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Friday, September 11, 2009
Good drinks: Framboise Flip at East Side Show Room
What kind of place is this? Every detail is obsessively rendered in soft-focus retro-shab, down to the bartender smashing ice to order in a green Swiss Army-style bag for the pricey, show-crafted cocktails.
A woman in a vintage-store strapless flapper ensemble plays the piano and the kazoo (at the same time). Dark red curtains shield the big main room, a patchwork of exposed bricks, painted ductwork and concrete floors. The furniture looks like it was made for overimagined puppet people, like having a tea party with the robots from the new animated fever dream called ‘9.’
The Framboise Flip is a $9 drink of doll-like proportions in a wee sherbet goblet, something like a pleasantly sweet raspberry-bourbon smoothie with a dash of peach bitters, made frothy with an egg and finished with a mint leaf the bartender smacks between his palms to release the oils. It’s a fussy concoction made by true cocktail believers.
In fact, after eyeballing my half-drained drink, bartender James Chauncy didn’t like what he saw. So he remade it — colder, more finely muddled and strained, sporting sharper teeth.
Elsewhere on the early-last-century cocktail list is a Pisco Fuego, made with grape brandy, lemon, elderflower liqueur and fire. Yes, for $11, you get to see the thing get sprinkled with sugar and torched to make just a whisper of a bruleed floater on the sweet, floral drink.
Not in the mood for a show? The beer list is medieval in strength, and the menu moves from charcuterie to shrimp and grits to short ribs.
1100 E. Sixth St. 467-4280, eastsideshowroom.com.
(American-Statesman photo by Mike Sutter)
