Every serious cocktailian in NYC and most around the world got some unwelcome news yesterday morning: Audrey Saunders announced that Pegu Club, closed since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, wouldn't reopen. As Saunders put it in her detailed goodbye missive: "we knew the day would eventually come when we would have to say goodbye to her, but never did we ever dream that it would be under these conditions. Our lease was due to expire on October 31st, and we had every intention of staying put until then," going on to point out that "a soft reopening following NYC guidelines would not be enough to sustain us entering into the summer months," that summer business has historically been slow, and the added financial stresses of a rent increase, a PPP loan that couldn't be converted into a grant due to lower capacity and staffing, and even plumbing expenses..."so much tsuris!"
Of course the news rocketed around the cocktail world, from enthusiasts to bartenders to food media (Eater, the New York Times, and some especially affectionate remembrances from Grub Street and Imbibe's Paul Clarke.) Robert Simonson, who wrote the NYT story above, has nicely sung Pegu's praises over the years, described five years ago how it "forever changed the cocktail game", and devotes a chapter to the bar in his "A Proper Drink," his magnificent history of the cocktail renaissance:
Pegu was. . . the gelling of a scattershot movement, opening in 2005 at a moment when the whole cocktail thing was still a cool, insider secret, known and appreciated by only a relative few. It was something the media could latch onto with the seriousness it usually reserved for an important new restaurant, and it was fronted by an opinionated figurehead ready for her close-up. . .
After jettisoning a few other names for the bar (Sun King was an early candidate), she christened it after a favorite cocktail created in the early twentieth century at a British officers' club in Rangoon, a piquant mix of gin, bitters, orange curaçao, and fresh lime juice. It evoked an exotic, Charles Baker-esque world (he was the author of one of her favorite cocktail books), and it expressed her devotion to gin, a then-unfashionable spirit she would trumpet from the soapbox Pegu Club gave her. . .
The opening cocktail menu at Pegu was a call to arms. There was the namesake drink, redolent of history and botanical rebellion. The very wet, vermouth-heavy Martini. . . was there, renamed Fitty-Fitty, giving it some street swagger. Little Italy, a Manhattan laced with the obscure Italian amaro Cynar, was created for Pegu. Saunders's past creations, like the Gin-Gin Mule, Old Cuban, and Earl Grey Mar-TEA-ni, were given pride of place.
Nothing got onto the menu — classic or original — unless it survived Saunders's rigorous lab testing. . .an eighth of an ounce was the makings of a federal case in Saunders's world. There was perfect, or garbage.
Historical mixographer David Wondrich recalls Pegu Club's perfection in his writeup for Esquire's inaugural World's Best Bars in 2006; it's too long to quote here, but do go check it out and just imagine how this place landed in a city awash in shitty Cosmos and Heineken Light. In another tweet or two, he went on to note that "To me, it was always a classic hotel bar without the hotel. All were welcome, it was no secret, and the drinks were always elegant and eschewed trendiness. . . Always the place I met out-of-town visitors. Elegant, impeccable drinks, and big enough that you're not packed in. I like to get there early, right after opening, and snag one of the seats at the corner of the bar. Paradise."
In his "Spirit, Sugar, Water, Bitters", philosopher-barman Derek Brown recalls his first visit to Pegu Club:
I still remember the first time I walked in and how the smell of citrus and booze — now familiar in cocktail bars — overtook me. . . It was clean and busy. The bartenders were efficient and the drinks crafted to perfection. It did not just feel like a revival bar or speakeasy. It felt like a brand-new temple — one where we worship by the glass.
Oddly enough, I don't remember my own first visit to Pegu Club. But I sure do remember my second, largely because I wrote about it as a nascent cocktailian. I'd been to Angel's Share in 2003(?) (2004?), the first place where I encountered a craft cocktail and started to glimpse the rabbit hole I was about to dive into, and started to gingerly build my booze collection. I discovered cocktail blogs, chiefly Chuck Taggart's estimable (and friendly) Looka and Robert Hess's enthusiastic (and authoritative) DrinkBoy, picked up a copy of "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails" by Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh, gobbled up Wondrich's writing in Esquire, and when I ran into a recipe in one of these places that looked intriguing, I'd test it out by going to one of the cocktail bars that were just beginning to emerge, and ask them if they'd mind going off menu and making it for me.
(I first tested this approach out at my local divey Irish bar — where "jigger" is almost as dirty a word as "Yankees" — and...it did not go terribly well. Once I started going to the places that had heard of a Sazerac, it got better.)
