Where: Table 17, 782 Queen East, at Saulter, 416-519-1851
How: 1 oz Maker’s Mark bourbon, ½ oz Cointreau, Peychaud bitters, Fee Brothers bitters. Shake on ice, pour into a champagne flute, top with dry sparkling wine and an orange twist.
How much: $14
The experience: Mikey Morrow’s been bartending for a long time, and reveals a likeable lack of pretension when he mentions he found this drink, named after a Louisville hotel, “while farting around on the internet.”
I’ve imbibed at the Seelbach and it is worthy of emulation. Here, the virtues of the champagne cocktail format become readily apparent. The Seelbach verges on thirst-quenching, and the relative neutrality of the wine allows the fruitiness of the drink’s other ingredients to shine through.
Table 17 is admittedly more of a restaurant than a bar, but it does have a nice big piece of wood with stools in front of it and Morrow behind it. And it’s one of the few places in the east end where serious cocktailing is undertaken.
