemead Blvd., Rosemead, (818) 285-1241.

CAMPANILE

Campanile has always been a few steps ahead on the beverage front. It was among the first restaurants in Los Angeles to feature obscure super-Tuscans, ahead of the curve on Swiss eaux de vie, and definitely the first local grappa list to break into triple figures. There was a time when Campanile was probably in possession of every single bottle of Piemontese freisa in the United States, and it cornered the market on the odd hand-labeled liquors of Romano Levi. The wine list is legendarily deep in Barolos and in Rhônes. So it makes a strange sort of sense that Mark Peel, the chef-proprietor, has lately become as obsessed with cocktails as he used to be with grilled lamb — old concoctions like the Aviation; new ones like the restaurant’s signature Belltower, fizzy and bitter; and a warm winter drink, Johnny’s Punch, made with crème fraîche, 12-year rum, bitter almond and organic Fuji apples among other things, a cocktail as complicated in its effects as anything from Campanile’s pastry kitchen. You will not be surprised to hear that Peel has a new, even more cocktail-intensive restaurant under construction for a projected fall opening. 646 S. La Brea Ave., L.A., (323) 938-1447.