nothin Anchor “Legend” Captures Cocktail Crown | New Haven Independent

Anchor Legend” Captures Cocktail Crown

Lucy Gellman Photos

“Yale Beets Harvard,” an entry in the taste-off.

Anchor’s Courtney Brisson.

A candied orange slice wilted just-so over a glass of chilled beet juice and buttered rum, shimmering in the light before it shuddered, and began to sink into a sea of garnet.

In a nearby chalice, something from a juniper-scented dream was covered in an even glaze of eggy sea foam, a whiff of cucumber drifting off the top.

Doug Hausladen had never seen that before.

But it didn’t faze him. It didn’t faze his crew of fellow downtown adventure-seekers. They were ready to try the newest cocktails at College Street’s new-old Anchor Spa, and weigh in on the results.

The panel.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Transportation & Parking Chief Hausladen met up with New Haven Independent Reporter Aliyya Swaby, writer Daisy Abreu, and city arts czar Andy Wolf at the reopened Anchor Spa, Karl Franz Williams and business partner Dimitrios Zahariadis’ posh new take on the beloved New Haven watering hole that closed in January 2015.

The crew’s task: to sample some of the concoctions at the bar, offer their judgements, and see what the buzz was all about.

Each of the Anchor Spa’s imperialist-sounding cocktails — there are currently seven on-menu and one off, each priced at $13 — is named after a different port city, yoking imported goods like coffee, chocolate, green tea and cane sugar with flavors, fruit mixes, and extracts that Williams and Zahariadis beta-test in the Anchor’s kitchen, and debut at the bar. Printed on a map, the menu is a literally criss-cross of trade routes, intended to lead taste buds on a trip halfway around the world.

The panelists prepared for that trip. Taking a moment to mourn the absence of the old Anchor’s jukebox (there are confirmed reports that it will be back later this month), perennially sticky carpet, and burning popcorn smell, the quartet singled out a spacious, seagreen booth, and got to work. 

Wolf suggested the four begin with the cocktail named Yale Beets Harvard.”

We have to have New Haven if we’re here,” he said of the first of four boozy ports that were to come.

New Haven, CT: Yale Beets Harvard”

What’s in it: Brown Buttered Plantation 3 Star Rum, Smith and Cross Rum, home-juiced beets and lemon, home-fashioned orange acid (juiced oranges, with added malic and citric acid to bring up the acidity), molasses bitters, a candied orange slice cut paper thin, and served on top. 

Consensus: While this reporter — in full disclosure not a cocktail fan — found it a little too much like a Werther’s Original dissolved in beet juice, the panel had more insightful thoughts.

It’s good. I like it,” Abreu said. I can drink that.”

Strong, a little bit of bitterness, but a lot of taste,” Hausladen added. You can taste the bitters, but the overpowering is the sweetness of the beet. You can taste the rum, its flavor and spice.”

Swaby and Wolf agreed. While the former suggested that the beets were a little too much like candy,” Wolf liked the addition.

Really, how can you go wrong with a vegetable?” he asked. It’s like a full meal.”

Plymouth, England: Heading West”

The Highwayman, Legend, Yale Beets Harvard, and Heading West.

What’s in it: Plymouth Gin, house made lime cordial, Sea Foam” that has egg white and a hand-stenciled anchor painted on top. 

Consensus:With good gin as its core, Hausladen and Wolf noted, it was kind of a quintessential New England drink.

Grassy” was the first word out of Wolf’s mouth, and the panel stayed with it, honing in on how a sugary-sweetness rose up to meet some very green flavors. It’s not my favorite,” Abreu said. I’m not really a cucumber water person.”

Being a bourbon person, anything with gin strikes me as an odd choice,” Hausladen contributed, but there’s a complex flavor.”

Abreu, a transplant who has been in New Haven for 22 years and feels no fonder about gin now than when she arrived, wasn’t convinced. Neither was Swaby. One tiny sip, and the first words out of her mouth were uh-uh.”

