This spring, the James Beard Award-winning team behind Maison Premiere releases The Maison Premiere Almanac [April 25th, 2023, Clarkson Potter, $40]. More than a cocktail recipe book, the Almanac serves as a resource for professional bartenders and home enthusiasts alike, bringing to life the Maison Premiere experience with the rare combination of style and substance. Maison Premiere, the multiple award-winning bar and restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn delights with an imaginative and thoroughly original cocktail compendium and bartending manual with 90 drink recipes for absinthe (a Maison specialty) and highly refined cocktails, including martinis, toddies, punches, and mint juleps.
James Beard Award-Winning Maison Premiere Releases Almanac
Known for their excellent cocktails, supreme oysters and unique New Orleans flair, Maison Premiere has grown from humble beginnings to being a major player in both the craft cocktail revival and the bar and restaurant renaissance. Owners Joshua Boissy and Krystof Zizka founded Maison Premiere in 2011 with late-nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and Paris as their muse. The bar has since been met with accolades like Best Bar in America by Esquire, and Top 50 Bars in the World over its many years. In an effort to document the story, recipes, and ephemera of Maison Premiere, Boissy and Zizka set out to make a book, and tapped Jordan Mackay (journalist, writer, and co-author of several award-winning books on wine and food) and William Elliot (longtime managing partner of Maison Premiere) as co-authors.
Essentially a Maison Premiere artifact itself, the book offers an inside look at the bar’s inspiration and origin story, a stylized guide to Maison Premiere’s refined aesthetic, a whirlwind account of the tumultuously tawdry history of absinthe and how to drink it, and a deep dive into the mighty oyster and the farmers who raise them. The Almanac serves as a collection of essential and diverting information for Maison Premiere context complete with a guide to wines ready to pair with a freshly shucked oyster, a manual for building a baroque-inspired garden, selections from Maison Premiere’s NOLA Blues soundtrack for an immersive experience and more.
DETAILS
The Maison Premiere Almanac debuts transformative bartending techniques, deep explorations into the art of the cocktail, detailed guide to enjoying the craft of cocktail in the Maison Premiere style and recipes inspired by history to create a pinnacle beverage bible for a new generation of cultural savants.
The Almanac is separated into five chapters, including:
- The Place – Illustrating the humble history of how the successful bar and restaurant was designed and built, the foundations of the Maison-style, and a glimpse into meaningful geological influences, this section offers an inside look to the inception of Maison Premiere and its storied impact on the craft cocktail revival.
- The Bar & Its Drinks – With a basic guide to bar practices, a dossier of refined tools and advanced techniques from the lexicon of Maison Premiere’s spirit selections, insights on tableside preparations plus a note on a beer and a wine, this section highlights the uninhabited creativity, meticulous selection of ingredients, rigorous polishing of technique and practice of Maison Premiere — all driven by a continuous quest for deliciousness and an artistic eye toward presentation. Highlights include:
- Tableside Cocktail Service including details on Sazerac Service, Toddy Service, Martini Service – all staples at Maison Premiere.
- À La Louisiane – Hailing from the historic restaurant in New Orleans, this spirituous cocktail is a less valued member of the Southern cocktail cannon, that contains Peychaud’s bitters, a touch of absinthe, rye whiskey, Bénédictine (an herbal liquor), red vermouth and garnished with a candied cherry.
- The Carondelet – one of Maison Premiere’s most frequently ordered cocktails, includes equal parts lemon and lime juice, orange flower water, vanilla, salted honey syrup and London Dry gin. This elixir is built on the flavor template of a Ramos Gin Fizz, but reimagined by the Maison Premiere team to exclude dairy and egg white.
- Syrups and Cordials like Ginger Syrup, Maison 7-Spice Chai Syrup, Maison Toasted Coconut Syrup, Passionfruit Syrup and more.
- Absinthe: The Song of the Green Faire – This chapter includes building blocks of cocktail preparation with absinthe and Maison Premiere’s distinct choice to incorporate this ethereal spirit into a mainstay on the menu through curated absinthe rituals and protocols. Recipe highlights include:
- Chrysanthemum – first making its appearance in Hugo Ensslin’s 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks, Maison Premiere reimaged this cocktail in early 2010 to highlight absinthe in this usually low-ABV drink. With a very unique profile of heavy aromatics of mint, fresh fennel and rose, this cocktail includes aromatic bitters, Germain-Robin absinthe, Bénédictine, La Quintinye Blanc vermouth and a snapdragon, discarded lemon twist, for garish.
- Maison Absinthe Colada – one of the most famous cocktails from Maison Premiere, this colada was the lovechild of two early Maison bar talents, a former bartender and bar manager, which morphed the tropical combination of rhum agricole and coconut into a cooling, herbal, fennel accented cocktail with crème de menthe, lemon juice, white rum, Maison Coconut Syrup, pineapple juice, Mansinthe absinthe and garnished with a mint bouquet.
- Inverness – utilizing La Muse Verte, one of the most deeply herbaceous absinthes, this wild and fresh cocktail boasts a mildly woodsy bitterness with Angostura bitters, blueberry jam, lemon cordial, Mattei Cap Corse Quinquina Blanc vermouth, Drambuie, La Muse Verte absinthe that mixes with hand-whipped cassis cream, rounding off the cocktail with a sharp peppery black currant flavor.
- Yellow Parrot – this absinthe forward cocktail has surprised drinkers at Maison Premiere for over a decade with its unlikely combination of yellow Chartreuse, Vieux Pontarlier Absinthe Verte, and Apry liqueur. This immensely delicious recipe is the perfect way to enjoy a full-bodied, absinthe-forward cocktail.
- The Call of the Sea – This section of the Almanac speaks to inspiration behind Maison Premiere oyster-bar, the discovery of old New York’s obsession with all things oysters & seafood and a how to guide on how to confidently select, prepare and indulge in the salubriousness of oyster eating all in the Maison Premiere style.
- The Almanac – The final chapter includes a calendar of events with notable dates and seasons of the Maison Premiere annum, along with wine pairing for oysters and other sea delicacies and poetry and song inspired by the New Orleans streets, artifacts and horticulture.
The Maison Premiere Almanac releases on April 25th, 2023. For more information visit maisonpremiere.com or follow Maison Premiere on Instagram.
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