🍹🥃 Summer-to-fall cocktails

Table Talk: Summer-to-Fall Cocktails + Yumbii’s Bulgogi Philly 

Sept. 2 — Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the table!

In today’s “Family Meal,” I’m bringing you a story on transitional cocktails, or cocktails that bridge the gap between summer and fall in Atlanta, when patio drinks like margaritas and Aperol spritzes give way to cozier brandy-based Applejacks and whiskey-laden hot toddies by Halloween.

 Plus, for “The Move,” I tell you why I love the chilaquiles from La Mixteca Tamale House. And Rough Draft Dining Reporter Sarra Sedghi provides you with a recipe for the bulgogi Philly from Yumbii, a sandwich recently featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” hosted by Guy Fieri. 

Cheers!

 Beth

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Experience the power of story at Art Farm’s first Film Showcase Weekend. Join us for a special screening of Parrot Kindergarten and a live conversation with the director and film’s subject. On Sat., Sept. 13. Get tickets here! SPONSOR MESSAGE

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The Move:
Chilaquiles From La Mixteca Tamale House

 Whenever I see chilaquiles on a morning menu, it’s an automatic order, especially if I get to customize my breakfast nachos with sauces, toppings, and protein options.

Serving as the base layer for chilaquiles, thick strips of fried tortilla are quickly simmered in salsa, to which refried beans, eggs, cilantro, and lots of crumbly queso fresco are added, along with other ingredients like pico de gallo, avocado, and jalapeños. Then you pile on your favorite extras, including shredded chicken, chorizo, steak, and even tofu.

The chips for the chilaquiles at La Mixteca Tamale House come with substantial heft, enough to hold together during the salsa simmer without disintegrating or turning to mush, or later collapsing under the weight of multiple toppings.

I appreciate that La Mixteca keeps its chilaquiles add-on options tight. The basic dish comes with eggs of any style, avocado, queso fresco, onions, cilantro, and jalapeños. I added spicy green salsa, shredded chicken, and opted for a sunny egg, mixing in the yolk to give the chilaquiles a creamier texture. At $15, this chilaquiles brunch was a bargain. 

 La Mixteca includes locations in Suwanee, Buckhead (takeout only), and Underwood Hills. 

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Food, Culture, Community — It’s All Here

SPONSORED BY THE CITY OF CHAMBLEE

A Taste of Chamblee is where flavor, culture, and community unite for an unforgettable day. Local chefs and restaurants bring their best dishes, from international favorites to Southern staples, creating a culinary adventure for every palate.

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 Come hungry, leave fulfilled—make your way to A Taste of Chamblee and discover why this city shines.

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The Transitional Cocktails
Bringing Atlanta From Summer to Fall

 Now that Labor Day has come and gone, college football season is underway, and school is back in session, the lazy days of summer are coming to a close.

But in Atlanta, we have another month of summertime temperatures, and maybe another month after that of warm days and cool nights before it truly becomes fall in the South.

Atlanta tends to sputter into fall, evidenced by rounds of fake fall in late August and early September, followed by a couple of weeks of summer 2.0, all part of the 12 micro seasons occupying the nooks and crannies of the big four: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. 

 I’ve been thinking a lot about cocktails that bridge the hyper-seasonal gap between summer and fall in Atlanta, when patio drinks like margaritas and Aperol spritzes give way to cozier brandy-based Applejacks and whiskey-laden hot toddies.

This time of year, transitional cocktails blend light and refreshing flavors with weightier spirits like Old Tom Gin, smoky mezcals, and caramelly bourbons. Other ingredients tinge cocktail flavors with baking spices or hold profiles melding sweet and savory. 

Several classic cocktails fit the transitional bill, such as the Sidecar, a sour-like cocktail with cognac, orange liqueur, and fresh lemon juice, or the Casino, made with Old Tom gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, orange juice, and orange bitters. 

 Consider the fizzy gin cocktail French 75, made with fresh lemon juice, sugar, and Champagne. 

While never out of season, a bourbon Old Fashioned makes for a perfect in-between-seasons cocktail, especially if you swap out the simple syrup with a seasonal replacement. 

