Pegu CLub | |
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Restaurant information | |
Established | 2005 |
Closed | 2020 |
Street address | 77 W. Houston St, Manhattan, New York City |
Coordinates | 40°43′36″N73°59′58″W / 40.726536°N 73.999554°W Coordinates: 40°43′36″N73°59′58″W / 40.726536°N 73.999554°W |
Pegu Club was a craft cocktail bar in New York City, operating from 2005 to 2020. It was located on the border of SoHo and Greenwich Village in Manhattan. The bar was named after and loosely inspired by the Pegu Club, a club in a British colonial outpost in Myanmar, as well as its signature cocktail with the same name. [1]
The bar was one of the most influential in the world, and a pioneer of the craft cocktail movement. [2]
The bar occupied a large space on the second floor of a green building on Houston Street. The decor had a subtle Asian theme including bamboo floors and gilded lighting, kept dimly lit. Its entrance was subtly marked, only with a small brass dragon business card holder, affixed to the front door at street-level. [3] Tables included condiments – eyedroppers with lemon, lime, sugar, and bitters, inviting guests to customize their drinks. [4]
Audrey Saunders was the creative talent behind the bar and its most well-known owner, among a group of partners. [2] Another notable co-founder was Julie Reiner. [5] Saunders had a drive for quality, partially inspired by her work at Bemelmans Bar. In testing cocktails, she would try innumerous ingredient and spirit combinations, measure her recipes, and refrigerate vermouth. For the bar, she ordered custom barware as well as a Kold-Draft ice machine. The bartenders and servers were given tailored vests over buttoned shirts or stylish cocktail dresses. Saunders was also noted to not accept poor behavior from guests at Pegu Club: part of the cocktail revolution was a change in viewing bartenders from a "liquid butler" to a professional worthy of respect. [6]
The bar's menu had a mixture of forgotten classics, including the Pegu Club cocktail, and Saunders' own creations, including the Gin-Gin Mule, Old Cuban, and Little Italy. [2] The bar was also known for its Fitty Fitty martini (half gin, half vermouth, with a dash of orange bitters to cut the vermouth's effect). At its opening, cocktails were $11-16. [4] The bar highlighted rye and gin, and was famed for not serving any vodka, allowing its guests to discover spirits they thought they might not enjoy. [6]
The food menu, put together with input from their chef Gavin Citron, was short though it had unusual and intriguing combinations. These included smoked trout deviled eggs, scallop mini butgers, and a slider with pulled duck and barbecue sauce. In 2005, the small plates ranged from $6 to $16. [4]
The space was formerly used by a "scrappy" music club before the bar opened. [6] Pegu Club opened in 2005, owned by Audrey Saunders, who was already well-known as a bartender and protégé of Dale DeGroff. At the time of its opening, the cocktail renaissance was in its infancy, and Pegu Club was one of few places in the city to find a complex cocktail. [3]
The bar announced its closure on April 30, 2020, stating that its lease is set to expire in October. Though Saunders had planned to keep the bar open, the business shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the bar. Saunders said the slower summer business would not sustain the operation, a rent hike was possible, the federal small business loan would not have allowed her to rehire all the staff, and there were plumbing issues in the building as well. Saunders stated she was unlikely to reopen Pegu Club elsewhere, as the bar had a sense of place in its location that would not be replicable elsewhere. [3]
Pegu Club was one of the pioneering establishments in the cocktail renaissance. [7] It was also influential in training several of the best-known bartenders; [3] its opening staff was Toby Maloney, Phil Ward, Jim Meehan, and Chad Solomon, all of whom would eventually create their own cocktail bars. [2] The bar also included notable bartenders St. John Frizell, Brian Miller, DEl Pedro, and Kenta Goto. [1] The bars created by these bartenders included PDT, Death & Co., Mayahuel, Fort Defiance, Violet Hour, Bar Goto, The Polynesian, and many others. [8]
A Manhattan is a cocktail made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters. While rye is the traditional whiskey of choice, other commonly used whiskies include Canadian whisky, bourbon, blended whiskey, and Tennessee whiskey. The cocktail is usually stirred then strained into a cocktail glass and garnished traditionally with a maraschino cherry. A Manhattan may also be served on the rocks in a lowball glass.
The old fashioned is a cocktail made by muddling sugar with bitters and water, adding whiskey, and garnishing with an orange slice or zest and a cocktail cherry. It is traditionally served with ice in an old fashioned glass.
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The Pegu Club or the Pegu is a gin-based cocktail that was the signature drink of Burma's Pegu Club. Located just outside Rangoon, the club was named after the Pegu, a Burmese river, and its members were those Britons who were senior government and military officials and prominent businessmen.
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Pegu Club is a recognized heritage site in Yangon, Myanmar, which was a Victorian-style Gentlemen's club founded in 1871 during the British colonization of Burma. The building was built in 1880 and finished in 1882. Pegu Club used to be a place for British officials to spend their time for a drink or two. It was well known because of its signature Pegu Club Cocktail. In southeast Asia, Pegu Club was an equivalent place to the Royal Selangor Club of Kuala Lumpur and The Tanglin Club of Singapore. Rudyard Kipling, as a young newspaperman, visited Pegu Club when he was in Yangon in 1889. Paul Theroux visited Pegu Club in the early 1970s and wrote about it in his book The Great Railway Bazaar. The first phase of the Pegu Club's restoration was completed in 2018.
Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide is a cocktail recipe book and bartending manual first published in 1935. The guide was once used on nearly every bar shelf in the United States. About 11 million copies were printed in 68 editions, as of 2015.
The Blackthorn is an Irish whiskey or sloe gin based cocktail. Both versions emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The Martinez is a classic cocktail that is widely regarded as the direct precursor to the Martini. It serves as the basis for many modern cocktails, and several different versions of the original exist. These are generally distinguished by the accompaniment of either Maraschino or Curacao, as well as differences in gin or bitters.
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Audrey Saunders is an American bartender, considered one of the world's most famous bartenders and New York's most famous female bartender.
The craft cocktail movement is a social movement spurred by the cocktail renaissance, a period of time in the 21st century characterized by a revival and re-prioritization of traditional recipes and methods in the bar industry, especially in the United States. The renaissance spanned from 2004 into the late 2010s. By 2017, high-quality ingredients, techniques, and liquors began to be ubiquitous in bars across the United States, leading writers to declare the renaissance over.
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