Chewing the Fat: Derek Brown of The Gibson

Well sure, you have had experience that's ranged from a number of different things, including as a sommelier. For example, one of your pieces from The Atlantic is about the idea of pairing cocktails with food, and that's not a typical bartender thing, that's a sommelier thing. So how is that, without going into too many specifics, how is that going to influence the new project? I know that you're planning two kind of separate spaces.

Right. And they're very personality driven...We both have a lot of knowledge but how we apply it is what's really different. I really love the idea of food and cocktails together. And the more that I do it, the more that I realize that this is something that's going to become more and more important in the future. Because the assumption has always been extremely Eurocentric and very French in the idea that only wine pairs with food. And you've got a range of responses to that where, when you say, “I'm preparing cocktails with food” which are like “Oh there's too much alcohol.” You're probably familiar with the principle of equivalency which is that sixteen ounces of beer is four ounces of wine is a cocktail - one and a half ounces or two ounces of booze. The fact is that they're all equivalent. But furthermore, you don't have to make cocktails with that much alcohol, you can definitely affect the alcohol in a way that you simply cannot with wine.

And the thing with the craft cocktail movement in D.C. is that a lot of the really great bartenders work in the environment of a restaurant - you've got Gina [Chervesani] at PS 7 and Tom [Brown] at Cork and Todd [Thrasher] at Restaurant Eve. And to be able to go to a restaurant and know that you can have a really great glass of wine for dinner or one of the best cocktails that you'll have anywhere is kind of a nice option.

This is in its infancy. Dial back to 1984, walk into a restaurant and ask them to pair the wine with food. They'd look at you like “What are you talking about?” And the same with beer, which is an even better example because at least there was a tradition that was understood [with wine]. There are traditions of pairing spirits and cocktails with food but they're not understood. In fact, that's one thing I like to point out. Go around the world, getting away from Europe a little, and you find that in Greece they drink Ouzo with their food. You go to Russia, they pair vodka with food. You know there's all these examples throughout the world of people drinking spirits and sometimes even drinking mixed spirits and not always with as articulated a vision as wine pairings... I learned as a sommelier to focus primarily on letting the wine be itself and letting it interact with the food. As a bartender I learned to throw out the rules of whatever you want with cocktails. In other words, keeping the integrity of wine is essential to a sommelier but to a bartender, you just don't care about that horseshit. You don't think to yourself, “Oh, this is wine I can't do anything to it, I can't change it.” You go, “No, I can change it if I want.”

So, that said, are you guys planning to do food?

I think food is integral to our concept. It's fun if you were to have a bar that focuses just on cocktails and it's useful and necessary in order to help the city appreciate cocktails. Although I would say that D.C. is extremely sophisticated compared to most cities in terms of appreciation for cocktails. You know we drink more booze than any other city per capita.

What do you think it is about D.C. that makes it unique in that regard? I know there's a lot of reasons people give: it's an expense account town, there's a lot of young, single, professionals who can and will spend money on drinks, etc.

All of those things are true but I think it's also an issue of culture. D.C. is a very international city and we have so many different influences of cultures and foods. Certainly New York has that too, but here there's a very sophisticated recognition of those cultures and how they interact. D.C. people are very well-traveled and more people have advanced degrees. And I'm not trying to say that we're a whole city of Ph.Ds, but even people who, like myself, don't have an advanced degree interact with people who do, and so I guess the best way to say it would be that D.C. is a city of geeks.

Do you think that makes D.C. uniquely situated as a good place to open a spot that is focused on craft cocktails? I mean, with New York, any time you open The Times you see news about what places are closing based on the fallout from what's happened in the financial sector. D.C. seems to be a little better insulated from that. Do you think we're better suited to be the city of the $14 cocktail than say, New York or L.A.?

Yeah, I do think we're a little lucky with our economic situation in D.C. I have to say that there are a couple of other factors that help. New York has led the cocktail revival as has San Francisco. And part of the reason is because they pick up on trends and run with it. Some people say, “Well, D.C. is behind.” Another way to put that is that when we follow a trend it's not necessarily just for the sake of the trend because there's truly passionate people that are making it happen. And they become great places and they're different and some of them are just trend-proof.

You look at Komi for example. Komi is ahead of a lot of other restaurants I think, in my mind it's not a trend. Johnny Monis is not a fad chef who's picked up a bunch of ingredients because he saw they were cool ingredients being used elsewhere. And now if you go to any number of good restaurants you see goat on the menu. And that's not just to lionize Johnny but I think it's to say that's an example of D.C. having something that's trend-proof. We're focused on what's smart, what's good.

