THE BON VIVANT’S BLUE BLAZER

He was known as a bon vivant After he was seen even having wine at lunch at Union Square Café. A bon vivant (one fond of good living or one who lives well, a person devoted to refined sensuous enjoyment especially good food and drink.)

Then he died.

That’s how Paul Gottlieb’s (former president, chairman and editor-in-chief of Harry N. Abrams) New York Times obituary writer summed up his demise. The story goes on that in college sometimes he showed up at his morning class still in his evening clothes (black tie). Now that’s a man of class. His desk at Harry Abrams publishing had the sign “Let the Good Times Roll”. If he had been from New Orleans, it would be Laisser le Bons Gouts Rouler.

We have come a long way gastronomically in the United States ever since we lost it all when the home economists and agribusiness took over from the Depression. Bringing the American family enough cheap food to initiate the crisis of obesity and unhealthful food in which we are drowned today. The late great George Lang puts his marker at 1959 when “canned pimento was in the fancy food section of the supermarket.” Not long after a portly gentleman sporting a white goatee and wearing a white suit walked into the Brass Rail headquarters in New York with an idea to cook chicken with all the taste “that God” embalmed them with. The year Howard Johnson’s reduced their 48 flavors to 24. And the 69-cent cocktail disappeared from the Irish bars on Manhattan’s Third Avenue. Along with their 4-inch-high steam-table pastrami sandwiches on indestructible rye.

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Paul Gotlieb would have mourned these passings, but instead of complaining, he would have gone to The Four Seasons to have lunch, a meal that would have included a glass of the Montrachet. And would have gone because he was a bon vivant. He saw no point in letting the good life pass along with the apotheosis of pastrami. Unlike The New York Times obit writer, it would never have occurred to him to juxtapose death and having a glass of wine at lunch.

He might have mentioned the text on the Simple French Food that had just landed on his desk and had a whiff of success as powerful as Richard Olney’s truffled eggs as served up at James Beard’s cooking classes a few weeks before.

But most certainly, as a man of bon temps and bon gout, he would have happily scorned the smiley-faced and Sesame Street thinking that by apostolically refraining from a perfect chardonnay at lunch has moved the world forward.

I would love to have had lunch at The Four Seasons with Gotlieb and George Lang and to speculate on what have been the human inventions of the last two hundred years that have truly improved our daily lives. I would haul up the flagpole, antibiotics, anesthesia, and electricity (though the quality of light of a mirrored room at night with candles is an argument to not use incandescent bulbs). Then I would run out of achievements and the names of who brought them to us because I have almost always had wine at lunch when gathered at a table of friends or great minds I wanted loosened up.

Wine at lunch recently brought the memory back of the Blue Blazer. And memories of Jerry Thomas, the professor of sublime libation and his 1862 The Bartender's Guide: How To Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion.

All the current Cirque du Soleil antics of bartenders (sorry, mixologists) have their origins in Jerry. A man who could make a Blue Blazer at a perfect right angle. Pouring the flaming elixir at a perfect right angle from one hand straight up over his shoulder to another glass in his other hand resting on the bar without setting fire to the neighborhood. As well as he could teach eloquently about American civilization with discourses on the universe of cobblers, juleps, bitters, cups, sangarees, slings, sours, shrubs, tinctures, toddies, and toms.

His motto was “There’s philosophy, even in a jug of punch!” And used a whole book of bon vivant material to prove that nothing good comes from anything mediocre. That no excellent drink can be made out of anything but excellent materials.

Thomas was an imposing and lordly figure of a man, portly, sleek, and jovial, yet possessed of immense dignity. A great diamond gleamed in his shirtfront. A jacket of pure and spotless white encased his bulk. And a huge and handsome moustache, neatly trimmed in the arresting style called “walrus,” adorned his lip and lay caressingly athwart his plump and rosy cheeks.

In professor Jerry’s efforts to pour his delights upon a parched and thirsty world, and having conquered New York, he set sail on the “Annie Smith” for San Francisco. Becoming principal bartender at the famous El Dorado resort. Such were his talents, that when a “gang of desperados” swarmed into the hotel intent on robbery, the professor suavely suggested they refresh themselves before proceeding hell bent. Upon their assent, he prepared a dram which sent them “quivering” to the floor. A good time was had by all at their vigilante hanging an hour later.

At the festivities following their moment with the rope, a large gold miner pulled himself to full height, and roared out that whiskey was for nursing infants.

“Bar-keep! Fix me some hellfire that’ll slake me right down to my gizzard!”

The professor, eying the giant, realized that here, at last, was a man worthy of his steel.

“Come back in an hour.”

The bar room filled with anticipation of the professor’s experiments and was moved to silence. Jerry took out his two New York silver mugs. After a careful twirl of his moustache, he turned to his audience.

“Gentlemen!” he announced. “You are about to witness the birth of a new beverage.”

He poured a tumbler of Scotch into one mug and added a bit of boiling water. He lighted it, and as the blue flame shot toward the ceiling and the crowd shrank back in awe, he hurled the blazing mixture back and forth between the two mugs for ten seconds. He stirred a teaspoon of sugar into the mixture, added a twist of lemon peel, and shoved the smoking concoction across the bar to the bewhiskered giant.

Photo Courtesy of Difford’s Guide

“Sir,” said professor Thomas, bowing, “the Blue Blazer.”

Photo Courtesy of magicskillet.com

Ingredients

4 ounces high-proof (50 percent or higher) Scotch Whisky

2 tsp sugar

3 ounces boiling water, plus extra to heat the mugs

1 lemon twist

Instructions

Preheat 2 glass toddy mugs, or other nonceramic heatproof mugs, with boiling water, then discard before proceeding. Add the whisky, sugar, and 3 oz. boiling water to one of the mugs, then carefully light the liquid within. Pass the flaming liquid between the mugs at least four or five times. Divide the liquid evenly between the mugs and, if necessary, extinguish the liquid using the bottom of the opposite mug. Garnish each with a lemon twist.

Many versions have been told of what happened after the drink was swallowed. But no one denies that the miner drank no more for three days, for the effect of the Blue Blazer is by no means ephemeral. Nor is his establishing the image of the bartender as a creative professional.