After a rough day at work, Dante’s Fire is the perfect spot to relax over a plate of mussels and a stiff martini. Even if it’s, say, 1:30 in the morning.
The funky old A-frame building on Grant Road has become a hot spot for service industry folk, who pour in after their late shifts in search of craft cocktails and a little kitsch. On a recent evening, servers in black button-ups and ties sprung out of kitchen carrying plates of old school bistro faire like pappardelle pasta and oysters Rockefeller. The red room was filled with laughter.
Perhaps they were looking at the cocktail menu, which reads like a divine comedy. Drinks are organized into Dante’s circles of hell (lust, heresy, et cetera) Many have funny names, like the Grow a Pear with citrus vodka and pear juice, or the Bloody Hell stained red with bitters and sweet Lillet Rouge.
Like usual, I skipped the whiskey and the screaming hot pepper drinks and went for the fluff. Dante’s signature drink is a cucumber martini that uses a technique borrowed from molecular gastronomy. Basically, owner Jon Tuck likes to turn things into foam. Coffee, foie gras, Manchego cheese, you name it.
For the martini, aptly called the Cucumber Martini, he extracts the liquid from a ton of cucumbers until he fills a plastic jar with their glistening, emerald juice. He takes six ounces of this, one ounce of simple syrup, two egg whites and shakes, pouring the mix into a small pressurized canister you’d typically use for whipped cream.
Voilà! Cucumber foam. The rest of the drink is simple. Cucumber vodka, triple sec and housemade sour mix made from citrus and simple syrup, “shaken as if it owes you money,” he says. Foam goes in first, then the liquid is poured on top.
The cocktail tasted, well, ethereal. The sweet foam coated my lips as I sipped the refreshing juice, almost like drinking from a rain cloud. It wasn’t by any means a challenging cocktail or even a very complex one. But hey, after a long day, who wants another math problem?
My only advice is this: Drink up; the foam melts quickly!
