A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from June 22, 2008
Red Hook (cocktail)

Red Hook used to be a rough area of Brooklyn filled with longshoremen, but Red Hook is rapidly being gentrified. In 2008, New York City’s first IKEA store opened there.
   
The Red Hook cocktail was created by bartender Enzo Enrico at Manhattan’s Milk & Honey; online recipes for the drink appeared in 2005. The Red Hook consists of two ounces of rye whiskey, one-half ounce Punt y Mes, and one-half ounce maraschino liqueur. The Red Hook cocktail is sometimes said to have been based on the Manhattan cocktail, but Enrico is quoted below as saying that he based the Red Hook on the lesser-known Brooklyn cocktail, substituting Punt y Mes for Amer Picon.
 
     
Wikipedia: Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, USA. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6.
 
Location and history
Before annexation into the 12th Ward of Brooklyn, Red Hook was a separate village. It is named for the red clay soil and the point of land projecting into the East River. The village was settled by the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam in 1636, and named Roode Hoek. In Dutch “Hoek” means “point” or “corner” and not the English hook (i.e. not something curved or bent). Today, the area is home to about 11,000 people.
 
Red Hook is part of the area known as South Brooklyn, though it is northwest of the geographic center of the modern borough. It is a peninsula between Buttermilk Channel, Gowanus Bay and Gowanus Canal at the southern edge of Downtown Brooklyn.
 
Red Hook is connected to Manhattan by the vehicles-only Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, whose toll plaza and approaches separate it from Carroll Gardens to the north. Subway service in the area is sparse, with the IND Culver Line (F G) running along Smith Street and Ninth Street. The B61 bus, formerly a trolley line, runs as a 24-hour service from Erie Basin Red Hook through Downtown Brooklyn, Clinton Hill, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint, terminating at Long Island City, Queens. The B77 bus connects with the Culver Line’s Smith-Ninth Streets station.
 
Red Hook was the setting for the H. P. Lovecraft story “The Horror at Red Hook” and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.
 
Patrick Daly, Principal of P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn was killed in 1992, in the crossfire of a drug-related shooting while looking for a pupil who had left his school. The school was later renamed the Patrick Daly school after the beloved principal.
 
Red Hook’s current eclectic mix of living artists and industrial businesses create a neighborhood coined “Residustrial” in 2008 by artist and resident John P. Missale. Red Hook also contains several parks, including Red Hook Park. In the spring of 2006, the new Carnival Cruise Lines Terminal, more formally the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, opened at Pier 12 at Pioneer Street, Red Hook, bringing additional tourists to Brooklyn.
 
Red Hook is the only part of New York City that, on land, has a full frontal view of the Statue of Liberty, which was oriented to face France, the country which gifted the statue to the United States following the centennial of the United States.
 
eGullet Forums
slkinsey
Jul 29 2005, 07:29 AM
Do we consider Punt e Mes a vermouth? It’s kind of right there between vermouth and amaro. Anyway, I’ve really been liking a Brooklyn-inspired cocktail they make at Milk & Honey called the Red Hook, made with rye, maraschino and Punt e Mes.
     
The Cocktail Chronicles
Red Hook
Posted on November 18th, 2005 by Paul
Just when I started to think that every combination of classic ingredients must have been tried, along comes a drink like the Red Hook. This variation on the classic Manhattan is a fairly recent creation, credited to Enzo Errico, bartender at Sasha Petraske’s Milk & Honey in New York. Named for the neighborhood in South Brooklyn–a former industrial zone with cobblestone streets and Civil War-era brick buildings, now yet another revitalized urban area–the Red Hook is a little more rugged than your typical Manhattan. The Punt y Mes has a bitter component, kind of a cross between sweet vermouth and Campari, that gives the drink a kind of serrated edge, but the healthy dose of maraschino manages to simultaneously tone down the Punt y Mes while adding its own complicated personality to the mix. In cautious balance on a base of rye whiskey, this flavor pairing manages to bring out the strengths in each modifier, without any one flavor becoming too dominant.
 
Cheers to Ben at Zig Zag Cafe for introducing me to this one. A dedicated Manhattan drinker and all-around rye-whiskey fiend, I think I’ve found a new favorite.
 
Red Hook
2 ounces rye whiskey
1/2 ounce Punt y Mes
1/4 - 1/2 ounce maraschino, to taste
Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.
(...)
COMMENTS
slkinsey // Nov 27, 2005 at 7:23 pm
The Red Hook is one of my favorites these days, and I have it almost every time I go to M&H. The formula I’ve had there is: 2 oz Old Overholt rye whiskey, 1/2 oz Punt e Mes and 1/2 oz Luxardo maraschino.
 
I’m not sure it’s quite right to think of it as a Manhattan variant, though. Enzo told me it was inspired by the Brooklyn Cocktail, which is made with rye, sweet vermouth, Amer Picon and maraschino. The Punt e Mes is a stand-in for the sweet vermouth/Amer Picon combination.   
 
Flickr
The Red Hook Cocktail
Uploaded on September 26, 2007
by Chuck T.
Last night’s libation, which I was eager to try after having stumbled across the recipe while reading and researching about vermouth.
 
It’s the creation of Enzo Errico of Milk & Honey in New York, which I thought a wonderful variation on a Manhattan; further Googling reveals that Enzo considers it to be more of a Brooklyn variation.
 
Punt E Mes is a sweet vermouth made by Carpano, but has a bitter characteristic and is more robust and spicy than garden variety sweet vermouth. Don’t substitute regular red vermouth like Martini & Rossi or Cinzano; it won’t work properly for this drink.
 
2 ounces rye whiskey (we used Rittenhouse 100)
1/2 ounce Punt E Mes
1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur
 
Stir with ice for at least 30 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. No garnish was specified, but I added two brandied cherries.
     
New York (NY) Times
Red Hook Cocktail
Published: December 29, 2009
Adapted from Enzo Errico
2 ounces rye whiskey
1/2 ounce Punt e Mes or other sweet vermouth
1/4 to 1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur.
Pour ingredients into a shaker with a generous handful of ice. Stir briskly until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve.
Yield: One drink.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityFood/Drink • Sunday, June 22, 2008 • Permalink


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