I first encountered the Ramos Gin Fizz years ago and one of my favorite local spots in Manhattan, Market Cafe (496 9th Ave.). A hidden gem, Market Cafe features extremely well priced food and I was a regular consumer of their simple, vibrant salmon tartare when I lived just a few blocks away.
As importantly, the owner of Market Cafe had his entire staff trained by as I remember an 82 year old Cuban Bartender who taught them quite a few specialty cocktails using the freshest ingredients. My first taste of Market Cafe’s Ramos Gin Fizz (and every subsequent taste) made me a fan for life.
I have embedded a great video showing how to make it below. The video features Chris McMillan of the Lobby Lounge at the Ritz Carlton in New Orleans. He’ll give you a bit of the drinks history and show you how to make the classic Ramos Gin Fizz. (FWIW, I don’t use the Vanilla extract when I make it. I prefer the drink’s more refreshing citrus character when it is made without vanilla.)
As a history buff, and for completeness sake, after watching the video, I recommend reading Amanda Hesser’s New York Times Article regarding the Huey Long incident to which McMillan refers in the video.
Recently, Chef Racicot added a new dish to the Lautrec Grand Tasting Menu, PORK BELLY banana miso, kimchee, sudachi, daikon, a move I applauded since I love sous vide pork belly – it was favorite dish of mine at WD-50 in New York – and besides that I have eaten A LOT of kimchee in my life since I have a lot of Korean friends from college, including an old roommate. The problem is, kimchee is fairly spicy and not all that many things pair well with it.
So we first went to rule #2B of the Alan Uchrinscko School of Food & Wine Matching: With spicy cuisine, find a wine with the same level of sweetness and counter the spice with sweet. I started with Weingut Helmut Hexamer Meddersheimer Rheingraffenberg “Quartzit” Riesling 2007, on eof my goto wines, but it failed miserably when faced the spiciness of kimchee: it wasn’t sweet enough. 2005 Egon Muller Scharzhofberger Kabinett, fairly sweet for Kabinett also failed the test. So I then moved up in sweetness pretty substantially, and tried a pair of wines, 2006 St. Urbans-Hof Piesporter Goldtropfchen Auslese and 2003 J.J. Prum Bernakasteler Doktor Auslese. It was a toss up and either one worked pretty well, but it wasn’t precisely what I wanted.
So we then moved back a step to rule #2: Figure out where the dish comes from, and find a wine that grew up with it, that is, if it grows together it goes together. Inevitably this led me to Soju. But Chef Dave wanted a bit of a spin, and said, “Why don’t we make a cocktail?”
This led us to our current pairing, an original creation, the Soju-Litchee Fizz. We use the exact same method for making the drink as hsown in the video above, we simply substitute soju for gin and add in addition to the other ingredients, Wolfberger Litchi liqueur from Alsace. So the recipe is as follows:
Soju Litchi Fizz
1 1/2 oz. CharmSoju
1/2 oz. Lemon Juice
1/2 oz. Lime Juice
1 oz. Simple Syrup
2 oz. Heavy Cream
1 oz. Wolfberger Litchi Liqueur
3 dashes of Orange Flower Water
3/4 oz. Club Soda
Shake all ingredients in a Boston Shaker with no ice for at least one minute. Add ice, and shake again, for as long as possible, at least a minute or two.
The frothy texture prefectly balances the spicy kimchee, and the sweetness of the Litchi cools the palate and along with the Soju adds an Asian flair.
One more cocktail came from my experimentation, the Elderflower Gin Fizz, substituting St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur for the Litchi in my Soju-Litchi fizz and return to Plymouth Gin rather than Soju (although it worked with Soju as well). This was sweeter and more delicate. This is an ideal after-dinner drink tasting quite a bit like a vanilla milk shake. I prefer this cocktail to the Ramos Gin Fizz using vanilla: I think my version is more complex.
Elderflower Gin Fizz
1 1/2 oz. Plymouth Gin
1/2 oz. Lemon Juice
1/2 oz. Lime Juice
1 oz. Simple Syrup
2 oz. Heavy Cream
1 oz. St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
3 dashes of Orange Flower Water
3/4 oz. Club Soda
