The Canon Cocktail Book: Recipes from the Award-Winning Bar

By Jamie Boudreau and James O. Fraioli

“Integrates modern cooking technique with innovative classical cocktail preparation . . . invaluable for aspiring mixologists looking to go pro.”—Jim Meehan, author of The PDT Cocktail Book
 
Home to the Western Hemisphere’s largest spirit collection, Seattle bar Canon: Whiskey and Bitters Emporium has achieved unprecedented, worldwide acclaim. Named Best Bar in America by Esquire, Canon received Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards for World’s Best Drinks Selection (2013) and World’s Best Spirits Selection (2015), and Drinks International included it on their prestigious World’s 50 Best Bars list. 
 
In his debut, legendary bartender and Canon founder Jamie Boudreau offers 100 cocktail recipes ranging from riffs on the classics, like the Cobbler’s Dream and Corpse Reviver, to their lineup of original house drinks, such as the Truffled Old Fashioned and the Banksy Sour. In addition to tips, recipes, and formulas for top-notch cocktails, syrups, and infusions, Boudreau breaks down the fundamentals and challenges of opening and running a bar—from business plans to menu creation. The Canon Cocktail Book is poised to be an essential drinks manual for both the at-home cocktail enthusiast and bar industry professional.
 
“If you’re lucky enough to have drunk at Canon, the bar, you’ll find reading Canon, the cocktail book, remarkably similar: rich in detail, surprising, sometimes challenging, and always delightful. If you haven’t been to Canon, at least read the book. A few pages in and you’ll be on your phone, booking a flight to Seattle.”—David Wondrich, author of Imbibe! and Punch
 
“The collection is unassailable . . . This terrific resource is sure to send armchair bartenders scurrying to their shakers.”—Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780544631595

Book preview

Jamie Boudreau’s Seattle bar canon: whiskey and bitters emporium has achieved unprecedented, worldwide acclaim in just a handful of years since opening. Esquire named it one of the Best Bars in America, it received Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards for World’s Best Drink Selection in 2013 and World’s Best Spirits Selection in 2015, and Drinks International included it on their prestigious World’s 50 Best Bars list. With just seven tables and thirty-two seats in the 450-square-foot dining room, only part of the story is told upon entering. There are three menus: the seasonal cocktail menu, which changes about every two months; the extended cocktail menu, which is over one hundred pages long; and the spirits list, which is 165 pages long with more than 3,500 spirits available, all hidden behind the scenes.

This book is, first, a collection of cocktail recipes. You’ll find best-ever versions of traditional drinks, like the French 75, which Boudreau explains is even better served over ice in a Collins glass rather than in a flute. There are also his riffs on classics like the Manhattan and Corpse Reviver, and the bar’s lineup of original house drinks, such as the Truffled Old Fashioned and the Banksy Sour. Other drinks have to be seen to be believed, like the Campfire in Georgia, which is served under a smoke-filled dome. For satisfying a sweet tooth, there are dessert cocktails including the Movie Night Float, made with root beer, frozen bourbon, and popcorn ice cream (recipe included), and served with a red licorice straw.

In addition to the recipes, Boudreau lends you his experience by including a thorough guide to opening and operating a bar that covers everything from leasing a space to designing the menu. There are also master tips on equipment and mixology techniques, all of which make this book required reading for both aspiring professionals and home bartenders who want to learn how to make drinks properly.

Copyright © 2016 by Jamie Boudreau and James O. Fraioli

Photography by Brittany Marshall, Andrew Fawcett, and Jamie Boudreau

All rights reserved.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-544-63103-8 (hardcover);

978-0-544-63159-5 (ebook)

Book design by Rachel Newborn

v1.1016

contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

classics, originals, riffs & mr. potato head

tom collins, friends & animals

the old fashioned

low-alcohol cocktails

carbonated, aged & bottled cocktails

for the love of all that is bitter

tiki

over the top

canada

dessert

cocktail foundations

INDEX

about the authors

acknowledgments

Jamie Boudreau would like to offer his gratitude to the following:

My sweet, gorgeous, and infinitely patient wife, Erin.

Andrew Fawcett (partner and photographer extraordinaire), without whom this may have never happened.

