Whiskey Smash

Photo - Philip Greenberg for The New York Times

By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON Published: April 24, 2005 NY Times

BOBBY FLAY, the celebrity chef, is a bourbon drinker, so it would make sense that there would be a bourbon drink, the Whiskey Smash, on the cocktail list at his new restaurant, Bar Americain, which opened at 152 West 52nd Street last week.
"My wife is from Texas, so we drink a lot of bourbon at home," Mr. Flay said on Tuesday, sitting at the 28-foot zinc bar that is the centerpiece of Bar Americain with his business partner, Laurence Kretchmer, who devised the drinks list. "In the warm weather I'm a total sucker for mint juleps." (In the winter it's Manhattans.) Mr. Flay added that when he attends the Kentucky Derby, which is frequently, "I'm bathed in bourbon and mint."

Mr. Flay and Mr. Kretchmer's other restaurants, Mesa Grill and Bolo, have themes: the American Southwest and Spain, respectively. They've done Las Vegas too, with a Mesa Grill at Caesar's Palace. Bar Americain also has a theme, which is brasserie-style dining, but the not very hidden subtext is cocktail drinking. The two-story bar and its huge, ornate mirror greet those entering the dining room like Prometheus rising above the fountains at Rockefeller Center: a mythological place to take the waters. The restaurant was designed by David Rockwell, an architect and set designer who is the Walt Disney of the New York theme dining world. In Paris a brasserie with a "bar américain" is classically a place where you can order a mixed drink, as well as wine and beer. So Mr. Kretchmer's cocktail list, appropriately, is classics, including a Hemingway daiquiri (Papa's purist version, with rum and fresh citrus) and the Bronx cocktail, invented at the Brass Rail bar in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in honor of the opening of the Bronx Zoo in 1899, when the Waldorf was on 34th Street. The Whiskey Smash, a mint-infested julep, has a sunburst of lemon juice. "We don't want to serve the next kumquat mojito," Mr. Flay said of the era of cocktail innovation now upon us. "I'm a native Manhattanite, at least that I know of, fifth generation, from the Lower East Side. My grandfather was this really Damon Runyon character. He knew everyone: good guys, bad guys. That's the way New York was. The judges and gangsters all hung out in the same bars." That's very elaborate cocktail nostalgia, and one can only wish the same sort of success for Bar Americain, updated but with the kind of notorious elbow rub at the bar that makes hoisting a drink in unfamiliar company so enjoyable an enterprise. No, the pleasure's mine. What did you say you did again?

Whiskey Smash

2 lemon wedges
Several sprigs of fresh mint
¾ ounce simple syrup
1½ ounces Maker's Mark bourbon
Splash of club soda.

Muddle lemon, mint leaves and syrup in the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass. Add bourbon and club soda with ice and stir. Garnish with a mint sprig.