{"id":370,"date":"2012-08-23T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2012\/08\/23\/essex"},"modified":"2015-12-16T18:19:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T23:19:42","slug":"essex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/08\/essex\/","title":{"rendered":"Essex"},"content":{"rendered":"

I MADE IT! By which I mean, I managed to not<\/i> go into labor before, in the middle of, or in the days immediately following the opening of Essex<\/a>. VICTORY.<\/p>\n

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I imagine that I will very soon start cursing the fact that I am still pregnant<\/a>, but for now, I feel like I should be given a medal, or a cocktail. Since neither is a viable option, I made myself a pan of\u00a0flapjacks<\/a>\u00a0and ate a quarter of it in one sitting.<\/p>\n

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I haven\u2019t written a lot about Essex here, not because it has felt like any less of a big deal than Delancey<\/a>, but because the first half of this year, which was when the project began to move forward, ate me alive<\/a>. There were a couple of months when, in my own head, I had to pretend (la la la<\/i>) that Essex wasn\u2019t actually happening. But last Wednesday, with great help from a lot of people, it happened. Essex is now open! Every Wednesday to Sunday! Starting at 4:30 pm!<\/i> I\u2019m so proud of it, proud of Brandon for dreaming it up, proud of our staff for working so hard, proud that we actually did it and that I didn\u2019t have the baby while hunched over the computer in the office, formatting the cocktail menu.<\/p>\n

In the early days of Delancey, I was too busy making salads and mistakes and popsicles to reach for my camera and take pictures. I have pictures of Delancey under construction, pictures of Delancey just before opening, and pictures from months after opening, but I have almost none of its first weeks. So this weekend, I sneaked into Essex in the few quiet, golden moments between set-up and opening time, and I snapped some.<\/p>\n

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Essex sits directly next door to Delancey, in the former home of Bella Umbrella<\/a>. Even before we learned that the umbrella shop was moving out, we had talked about someday opening a bar there. Maybe it could work hand-in-hand with Delancey, we thought, and be a place for people to hang out before or after dinner. As we began to think about what we would want our bar to feel like, and what we would want to drink there, and what we would want to eat there, the idea grew. Since this is our neighborhood, we wanted it to feel like a neighborhood place, but with exceptional cocktails. Even more, we wanted to sort of geek out with it, to make a lot of the cocktail ingredients in-house – and not just bitters, but liqueurs, fernet, vermouths, and sodas. That thinking then quickly extended itself to the food. If we\u2019re going to serve pretzels, let\u2019s say, we should make them ourselves, we decided. And we should serve them with Brandon\u2019s homemade mustard. And while we\u2019re at it, hey, maybe you could eat a whole meal at Essex! \u00a0Maybe we could serve open-face toasts with clothbound aged cheddar and house-pickled peppers. And maybe that lacquered and smoked pork shoulder that Brandon has been tinkering with since May. And maybe spot prawns caught nearby, with a pot of chile-spiked mayo. And oh, oh, OH<\/i>, our own version of a Thin Mint! We could play around, we realized, and really\u00a0make stuff <\/i>– stuff that didn\u2019t necessarily fit at Delancey.<\/p>\n

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We decided to call it Essex because, in Manhattan, Essex and Delancey Streets intersect, and the Essex and Delancey subway stops share a station. Our Essex and our Delancey share a staff, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a hallway, and an overstuffed office that gives me heart palpitations. Like Delancey, Essex was designed by Katie Caradec (my cousin!) and Pantea Tehrani, of\u00a0tbD<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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And to really keep it all in the family, Brandon named our first liqueur, made from three different kinds of citrus and aged for four months in rye barrels, after my dad. It\u2019s called Burg\u2019s Extra-Special Orange. Burg will have been gone for ten years, ten years<\/i>, this December, but if he were still around, I think he would have claimed this bar stool\u00a0as his designated seat. Maybe we should have a plaque made for it. Maybe someday.<\/div>\n
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Recipe<\/div>\n

British Flapjacks<\/h2>\n

Adapted from my recipe in Bon App\u00e9tit, March 2010<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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