It’s like green lime, punching you in the face,” she said. I do like limes, but it’s too sweet. I would like it if it were more tart and less sweet.”

New Orleans, LA: Crescent City Highwayman”

Abreu: not convinced on the “Heading West.”

What’s in it: Ford’s Gin, Bicardi 8‑year rum, Pierre Ferrand Cognac, Dim’s Mix” (Zahariadis’s home brew of fruit juices and extracts, of which pineapple is perhaps the most pronounced), Falernum syrup, Angostura bitters. 

Consensus:A Christmasy drink, way more palatable than egg nog, in July — with the true spirit of the Bayou somewhere in there.

It tastes to me like something you’d drink at a holiday party,” Abreu suggested.

A potpourri,” added Wolf.

For Hausladen, it took him right back to the streets of New Orleans. I definitely feel the New Orleans fusion,” he said. I was in New Orleans in June, first time since I was six months old, and that tastes like all of the fruit drinks … that really remind you of the fruit fusion.” 

Finally, a concoction on which some consensus could be reached. But three drinks in, the city’s finest imbibers were looking for something a little less sweet. And suddenly, they found it — in a drink hailing from a few port cities, oceans, and economic crises away.

Piraeus, Greece: The Legend”

Wolf eyes the four contenders.

What’s in it: Metaxa 5 Star Brandy, Black Cherry, Honey, Thyme, Lemon, Old Fashioned Bitters.

Consensus: As it traveled from one end of the table to the other, The Legend became, in its understated way, kind of legendary — and an immediate hit.

While wary — that’s presumptuous, to already call it the Legend,” Abreu proclaimed before her first sip — panelists came around to it almost immediately. The drink offered something that the other three had not: comfort. Or as the tasters put it, The Legend” was kind of fancy cold toddy, with a little more bitter. 

It tastes like tea,” Swaby said.

Yes! It’s almost like that Constant Comment tea,” Abreu said. Put some honey in there and you’re good to go. This is the kind of thing, if you had it warmed …”

… you would feel comforted,” Wolf concluded.

The Winners, The Losers, And The Big Rock

The Legend.

While The Legend got a unanimous yay from the panel, there were really three winners of the evening.

The second was the big rock,” an enormous ice cube that, when dropped into each drink, melts slowly because of its lower surface area. After trying four cocktails and calling both the Highwayman and Legend drinks he would try again, Hausladen declared the big rock the hero of the evening, lingering over the ice cube trays before heading out.

That, and the graceful, lightning-quick service from mixologist Courtney Brisson and server Ibrahim Kadi.

But the third was the old Anchor, whose shadow slipped into every drink — especially The Legend, whose greatest asset is its understatement and immediate familiarity — and made its way into every conversation.

The big rock trays.

Wolf recalled walking by the old Anchor, looking into the windows that now reveal a long, shiny bar with long-necked bottles, books arranged sparingly on the shelves and a ceiling on which the paint still looks fresh. All four noted that the Spa was beautifully redone. But they also said it felt more like a special occasion” bar than a first date dive or regular meeting place.

Abreu, who called the experience of returning strange,” talked about coming to the Anchor years ago after working the second shift at the old Kinkos on Chapel Street.

You’d sit down and Dee would give you grief,” she said, remembering coming with friends and colleagues until it was a meeting place. One winter in the late 1990s, she had trudged through the snow to watch the New England Patriots play the San Diego Chargers on the bar’s screen, making friends with the 10 fellow New Haveners who had braved the elements to see the game.

It was this moment where I left, and I felt like: Yeah, I’m probably going to be here for a while.’”

She didn’t feel like that at the new space yet. None of the panelists did. They needed time (and maybe a few Legends) to adjust to it.

I’m so glad that this isn’t an empty storefront,” Abreu said. But it feels a little haunted.”

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