Have you stepped inside the doors at 1000 Washington Ave., yet? There’s something for everyone at Prime 1000, restaurateur Claus Schmitz’s new downtown steakhouse. Depending on your mood, you can saddle up to the bar, sit in the main dining area or hang with friends in the tucked-away lounge of the coolly transformed space that was once Kitchen K. When it comes to drinking, our mood swings too. Sometimes we want savory, other times we want sweet. At Prime, we’ve found cocktails that fit either spirit.
The M.Y. Martini is made from bacon vodka and – wait for it – pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. Seems an unusual ingredient for a cocktail but, as it turns out, vodka and pickle juice are a pretty good combination – and a classic Russian pairing. The bacon vodka is nicely crisp and not overpoweringly smoky. The drink’s lingering flavor of bacon – plus the salty pickle juice – is akin to the taste of biting into a BLT and following it up with a chomp of the (hopefully) crisp pickle on the side. Is pickle juice the next big thing in the cocktail world? We won’t make that prediction just yet, but this savory drink is definitely worth trying.
Feeling more like sugar, spice and everything nice? Get a head start on holiday merrymaking by ordering Prime 1000’s Gingerbread and Apples. The drink calls for apple rum, gingerbread syrup, apple juice and a splash of lemon juice to balance out what might otherwise be a sugar rush. Rimming the cocktail glass with graham cracker powder gives this fun wintry drink an added dose of flair.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2010.