The low-ABV, medium-bodied Adonis comes with equal parts sweet vermouth and fino sherry. 

Or maybe opt for a Martinez (the martini’s bolder cousin) made with Old Tom Gin, sweet vermouth, curaçao, and orange bitters).

When coping with Atlanta’s moody weather patterns during the late summer and early fall, bartenders need to get crafty with the cocktails they create for seasonally driven menus.

Lucky Star beverage director Kirk Gibson said it’s imperative to keep track of what’s in season this time of year, which varies from one day to the next, and even from year to year. 

 “In September and October, that would include watermelons, peaches, figs, certain species of blueberries, and corn,” Gibson said. “I also think about techniques in terms of lightly preserved fruits. So not ingredients that are salt-cured or sugar-cured where you’re expecting that ingredient to last a year, but rather syrups and shrubs of common fruits.”

Gibson is known for his love of cocktail science and isn’t afraid to experiment with ingredients and techniques to coax out the flavors and textures he’s after in a drink. At Lucky Star, Gibson recently served a clarified mimosa, along with the Little Lantern made with nopales-infused tequila, mezcal, and house-made tomatillo syrup. These are two examples of drinks you might also find on the menu at Gibson’s weekly cocktail omakase.

Offered on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, the omakase comes with five petite-portioned, seasonal cocktails paired with small bites from Chef Jason Liang, owner of Lucky Star at Star Metals and Michelin-star restaurant O by Brush in Buckhead.

Creating cocktails in September can be particularly challenging for bartenders in Atlanta, Gibson explained. The weather is all over the place, with temperatures topping off in the high 80s during the day, and dropping as much as 30 degrees once the sun goes down. The types of cocktails you should be drinking this time of year depends on when you’re drinking, Gibson explained. 

 “Watermelons and cucumbers are still in season, and I think there’s a lot to be done with corn in cocktails during the day,” said Gibson. “At night, when it dips into the 60s, I think about heavier spirits and the syrups, like an Old Fashioned with lightly toasted caramel syrup, or the Oaxaca Old Fashioned that Death and Co. does, which calls for reposado tequila and agave syrup.”

Gibson favors ingredient versatility found in cocktails such as the classic Lion’s Tail. With a bourbon base, the drink consists of allspice dram, lime juice, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters. Swapping out the simple syrup with a syrup or sweetener made from late-season fruits, makes the Lion’s Tail a prime example of a transitional cocktail to experiment with during September and October. 

However, bars around Atlanta are also whipping up equally worthy original cocktails to ease the transition from late summer to early fall in the South.

The Rye of Sunshine at Bar{n} booze {n} bites in Dunwoody mixes rye with elderflower liqueur, simple syrup, lemon juice, and apple juice. 

At Kimball House in Decatur, under the direction of Miles Macquarrie, the bar focuses on hyper-seasonality. An end-of-summer interpretation on the Alaska, a bold and weighty, botanical-leaning cocktail in the martini family traditionally made with Old Tom Gin, is currently on the menu.

 Called the Puget Sound, the cocktail sees a super fresh gin carrying notes of juniper and candied citrus fruits mixed with with clarified cantaloupe nectar, a melon aperitif, herbal liqueur, and dry vermouth. Macquarrie finishes it with “honeydew olive,” or honeydew compressed in the Kimball House olive brine, used for its martinis.

The Sheba and Sheik at Marietta Proper in Marietta features bourbon, merlot, peach liqueur, apricot syrup, and lemon bitters. The bar serves the cocktail in a lightly smoked glass.

Last year, Southern National in Summerhill served a cocktail called On the Nose with bourbon, lime, ginger soda, and a dark rum float. But try the perennial Punch Royal at Southern National, made with VSOP cognac, lemon, pineapple, and Champagne.

At Lucky Star, Gibson recommends ordering the blueberry cherry cobbler, using foraged blueberries from the Southwest Beltline he preserved in syrup earlier in the summer.

 For Lucky Star’s corn painkiller, Gibson juices fresh white corn and combines it with pineapple rum, Jamaican pot still rum, pineapple juice, a smidge of coconut milk, and simple syrup. The result is an early fall tiki drink that’s fresh yet not aggressively sweet, with the corn giving the cocktail savoriness.

