Ryan Wisniewski
Tailor-made: A Gold Rush just for you.
Mezze, the reboot of Amy’s Cafe, has recently abandoned its regular cocktail menu in favor of offering exclusively “dealer’s choice” drinks. This is the process whereby the customer puts his or her trust in the bartender to craft a bespoke drink to personal specifications.
Bar manager Dave Biefer asks would-be imbibers a series of questions to arrive at the perfect fit: What base spirit? Sweet, sour, tart or strong? If you should choose, say, “tequila” and “tart,” you might end, as I did, with a play on the margarita. But rather than use the typical triple sec or curacao, Biefer instead shakes the drink with orange peel. The result is a drink redolent of orange oil, with a heady perfume and refreshing flavor.
The choices of “whiskey” and “sour” resulted in a very pleasant take on the Gold Rush. Created by T.J. Siegal at the original Milk & Honey location in New York, the drink is bourbon, lemon juice and honey. Simple, but nevertheless a beautiful summery drink with a bit of kick.
Biefer says switching to dealer’s choice allows him to have more customer interaction, and it’s not as difficult as one might think to create bespoke drinks on the fly: “After the series of questions, I run through a few hundred recipes in my head and tweak one a bit if I have to.”
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misspelled bar manager Dave Biefer's name.