SUNDAY BRUNCH WITH BLOODY MARY

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S NOTE IN MANILA BULLETIN, PUBLISHED EVERY DAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 28 MARCH 2008)

I spent last Sunday free from all worries, waking up only for Chef Ruediger Lurz’s champagne brunch at Red at the Makati Shangri-La. It would have been perfect if I had myself wasted on Saturday night. After all, more than anything else, I was looking forward most of all to fixing myself a Bloody Mary, which, they say, is a hangover cure.

As I leaned over to offer some of my brew, I lost my balance and spilled the drink all over her dress. Seeing her splashed all over in crimson, I was positively inspired. ‘Well,’ I cried out. ‘If you aren’t bloody Mary!’ —George Jessel, The Chronicle Telegram

I don’t know why Bloody Mary has always appealed to me. As a young man, while watching a middle-aged CEO type pouring vodka, along with tomato juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, and celery salt, into a rock glass at an airport lounge just after the break of dawn, I decided it was very sophisticated to make a good Bloody Mary the morning after a night on the town.
In the early 2000, when I had the rare privilege to take a crash course on mixing drinks at the Absolut Akademi in Ahus, Sweden, I was so much more interested in concocting the perfect Bloody Mary than in any of the so-called drinks du jour on the bar list, so that back in Manila, bearing an Absolut Akademi diploma, I threw a mixing party for 50, in which my featured drink was, you guessed it, a Bloody Mary. Of course, I should have thrown a Sunday brunch instead because, although Bloody Mary was the raison d’etre of the cocktail party, how could it have possibly stolen the night from the Cosmopolitans and the ever-reliable vodka and Sprite?
In the Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach, published in 1980, Bloody Mary is listed as “the official alcoholic beverage of the preppy lifestyle,” so I guess I am just acting my age every time I crave for this classic cocktail. Nobody knows exactly how it came about, but some say it was first mentioned in a hedonistic column in The New York Herald Tribune in 1939, where it was considered “the newest pick-me-up [that] is receiving attention from the town’s paragraphers…” Identified back then as a creation of songwriter and Smirnoff endorser George Jessel, it was later claimed to have been reinvented by Fernand Petiot, a bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, who described Jessel’s cocktail invention as “nothing but vodka and tomato juice.” In 1964, in The New Yorker, Petiot revealed how he raised the bar on the famous drink: “I cover the bottom with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper, and a layer of Worcestershire sauce; I then add a dash of lemon juice and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice, shake, strain, pour.”
Last Sunday at Red, I enjoyed my Bloody Mary immensely. It was perfect as served, with room for me to tweak it to my satisfaction. Ordering Tabasco and a teaspoon of horseradish on the side, I built up the spiciness to a level that brought a delicious buzz to my head and a flame to my tongue, which, in turn, gave me more reason to go for more helpings at the buffet table groaning under the weight of supreme indulgence: a platter of exotic French cheeses, Alaskan king prawns, lobster tails, saffron risotto, organic egg omelet with wild mushrooms, and cup after cup of coffee. Just as exciting as the Bloody Mary, if only because they, too, allowed me to have a say in how best to enjoy them, whether with a little or a lot of lime juice, a pinch or more of horseradish, a sprinkling of vinegar or a shower of rock salt, were Red’s exquisite oysters. My favorite was the Belon, the prized flat-shelled ones from Brittany, but the creuses from elsewhere in France were just as delightful and so were the New Zealand oysters and fin-de-claires from the Philippines.
There is nothing so complex about the preparation of Bloody Mary. An extremely versatile, “buildable” drink, you can garnish it with anything, from olives and pickles to shrimp or lobster and even cheese to make it extra special. More than a drink, I suppose it is a dish in liquid form, like a soup with a kick, although, I must admit, it’s not so kosher to call it so.
But, without a doubt, you get more than a buzz from Bloody Mary. Each order is a glass full of antioxidants. I would also recommend the one at Ascott, but at Chef Ruediger’s champagne brunch, which runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Sunday at Red, you can drink your fill, in proportion to the free radicals you may have accumulated over the week before and the ones you are likely to accumulate in the week ahead.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.