40 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2017 40 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 40 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
FOOD & DRINK
Pumpkin spice and everything nice
Tullulah’s seasonally stimulated mixologists capture taste of fall
By CJ ARLOTTA
It’s spiced drinks season and no
place mixes up spicier libations
than Tullulah’s in Bay Shore, where
the mixologists boast a lengthy autumnal
cocktail list that reads like a
Thanksgiving dinner menu.
Some of the 11 fall cocktails ($14
each) on the menu call for seasonal
ingredients. For example, there’s
pumpkin purée and spiced simple in
the Autumn Addict, and apple cider
and cranberry jam make an appearance
in the Apple of My “Aye.”
“Fall’s definitely one of my favorite
seasons for making cocktails,” Bert
Wiegand, one of the bartenders
clad in ties and suspenders.
Wiegand and his fellow mixologist
Drew Conroy concocted the recipes
a few weeks prior to the drinks
being released. The cocktail and
food menus are seasonal, but one
featured drink’s available yearround.
That would be The Tullulah’s
Old Fashioned, which consists of
Redemption Rye, Demerara sugar,
muddled lemon and an orange
peel, Angostura bitters and cherry
bitters.
The suggestions are as follows: try
both the Rhubarb & Custard and
the Pecan Jag. Conroy, who moved
to the US about a decade ago, grew
up eating rhubarb and custard as a
child in the UK.
“It wasn’t a lavish dessert, but I
wanted to make a drink that tasted
like it,” he says. The cocktail calls
for 1.5 ounces of Queens Courage, a
New York Old Tom gin. A strawberry
infused Campari is then added.
“It’s got that bitter note as well from
the Campari but the sweet from the
strawberry,” he says. He then adds
egg white to the mix.
“It has a nice consistency,” says
Wiegand. “I think people are more
appalled by thinking that it’s going
to have a taste of egg, which it never
will.”
The Rhubarb & Custard cocktail
also consists of lemon juice, a rhubarb
purée and Licor 43, which gives
the drink a vanilla note. A dehydrated
lemon wheel is placed into the
glass before dashes of Peychaud’s
Bitters are added on top of it to
finish off the drink, so “you get that
aromatic of the nose,” Conroy says.
On to Pecan Jag, which Wiegand
concocted after choosing its name,
something he typically does.
“Pecan Jag’s actually a quote from
a Jadakiss song, which is hilarious
because nobody is going to actually
get that,” he says.
His basis for the drink: a booze-forward
tiki cocktail. Unlike the
Rhubarb & Custard, the Pecan Jug’s
rum-based. It calls for a pecan-infused
rum, which he makes using
Denizen Merchant’s Reserve Rum
and pecans. He then infuses the
bottle for about two days.
The drink also consists of Orgeat, an
almond-based syrup; fernet branca,
a staple of Tullulah’s (it’s the house
shot); pimento dram, a simple liqueur
flavored with allspice berries;
demerara simple, to sweeten the
drink; and Angostura bitters.
“It’s really a pretty simple cocktail,
all in all, with a lot of flavor in a
little glass,” he says.
Tullulah’s barkeep Bert Wiegand mixes up a Pecan Jag. (Photo by Justin Bernard)
The Pecan Jag can be found only at
Tullulah’s. (Photo by Justin Bernard)