The food world, and the drink world by extension does seem to focus a lot on trends. Like cupcakes are everywhere, you can't get away from them. And Belgian beer and mussels were hailed as a trend. And now it seems like craft cocktails are catching on and “mixology” is catching on because pretty much any restaurant you go to of a certain level has signature cocktails. Do you think that saturation is bad for the trend or does it force people to appreciate what's really good?

Well, you look at a place like Granville Moore's, I don't know if that trend is over or not with Belgian beer and mussels. But my appreciation is that even if the initial buzz of the trend wears off, Granville Moore's is still a damn good place to eat. So my hope for the “cocktail movement” or renaissance or revolution or whatever you want to call it, I look forward to what comes after that where you just walk into a bar and you get a great drink because you've come to expect it, and the people behind the bar have come to understand that.

I think the city right now is gaga over cocktails. It's cocktail crazy. I definitely think that this is a trend, but something that will also last beyond its prime. Just as, you know, the idea of seasonal food was received badly, well, not badly, people liked the idea but there was some resistance. Now it's become normal to have fresh ingredients. Same with craft cocktails. I think they will always be valued. I don't want to be that bartender who's trying to say that this should be the only style of bar, some secret place that only ten people can fit in. The hope is that it will carry over to fine dining restaurants who have been utterly shameful when it comes to cocktails. I firmly think that any fine dining restaurant that sources their ingredients for food and pays attention to the level of service but has nothing better than some tired play on the cosmopolitan on the menu really needs to rethink their game. They've been leaving out a whole segment of what's important to a restaurant.

I guess to transition back to what you guys are trying to do, I know that you are planning two really different spaces. There's going to be a main area that's more Tom's domain with a few cocktails that he'll come up with as well as wine, while the second space, as far as it's been explained so far, the phrase “custom cocktails” was thrown out. What exactly do you guys envision for that? Is it a place where someone sits down and says, “I really like a bourbon rickey so make me your variation,” or more along the lines of “I like bourbon and I enjoy a drink that's got spicy notes to it...go.”

The greatest cocktails were created between 1860 and 1917. And we're still working from those recipes. I like it when bartenders take it a step further and say, “We've learned those recipes and now we're expanding and creating new cocktails.” The way my brother approaches it has always been a little different. It's hard to nail him down on a Sidecar recipe. Believe me, he knows how to make a sidecar, but he knows how to make a classic one and he knows how to make it different. The better way to approach it if you're walking up to him is to say, “I want something with brandy in it.” You're more likely to get something that is interesting and creative. And that's just his style...Along with this “post-trend” cocktail movement will be a change where people think, “What does the menu matter?” The menu is only if you don't want to talk to the bartender. Your bartender should have already a vast knowledge of cocktails and that's where they're going to draw from. That's how it's done at The Gibson. Look how miniscule our menu is. We have a good selection of drinks, but after six months you'll go through most of them. Most of our regulars just drop the menu.

I get that for some restaurants, creating a specialty menu is easier. I'm not trying to say that everyone should have the same approach as The Gibson. But I just think that if you're taking money from guests you're taking requests. And that's what differentiates bartenders from the kitchen in some ways and the chef approach. They're curators of that experience but we have a more democratic experience at the bar whereas you'll rarely see the chef and you don't have the opportunity to throw things at them and say, “Hey, you got chicken? Why don't you do something cool with chicken?” That's just not going to happen.

Well it's interesting that you bring up the kitchen, because I know you said earlier that you think food is an integral part of the place you'd like to run. Have you guys thought about what kind of food or is it going to be mostly focused around the cocktails?

I think that's still developing. I know we both believe food will be important but we don't know the specifics yet...What I can say definitely right now is that neither of us envision a full service restaurant. It's reasonable to assume it might be a more “lounge-y” type menu but again, we're just still really early in developing the concept right now...However, I think it's fair to say these things: Tom and I influence each other even though we have different perspectives. But we don't see those sides as opposing because they both focus on quality, they both focus on pleasing the guest, they both focus on the core principles. But every other thing we do differently.

I think I'm really interested in evolving the art of bartending...when I say evolving I mean, look, there's great places and what I'm doing is different but it's not necessarily going to be better than any other place. I'm obsessed with technique and with an ever-growing body of ingredients and with making my own. So when I say I want to evolve the art of bartending it's within this very narrow confine. I'll never create anything better than a dry martini, in my mind there's just nothing better. But I want to learn how to make a dry martini so good that it's transcendent. I recognize that sounds a touch pretentious but I really do have a singular obsession with making cocktails.