High Spirits: Man About Town

man about town

View Gramercy Tavern’s recipe on page 64 »

HIGH SPIRITS MAN

( and woman ) ABOUT TOWN

by

JUDITH MARA

There are cocktails and then there are the cocktails that beverage director Juliette Pope’s team at Gramercy Tavern in NYC create. Stylish and sophisticated, yet carefully rooted in the classics, their latest addition, the Man About Town, has a long pedigree.

The name Man About Town was devised by bartender Paul Michel who worked on the cocktail—it is simply the translation of the French Boulevardier and seemed appropriate, given its sleek yet jaunty elegance.

The inspiration for the cocktail came from the Negroni, a classic Italian cocktail. While playing around with a different version of the Negroni, the staff at Gramercy Tavern made an older, lesser-known riff on the drink, the French Boulevardier. It substitutes rye for gin as a partner to the Campari and the sweet vermouth—all in equal parts.

Upon tasting it, the team thought it was great for autumn because of its orangegold hue, but they wanted to make it more drinkable. They added sweeter amaro, the classic Sicilian Cynar, upped the proportion of rye and were thrilled with the resulting cocktail—one that any man or woman about town would love.