The barman at Il Bistro mixes a mojito with the exacting
concentration usually reserved for major surgery. The mint’s a little
limp; he saves the most picturesque sprig to deploy precisely as
garnish, as if there’s one correct location for it and only one. While
the care taken is admirable, the making of mojitos in November
should be against the law, especially at Il Bistro. If Tom Bergin’s
in Los Angeles is The House of Irish Coffee, Il Bistro is El Casa de
Café Español, known for making the finest version of the
world’s finest corrected-coffee drink.
The barman is as impeccable in appearance as he is meticulous in his
mixology. His inky black vest has never seen a stain, his tie is a
perfect Windsor knot of understated stripes, and no one’s head has ever
been balder. Everyone at the bar watches the creation of the
Spanish coffee, reverently silent except for one woman’s murmur: “I
love Spanish coffee.”
The rim of a tulip-shaped stemmed glass is lemon rubbed and sugar
dipped. (The lemon, like the tiny twist served with an espresso,
provides a note of citrus that hits the coffee just right.) A small
amount of high-proof rum is introduced, then set on fire; it
burns blue, and the barman holds the glass horizontal, turning it
slowly, watching intently as the sugar rim caramelizes. If a flame
escapes, falling to the floor like a scrap of incandescent blue cloth,
he extinguishes it calmly with his foot. He grates a cinnamon stick
over the last of the fire, making sparks. Then it’s dark rum, Tia
Maria, coffee, and whipping cream from a battered silver bowl with a
whisk in it that waits in the refrigerator below the cash register. On
top: a grating of nutmeg.
What’s so Spanish about Spanish coffee? The Spanish are said to be
the people who first united coffee and alcohol, a clash of
civilizations in a cup. Moorish conquerors from the Umayyad caliphate
brought the Iberian Peninsula coffee; conquistadors returned from the
Caribbean with blood on their hands and “a hot, hellish, and
terrible fuddling” called rum. According to lore, “the rumbullion
man” walked up and down the docks of Lisbon—the JFK airport of
the 16th century—selling the restorative combination to shivering
sailors. (The Irish variation, legend has it, wasn’t concocted until
the 1940s, when it was served to weary, presumably cranky American
travelers at what would become Shannon International Airport.)
The drink: unsweet, unexpectedly complex, exactly the giddyap-whoa a
winter evening requires. How Il Bistro’s amber-lit hideout of a
bar became the premier venue for Spanish coffee is a mystery, lost
to the sands of time; the place has been open since 1975, the menu is
classic Italian.
Il Bistro, 93A Pike St, 682-3049