Toby Cecchini's &quot;Other Boulevardier&quot;

Toby Cecchini's "Other Boulevardier"

One of my go-to cocktails at my favorite Brooklyn local, The Long Island Bar, located just up the block from my apartment, is their house take on the classic Boulevardier, the traditionally equal-parts blend of whiskey, Campari, and sweet vermouth. Created by the bar’s co-owner Toby Cecchinifor the opening menu in 2013, the LIB Boulevardier quickly became one of the bar’s signature drinks and has remained on the menu ever since. “I tried to take if off the menu after six months and people screamed bloody murder,” Cecchini once told me.

Five years ago I wrote about the LIB Boulevardier for PUNCH, breaking down how Cecchini mastered his final formula, leaning more into the Boulevardier’s dual nature as a Manhattan with Campari rather than a whiskey Negroni, by splitting the whiskey base with two different ryes and perfecting the vermouth ratio with a custom blend of two contrasting expressions. “I want the base spirit in my cocktail to be basso profundo,” said Cecchini in the PUNCH story. And unlike most Boulevardiers, served over a big rock, at LIB the ruby-red cocktail stands tall in an elegant coupe adorned with a thick swath of aromatic lemon peel. “I feel like I get some of the credit for helping exhume [the Boulevardier] in a way and shepherding it along to some degree, but I didn’t make up this drink,” said Cecchini.

These days, though, when I’m courtside at the bar when Cecchini Is behind the stick and ask for a Boulevardier, he’ll likely counter with, “Which one?”

While it’s not on the menu, over the last year or so he’s occasionally been offering an updated, and very different, take on the LIB Boulevardier for industry friends and regulars to try. This “other Boulevardier” mostly sticks to an equal-parts spec, though amps up the proportion of rye, as is often the case with this drink. But his choice of red bitter and vermouth shifts the bracing and bold classic into an entirely different direction.

As Cecchini told me in my recent story on the Essential to Aperitivo Bitters for PUNCH: "Whenever I try any of the many new aperitivi and bitters out there, I'm always measuring how it plays against or stands apart from Campari. If they're too close to Campari, but not as good, that's like doing a cover song, but playing it exactly like the original and that never works. When you're doing a cover song, you have to completely take it to a different place."

For this updated version, instead of the traditional Campari he uses Mulassano Bitter, a fairly newly available product stateside inspired by the Liquore delle Alpi Bitter Bordiga has been making for Turin’s historic Caffè Mulassano since 1879. “Mulassano is very soft, and isn’t sharp like Campari,” says Cecchini, who was first exposed to it after local liquor rep Jan Warren stopped by the bar with a bottle to taste.

That bottle was still standing in sight next to the cash register behind the bar when Cecchini’s business partner Joel Tompkins asked for a Boulevardier, but wanted something different, clarifying his request with: “but not our Boulevardier.”

“Imagine that,” says Cecchini. “I get so stuck in my own sort of circles that I don't really think like you can make any drink completely differently a million different ways by just swapping out different things. But, of course, I don’t have to always use Campari.” So he started with the within-reach bottle of Mulassano, pairing it with a vermouth he’s particularly enamored with, the Barbadillo Atamán Vermut, produced by a family-run sherry bodega in the town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.

“This beautiful expression from a sherry producer that makes their own vermouth has this crazy sarsaparilla thing to it that’s so like root beer,” says Cecchini. “It’s really fleshy and broad, and since Mulassano is very soft and not sharp like Campari, I used Knob Creek rye to really punctuate the drink. [BTP: Cecchini has since switched from Knob Creek to Brooklyn’s Jaywalk Bonded Straight Rye Whiskey.] Cecchini reports that Joel was “over the moon” for this very different take on the Boulevardier, served in a double Old-Fashioned glass over a large ice cube.

Cecchini is spot on regarding the sarsaparilla vibe, and even the color of the drink strays from the traditional red hue to something more akin to cream soda. Up front it has a pronounced kick from the bonded rye, but shifts with each sip, as the stirred ingredients commingle as the dilution from the slowly melting ice steadily does its thing, transforming into something you might even call sessionable.

There’s been some buzz about officially adding last summer’s (and this summer’s, for those who know) off-menu La Passeggiata to the official menu. Fingers crossed, but I know there’s staff concern about customers struggling to pronounce the name of the drink, despite it being a refreshing aperitivo cooler for all your heat-dome-fighting needs. But this “Other Boulevardier” will likely remain an off-menu surprise offered to unsuspecting guests. Though if you ask nicely, you never know…

Read on to get the recipe for Cecchini’s original Boulevardier, made famous at The Long Island Bar, as well as an exclusive recipe for the “Other Boulevardier.”

Christie Applegate

Update: 2024-12-04

PicoBlog

Toby Cecchini's "Other Boulevardier"

Christie Applegate

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