But I remember Chuck's raving about a crazy drink with layers of flavor and a funny name, and asked for it on my second visit to Pegu Club. The Corpse Reviver No. 2 that arrived was a revelation, blowing my mind and showing me just how complex something with five ingredients could be when handled with care. My friend Tony got a Sidecar, and the bartender shooed the waitress away and shot Tony a get-ready-for-this look as he placed the drink in front of him, justifiably proud of the perfection of what he'd wrought. I will always remember that remarkable evening.
I remember other wonderful evenings there -- the time I took a dozen or more visiting geeks and saw the largest number I've ever seen on the total line of a guest check, the early days when each round of drinks would arrive with a tiny tray of dropper bottles of Ango bitters, lemon juice, lime juice, and simple syrup, in case you wanted to adjust the balance of what you'd received (but you never, ever needed to), the time Kenta Goto blew my mind with his Kenta Menta Cooler (an improbably delicious concoction of bourbon, Southern Comfort (!), Branca Menta, and peppermint tea), the lagniappe bonus sidecar flask of extra Manhattan, carefully packed in finely-crushed ice, the romantic evening when my girlfriend and I saw a movie and decided to swing by for a Tom & Jerry afterwards, when no one else was in the place and the snow was falling softly outside, the time I met St. John Frizell behind the stick and spent about six hours there with three friends and yet the bill wound up being suspiciously low, the magical afternoons when I could get there right at opening time, by myself or with one other person and commandeer the best seats in an empty bar and watch the sun slant through the window grilles...
But really, it was magical almost all the time. (Except weekend evenings after nine or so, when the LBD and aggressive-hair crowd would pile in. That's fine. Gotta pay the rent.) That was one of the things I loved and respected the most about Pegu Club: it ticked along like a Swiss watch. Newer, flashier places opened, the craft cocktail boom exploded, one could no longer count on one hand the number of places that could be trusted to deliver a quality Old-Fashioned in Manhattan, and the trend spotlight moved away. But always, always, you could go through that door from Houston Street into a cozier, more comfortable world, skip up the stairs into a sexy, sophisticated room, and know that you would get perfect drinks turned out with utter consistency. It never, ever stumbled. And I always felt welcome there. It was never intimidating or too-cool-for-school (pace some of its downtown brethren), but friendly and approachable, and never taking itself as seriously as it took the drinks or the hospitality. As Robert Simonson wrote in his encomium to Pegu today in Grub Street, it was always good. "Much has been made of Pegu Club's influence on America's bar culture, but less has been said about its continued excellence as a bar on its own terms. I made it a point to check in with Pegu Club at least a couple times a year, even as it became impossible to make time for all the new cocktail bars that opened in New York City. It was like touching base, a reminder of how the cocktail revival had begun, and a refresher on the baseline standards that characterized the movement."
As Audrey told Amanda Schuster in her book "New York Cocktails":
. . . while knowing how to make a good drink is important, at the end of the day it's the level of hospitality you offer your guests that keeps them coming back. I strive for both. . . I look for individuals with a flicker in their eyes, who enjoy giving to others, who have a passion for learning and a strong commitment to excellence. . . When I look back on it, it was more about bringing their individual personalities together and forming a great rock band that jammed well together.
And what a lineup! It was always a Murderer's Row behind the stick, with the alumni not only including the aforementioned Kenta Goto, and St. John Frizell, but also pirate king Brian Miller, Jim Meehan, Jim Kearns, Sam Ross, Phil Ward, Chad Solomon, Toby Maloney, and the great Raul Flores. However, one of the times I'll cherish most was when I went there with a friend sometime in 2007, when we were among the only people in the bar and we were lucky enough to be served by Audrey herself. I ordered a Corpse Reviver No. 2 (this one) and as she placed it in front of me, she murmured "D'you know what your garnish is?" I was taken aback and wasn't sure where she was going. "Ummm, lemon peel? a Luxardo cherry?" I ventured. "No, it's your hangover," she quipped with an enigmatic grin before bustling away. I felt seen, and appreciated.
There are bars which push the envelope more with cutting-edge techniques, bars with menus that change seemingly weekly or with no menus at all, bars which specialize in one specific spirit or thing to the exclusion of others, but Pegu Club was always my favorite. (That banner image up there at the top of this page? A Cinnabar Negroni at Pegu Club.)
As Wondrich put it in another tweet yesterday, "The thing about institutions is you always take them for granted; they're part of the basic architecture of your days, even if you don't go all the time. Just knowing it's there means you're covered. Now I'm a little adrift."
As are we all.
Celebrate that we got fifteen years of wonderful times: change your Zoom background, or better yet, make yourself the namesake drink. And raise your glass to Audrey Saunders, her partners (Julie Reiner, Susan Fedroff, Kristina, Alex, and Kevin Kossi), and all the staff for making such a place possible. We'll miss it.