McGarry Jack - The Dead Rabbit mixology & mayhem: the story of John Morrissey and the worlds best cocktail menu

Copyright 2018 By Sean Muldoon, Jack McGarry, and Jillian Vose cocktail Photography 2018 By Brent Herrig Photography Portrait and Bar Photography 2018 by Gregory J. Buda : Studio 54 AP Studio/Richard Drew, and 42nd Street New York Times/Jack Manning. Cover illustration by Mark Reihill All Rights Reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. hmhco.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Muldoon, Sean, author. | Vose, Jillian author. | Vose, Jillian author.

Title: The Dead Rabbit mixology & mayhem : the story of John Morrissey and the worlds best cocktail menu / Sean Muldoon, Jack McGarry and Jillian Vose. Description: New York, New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018012252 (print) | LCCN 2018019987 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328453334 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328451873 (paper over board) Subjects: LCSH: CocktailsComic books, strips, etc. | Morrissey, John, 1831-1878BiographyComic books, strips, etc. | LCGFT: Cookbooks. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX951 (ebook) | LCC TX951 .M828 2018 (print) | DDC 641.87/4dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012252 Book design by Drinksology v1.1018

INTRODUCTION WELCOME, WHATLL YOU HAVE? The Dead Rabbit is the brainchild of Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry. Theyd already created the Worlds Best Bar back home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and they wanted to do it again in New York. But they had a very specific goal in mind: to take the best of the traditional Irish bar into the twenty-first century, and add world-beating cocktails. In all, it took two and a half long years to find, secure and launch the Dead Rabbit. Everyone advised them not to do it. Everyone was wrong.

The bar was a runaway success from the start, winning major awards (including two Worlds Best titles to date) and setting new standards within the industry. A major part of that success has been a genuinely revolutionary approach to menu creation and design. These documents continue to excite extraordinary word-of-mouth interest in the bar throughout the world. And heres how its done... OF METHODS & MADNESS THERE IS METHOD IN THE MADNESS Its a familiar phrase that means, Hey, this isnt actually as crazy as it looks. Go figure. Go figure.

Of course, in our world, there are many colors of crazy. Theres crazy-intense, crazy-strict, crazy-focused, crazy-tough, crazy-good. And theres plain old crazy-crazy. Weve heard em all, and then some. Yes, our methods are unorthodox, we admit. And maybe we do make things harder for ourselves than they have to be.

Were ridiculously and relentlessly demanding of ourselves and others. Because were driven like maniacs to do more, get better, stay ahead. People say we have nothing to prove, that we should slow down, kick back. But we say thats just crazy talk. INTRODUCTION CREATING THE WORLDS BEST DRINKS MENU Well, thats an ambitious claim right from the start. Some might even say arrogant.

We say, just think of it as a statement of intent. Because our menus have won the highest accolades in the business. We aim for a superlative standard in all things. Its the only thing were after menu after menu, drink after drink. In this book we show how weve done what weve done, revealing our unique methodology for creating world-beating cocktails and incorporating them into equally extraordinary menus of originality and inventiveness. In these pages youll find history, booze and tale-telling on a vast scale.

Theres also evidence of some very dedicated and singular talents on display. So mix yourself a fine cocktail (instructions provided, of course) and make yourself comfortable. Ready? Then well begin. A QUESTION OF QUESTIONABLE CHARACTERS FROM JOHN MORRISSEY TO THE RABBIT In the rough-and-tumble Five Points quarter of lower Manhattan back in the mid-nineteenth century, nationalist and ethnic gangs fought bitterly for power and territory. Among these gangs, the most notorious was an Irish mob known as the Dead Rabbits. Their leader was John Morrissey.

Morrissey lived an extraordinary life, from street thug to champion prize-fighter, from Tammany Hall arm-twister to U.S. congressman and eventually New York senator. When he died in 1878, aged just 47, the entire state senate attended his funeral. Possibly just to be sure he was really dead. For rumor, myth and legend trailed Morrissey just as surely as fact. His nickname, Old Smoke, was reputedly acquired when he was pinned to burning coals from an overturned stove during a fight.

Despite the pain, Morrissey battled on, won the fight and a reputation. We liked that. We also liked his fierce devotion to the impoverished immigrant Irish he came from and whom he defended tooth and nail. For all his faults and they were many Morrissey had a code of honor. For him, betrayal of the tribe was the ultimate sin, and loyalty the true measure of a man. We told this story in our second menu, Warren Warrior, and showed the world of the Five Points at that time in its squalor and poverty and violence and corruption.

Morrisseys nature, his ruthlessness and his rage, resonated through the pages. This set the template for how we would work in the future in how we approach drink creation, how we envision and design the menus themselves. And how we learned to intertwine the two strands inextricably. We told Morrisseys story in comic book form. Its strong stuff. Luckily, there are also drinks.

Our third menu, Man on a Mission, stayed within the same historical and geographical framework, while the focus shifted to an evangelical crusader and social reformer, Lewis Morris Pease. He was a kind of anti-Morrissey a man driven by altruism and by faith, battling with a Bible in one hand and pen in the other to dismantle the degenerate world in which men like Old Smoke flourished. And he did flourish. For Morrissey would not die. Not, as some of his erstwhile senate colleagues feared, but as a presiding presence in our own story. His rage burned on and continued to cast a long shadow.

Two separate mythologies John Morrissey and the Dead Rabbit bar began to merge. But when we came to consider our next menu (number 4), we knew we didnt want to stay within the historical confines of the nineteenth century. That had run its course. By this point we had begun playing with a Rabbit character, creating promotional posters for special events, casting him variously as a DJ, rockstar and even a female singer-songwriter. Right from the start, he (or she) always wore the historically accurate red flannel shirt favored by the Bowery Bhoys.