Pegu Club and Milk & Honey for inspiring me to go nuts and open my own bar.

Vessel and those involved for ripping me from my homeland and allowing me the opportunities that have come.

All of my peers throughout the country and abroad who keep me hungry but never leave me thirsty.

My talented coauthor, James O. Fraioli, who helped me get my book written and published.

Andrea Hurst, my agent.

Photographer Brittany Marshall.

And of course, I must not forget my extremely talented staff, without whom canon would just be an empty shell, devoid of soul.

the story of canon: whiskey and bitters emporium

While canon is only a handful of years old, the story really begins twenty-nine years ago, when I was forcibly shaken and poured into this industry I have grown to love.

I was just sixteen when first introduced to the restaurant industry. It was my birthday, and my mother had given me this ultimatum: Get a job by your sixteenth birthday or get out of the house. Forever the procrastinator, I didn’t find a job until the day of my birthday; and they started me that very evening, so I missed my birthday/going-away party.

This first job was at a little fish ’n’ chips joint in Vancouver, where I started off as dishwasher, a job I did not relish. It was hot, dirty, and I was constantly soaked with dishwater and splattered with fish guts. It paid minimum wage with no tips, but there was a saving grace: pretty waitresses. They were confident, pleasant, and a little older than me. They seemed to have real mastery over their jobs, so much so that they were often bossing the owners around to make sure their tables received hot food in a timely manner. This was magical! They could actually yell at the owners, glide around the room like they owned the place, and with no fear for their jobs. I knew I had to get on the other side of the dish-pit window, for I believe it is always better to yell than to be yelled at.

That opportunity came just one month later. I had already left the dishwasher pit, proudly promoted to prep, when right in the middle of a shift, one of the two servers walked out, leaving the entire section to fend for themselves. With the remaining server extremely busy, the owner sent me out there to serve the abandoned section. And there I was, barely sixteen, zero training, and now suddenly I’m the waiter?

I don’t remember much from that night, but I do remember one particular table. They began their order with two Caesars followed by halibut and chips. I promptly brought waters and set about making their salads. Like at many Italian restaurants, this fish ’n’ chips place had servers make all the salads, desserts, and drinks for their station. When I presented the salads, the customers looked at them blankly, then at me, and asked, Where are the Caesars? I pointed proudly at their salads. Then, very calmly, they explained to me that a Caesar is a drink, a riff on the Bloody Mary, except made with Clamato juice instead of tomato juice. The complete name is a Bloody Caesar, but no one calls them this. Remember that procrastination thing I mentioned? Well, I hadn’t had a sip of anything alcoholic yet, let alone a fancy Bloody Caesar. So I found the other waitress, who quickly taught me how to build the Caesar cocktail. I was hooked.

With very few breaks, I worked full-time in the restaurant business from that day forward. Heck, it even allowed me the luxury of going to school since my shifts were at night and classes were during the day. Like a lot of people, I thought working in the business was just a stepping-stone to something else, presumably better. In my case, I was learning to become a physiotherapist, and my wages were paying for that too.

Throughout the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working in every single position in the restaurant with the exception of head chef. For a time, I even had a role that allowed me to train new employees, developing teams and systems in dozens of new restaurants. Through all those years and all those positions, there was one role that kept calling me: bartending. It had the combination of creativity and the satisfaction of actually making something with one’s own hands. Besides, I could make a decent living while doing it. And so, this began my purpose in life as I discontinued the path to physiotherapy.

Cut to many years later, and I had landed the most coveted jobs in Vancouver at the time. First, as bar manager of the Four Diamond–ranked Blue Water Café, and finally the Five Diamond–ranked, Relais & Châteaux–designated Lumière. At Lumière, I was given carte blanche to do anything I could imagine. My steepest learning curve was rising to that challenge. I started making my own bitters and cordials because the selection in Vancouver back then was not the greatest. Having my own ingredients became a necessity for re-creating the classics. And I played around with molecular mixology techniques, making foams and caviars and learning how to modify textures in cocktails.

