Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The Lafayette Lobby Bar’s Brandy Crusta: a slushie that drinks like a drink
Shaved ice meets a blend of brandy
Brandy Crusta
Anthony Schmidt
“All the drinks from the Lobby Bar are a slight twist on classic New Orleans,” says Anthony Schmidt, Beverage Director for The Lafayette. And the Brandy Crusta is a no-brainer for this particularly warm day. “Whereas typically a Brandy Crusta would be served shaken and up with an elongated orange twist, this one is a little bit different. We serve it over shaved ice, so it kind of turns into this unique new texture, like a slushie made almost à la minute.”
According to Schmidt, the original recipe calls for a sugar rim to balance the dryness, but his version has a more luscious, decadent finish. “Essentially, a traditional Brandy Crusta uses just a single curaçao. Here, we’re blending a couple of different styles to create this signature flavor, between the kumquat and our house curaçao. It’s actually a curaçao that we manipulate a little bit — we add a little touch of calamansi extract.”
The drink has a blend of brandy as well, “so instead of it just being a single version of brandy, we’re doing cognac and apple brandy.” He likes Clear Creek’s two-year aged apple brandy for this drink. “A little bit of age on the brandy is important. It kind of rounds it, makes it a little more soft, approachable, easy drinking.”
“When you combine those ideas,” Schmidt continues, “it’s gonna lend itself toward a more tropical presentation. We’re gonna drive that even farther when we use our passion fruit syrup in addition to this. Really, what we wanted it to be is one foot in ‘traditional’ and another foot in ‘tropical’ — and also inherently new, by way of the granita service.”
That’s where the shaved ice came into play. “We hadn’t used the machine before, and we were imagining ourselves in this hot box atrium, and this felt more festive, appropriate, and exciting, because we hadn’t done something like it before,” Schmidt recalls. “When it’s served, you’ll get a glass of shaved ice and the bartender will pour a blended cocktail over the top of it, and it immediately melts into a texture that’s somewhere between pebble ice and shaved ice. Ice that you can chew on, but it’s kind of like snow.”
Time is somewhat of the essence, but only somewhat. “You kind of want to enjoy it relatively soon… but it still holds that slush, that granita texture, quite stable. You don’t have to rush to enjoy it. It drinks like a drink.”
Lobby Bar at The Lafayette
THE LAFAYETTE LOBBY BAR’S
BRANDY CRUSTA
.75 oz lemon
.5 oz passion fruit syrup
.75 oz Cointreau
.25 oz kumquat liqueur
.75 oz Clear Creek Apple Brandy
1 oz Park Cognac VSOP
.25 oz simple syrup
.75 oz shaved ice
Add all ingredients except ice to a shaking tin and set aside. Then follow the directions on your shaver to make .75 - 1 oz of shaved ice and place into your favorite coupe. Quickly shake the ingredients in your tin, and slowly pour over the shaved ice. You will notice the ice start to melt down and dilute your cocktail. Garnish with your favorite edible flower — cheers!
Here's something you might be interested in.
The Lafayette Lobby Bar’s Brandy Crusta: a slushie that drinks like a drink
Shaved ice meets a blend of brandy
The Lafayette Lobby Bar’s Brandy Crusta: a slushie that drinks like a drink
Shaved ice meets a blend of brandy
Brandy Crusta
Anthony Schmidt
“All the drinks from the Lobby Bar are a slight twist on classic New Orleans,” says Anthony Schmidt, Beverage Director for The Lafayette. And the Brandy Crusta is a no-brainer for this particularly warm day. “Whereas typically a Brandy Crusta would be served shaken and up with an elongated orange twist, this one is a little bit different. We serve it over shaved ice, so it kind of turns into this unique new texture, like a slushie made almost à la minute.”
According to Schmidt, the original recipe calls for a sugar rim to balance the dryness, but his version has a more luscious, decadent finish. “Essentially, a traditional Brandy Crusta uses just a single curaçao. Here, we’re blending a couple of different styles to create this signature flavor, between the kumquat and our house curaçao. It’s actually a curaçao that we manipulate a little bit — we add a little touch of calamansi extract.”
The drink has a blend of brandy as well, “so instead of it just being a single version of brandy, we’re doing cognac and apple brandy.” He likes Clear Creek’s two-year aged apple brandy for this drink. “A little bit of age on the brandy is important. It kind of rounds it, makes it a little more soft, approachable, easy drinking.”
“When you combine those ideas,” Schmidt continues, “it’s gonna lend itself toward a more tropical presentation. We’re gonna drive that even farther when we use our passion fruit syrup in addition to this. Really, what we wanted it to be is one foot in ‘traditional’ and another foot in ‘tropical’ — and also inherently new, by way of the granita service.”
That’s where the shaved ice came into play. “We hadn’t used the machine before, and we were imagining ourselves in this hot box atrium, and this felt more festive, appropriate, and exciting, because we hadn’t done something like it before,” Schmidt recalls. “When it’s served, you’ll get a glass of shaved ice and the bartender will pour a blended cocktail over the top of it, and it immediately melts into a texture that’s somewhere between pebble ice and shaved ice. Ice that you can chew on, but it’s kind of like snow.”
Time is somewhat of the essence, but only somewhat. “You kind of want to enjoy it relatively soon… but it still holds that slush, that granita texture, quite stable. You don’t have to rush to enjoy it. It drinks like a drink.”
Lobby Bar at The Lafayette
THE LAFAYETTE LOBBY BAR’S
BRANDY CRUSTA
.75 oz lemon
.5 oz passion fruit syrup
.75 oz Cointreau
.25 oz kumquat liqueur
.75 oz Clear Creek Apple Brandy
1 oz Park Cognac VSOP
.25 oz simple syrup
.75 oz shaved ice
Add all ingredients except ice to a shaking tin and set aside. Then follow the directions on your shaver to make .75 - 1 oz of shaved ice and place into your favorite coupe. Quickly shake the ingredients in your tin, and slowly pour over the shaved ice. You will notice the ice start to melt down and dilute your cocktail. Garnish with your favorite edible flower — cheers!
Comments