I had a regular come in while I was working the coffee bar who has been a patron of mine in many different restaurants. He asked me if I was enjoying my restaurant life more than my music career. As a personal philosophy, customer service and music performance are one and the same. I sang in the UNI Varsity Men’s Glee Club, and our motto is that we believe in the power of music to lift up, inspire, and make the world a better place. My goal for every guest is to do the same with my service. Until this moment, I had never put this into words before but I have always felt this way.
I want to breathe energy and life into my guests; to lift them up, and hopefully educate and share my passion with them. It’s not always easy to please people, and not everyone wants, expects, or allows you to even try. Music and paintings are obvious art to most people, but I think that crafting magical cocktails, unique and thought-provoking dishes, and even perfecting the experience of a guest through your interactions with them is equally an art. Angie and I really enjoy this aspect of customer service. We also enjoy creating artful, thought-provoking beverages. To that end, this week we decided to play with a bottle capper. Enter: Argentinian Soda Jerk.
Several months ago, Angie had a lucky find during her stroll around our downtown shopping district that made this cocktail possible. She found a set of 1992 Barcelona Olympics vintage Coca-Cola bottles at a consignment store. They were empty and missing their original caps, but we knew we wanted to cap them. However, being that we’ve never capped a beverage before, we had to get a capper.
For the cocktail, we started by making some cinnamon syrup. One of the things that makes me nervous as a novice in the kitchen is vague directions that a skilled cook wouldn’t even blink at. Things like “toast the cinnamon until fragrant.” My inner dialogue explodes with questions. How long should I toast it? How hot should it be? Do I crack the cinnamon or toast it whole? Other times the directions say “two horseradish roots” or “five serrano chili peppers” and I find myself freaking out about whether or not I have the right size item. What if my peppers are huge, or worse, not big enough?
Luckily, the answer is always the same. When in doubt, figure it out. Go for it. Dive right in and make it. If it doesn’t seem right, try again and change something. This is the joy I find in working out of my comfort zone. Nothing is quite as exciting as trying to do something new and finding out if it went well or not. While making the cinnamon syrup, I thought it wasn’t going well at first. Before the water had cooled to room temperature, it was very lacking in cinnamon flavor, but by the time it was ready to mix with sugar and reserve in the fridge, the flavor of the cinnamon had significantly blossomed. It was the smoothest, most delicious cinnamon syrup I’ve used in a cocktail.
We decided to use Mexican Coca-Cola. Angie and I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that we were bottling an Argentinian cocktail with Mexican Coke, Italian liqueur, and Portugese Port in Spanish Olympic glasses, all being made and bottled in the U.S. A rainbow of cultures in every sip.
The rest of the cocktail is surprisingly easy. We mixed all of the components together and charged it in our soda siphon. After we were done carbonating it, we poured it into the Coke bottles. This was the most difficult part of the process. Our carbonated cocktail was so foamy we were having a hard time filling the bottles with liquid without having to spend time tending to the carbonation bubbles. Once they were filled to the brim, we capped each bottle and moved on to a photo session.
By the time we finished bottling everything, it was very late. Angie and I elected to sleep and wait to taste it the next day. We were also eager to see how it held up overnight. Needless to say, we were not disappointed. Delicious, refreshing, and full of herb and spiced flavors. The Argentinian Soda Jerk is an excellent marriage of Fernet Branca and cola, complemented by amaro and cinnamon, softly balanced by port, and crisp from the carbonation. Having done multiple bottles, I have been enjoying cracking one open from time to time over the past week and a half.