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Yumbii’s Bulgogi Philly Recipe

 This week, we’re sharing Yumbii’s bulgogi Philly recipe. Even if you haven’t tried the sandwich at Yumbii, you may have seen it on the Food Network this spring, when the restaurant appeared on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”

Yumbii co-founder Carson Young didn’t just bring a Guy Fieri-approved sandwich to television (the celebrity chef especially loved the cucumber kimchi’s cooling profile and even sampled a few extra bites). Young became the first deaf chef featured on the show, making Food Network history.

Young, who runs Yumbii with his wife, Katy, said the bulgogi Philly was inspired by his food truck crew and was a longstanding secret menu item. “We originally created it on the truck as a family meal for the team,” Young said. The hefty Philly was both satisfying and unique after a hard day of preparing tacos.

 Young prefers sourcing the sandwich’s ingredients at H-Mart and Buford Highway Farmers Market. When he first started the food truck, he purchased most of his Korean ingredients, such as Asian ribeye beef and gochujang paste, directly from that market.

“Our family is obsessed with H-Mart. We make it a family outing with our boys,” he said. “They are huge fans of Asian cuisine, but it might be the toy section at the end that they like most.”

 The homemade kimchi in this recipe must ferment for 48 hours, so this isn’t the type of dish to make on a whim. Young also recommends not overlooking the sriracha queso. “Make a double batch and put some aside in the fridge” he said. “It easily warms and is great with chips as an appetizer.”

This recipe has been adapted for home cooks.

Yield: 4 cheesesteaks
Active time: 30 minutes
Total time: Includes 48-hour prep

Marinated beef ingredients

• 2 lbs sliced ribeye or bulgogi-style beef
• 1/2 cup red onions, thinly sliced with a mandolin
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup pineapple juice
• 1 Tbsp fresh garlic, finely chopped
• 1 Tbsp scallions, finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup water

Sriracha queso ingredients

• 1 cup queso blanco (American melting cheese), grated or cubed
• 1/2 cup half & half
• 1 tsp sriracha

Cucumber kimchi ingredients

• 1 cucumber, thinly sliced with a mandolin
• 1/8 cup red onions, thinly sliced with a mandolin
• 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 Tbsp gochujang (Korean chili paste)
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 1 Tbsp gochugaru (Korean chili flakes)

Assembly and garnish

• 4 Philly rolls (10-inch)
• 1/4 cup red onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup scallions, chopped
• Neutral cooking oil (e.g. olive oil)

Prepare the cucumber kimchi (48 hours ahead)

1. Toss cucumbers and red onion slices with kosher salt and gochugaru in a bowl and let sit.
2. In a separate bowl, mix gochujang, vinegar, sesame oil, and sugar into a smooth paste.
3. Combine paste with cucumber mix until evenly coated.
4. Transfer to a sealed jar or vacuum bag and refrigerate for at least 48 hours. Use within 7 days.

Marinate beef (prepare 2 to 24 hours ahead)

1. In a bowl, whisk together soy sauce, pineapple juice, garlic, scallions, sugar, and water.
2. Place beef and sliced red onions in a shallow dish. Pour marinade over top. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, and up to 24 hours.

Day of cook and assemble

1. Melt cheese, half & half, and sriracha in a small saucepan over low heat. (Tip: grated cheese melts faster.)
2. Chop red onions and scallions for garnish. Set aside.
3. Toast Philly rolls in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until edges are golden. Set aside.
4. In the same skillet, add a little oil. Sear marinated beef and onions, turning often, until caramelized and cooked through.

Assemble

Sprinkle with chopped onions and scallions

Place beef on a toasted roll, about 8 ounces per sandwich.

Ladle warm queso over the meat and top with cucumber kimchi (1/4 cup or to taste).

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Experience the power of story at Art Farm’s first Film Showcase Weekend. Join us for a special screening of Parrot Kindergarten and a live conversation with the director and film’s subject. On Sat., Sept. 13. Get tickets here! SPONSOR MESSAGE

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The post 🍹🥃 Summer-to-fall cocktails appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.