I was finally wrested away from Vancouver and my country to open a new bar in Seattle called Vessel. Seattle had been, with rare exceptions, a sea of pale bars floating in pale vodka. At Vessel, we changed the way Seattle thought about cocktails, and we were honored with a number of awards to mark our success. We received a nomination for the Best New Cocktail Bar in the World at Tales of the Cocktail’s Spirited Awards, one of the world’s most prestigious events for the bar business.

Which brings us to canon . . .

canon is a special beast indeed. It remains a tiny room with enormous ambitions. How tiny? We have a mere 7 tables, and including seating at the bar, room for 32 guests situated in about 450 square feet. Our space is cramped, but our ambitions are enormous. We have three menus. The seasonal menu, a mere ten pages long, which changes approximately every two months. The spirits menu is 160 pages, and still growing. Our extended cocktail menu is over a hundred pages long, hardbound in leather. Why a 160-page spirits list? To accommodate the more than 3,500 different spirits we have available. With the 450-square-foot front of the house encouraging guests to enjoy themselves, the back of the house (our behind the scenes) is well over 3,500 square feet. All of this space is dedicated to our goal of making those thirty-two people feel fortunate that they chose us for the evening, an experience unlike any other in this city.

We also have laboratory equipment dedicated to bringing the best flavors to our cocktails and food. This includes such obscure and expensive tools as centrifuges, an ultrasonic homogenizer, a rotary evaporator, smoking guns, a magnetic hotplate stirrer, and a FIZZIQ Cocktail Bottling System, just a few of our fun toys you’ll discover later in this book.

If you don’t have intimate knowledge of how restaurants and bars work, you may not realize why canon is so special. One example I like to point out when giving a tour puts it all in perspective: We have more whiskey on display in our washrooms (yes, washrooms) than 90 percent of the whiskey bars in the world have in their entire collection. A strong inventory in a normal bar with a capacity that is double ours would be worth around $30,000. At canon the inventory is valued at over $1,000,000. This is just one of the reasons canon is special, for it makes absolutely zero financial sense to have a million-dollar inventory when you only have thirty-two seats to market that investment. What separates canon from average bars is passion and commitment. When I conceived canon, it was not a business that was ever going to make me wealthy, but it was going to put smiles on those faces that appreciate what a unicorn this place truly is.

I am often asked how canon came to be, and it’s a story I enjoy telling, as it is an unusual one. After having a number of disappointing experiences as minority owner in too many bars, I decided the only way I would ever consider ownership again was if I held controlling interest: no mean feat given my essentially nonexistent financial means. I had come close to partnering successfully with various investors over the years, but not one would relinquish control of the company, even when they had no experience in the industry. I understand the need to protect an investment, but if you can’t trust a partner to run a bar, then perhaps that partner isn’t right for you. I would mention this to prospective investors, and they would go invest in another venture, usually in some other industry.

Then one day I received a private message from a gentleman named Andrew Fawcett, a follower on Twitter. He was interested in talking about opening a bar with me, and asked if we could meet. I was more than skeptical at first, so I researched Andrew on the web and discovered he worked at Microsoft. This was a huge red flag for me, because I had seen several technology people around Seattle and Vancouver try to insert themselves into the hospitality industry, with disastrous fallout. I didn’t think much of his invitation to meet until my wife informed me that Andrew was a partner in a restaurant we both enjoyed. It was she who convinced me it wouldn’t hurt to speak with Andrew.

We met, and to make a long story slightly shorter, we agreed to partner, much to my surprise. I had a long list of expectations predicated on my previous failed partnerships. After years of meetings and talks, I had finally found a partner, but with one caveat: Andrew would only offer half the funds I was seeking.

Rather than bring on another partner or investor, I greatly downsized my business plan and began the hunt for space. I had nowhere near the resources I had hoped for, so instead of looking at empty spaces that could be built out to become canon, I focused on existing bars for sale. The financial commitment would be less, and if we got into dire trouble during renovations, we could just open the doors and start earning desperate money. Luckily, it didn’t come to that.

After almost half a year of hunting, Andrew and I settled on a spot that was almost perfect. It was smaller than I wanted: much less risk, but also much less reward. It was close to Capitol Hill, the quirky, hipster neighborhood