Let’s say you’re cooking dinner for your significant other. Wine is poured, candles are lit, music is playing, it’s all going well. The recipe calls for some gentle heat from a few slices of jalapeño, which you discover you do not have.
That’s ok , you think to yourself, and instead substitute in a Carolina Reaper, among the hottest peppers known to man.How would you imagine that dinner’s going to go? Whether your date “likes spicy food” or not, what I can say for sure is that your substitution is going to yield a different kind of dish, and you are about to have a different kind of evening. This is essentially what’s happening with the Absinthe Colada.
A Piña Colada is a kind and gentle experience, calling for a smooth aged rum to evoke the sensation of soft waves lapping at sandy shores. To substitute it out with the volcanic intensity of absinthe is like expecting a kiss and getting a headbutt, but this was, nonetheless, the foundation of an idea that became one of the most famous cocktails from one of the best bars in the world. When Maxwell Britten joined the team in late 2010 to be the opening bar manager of Brooklyn’s Maison Premiere, he brought with him a love of Piña Coladas, and why not? The Piña Colada is perhaps the ultimate tropical cocktail, in equal measures creamy, refreshing, decadent and delicious.
Maison Premiere, however, was going to be an oyster- and absinthe-bar, and they wear vests and ties, not Hawaiian shirts. Undeterred, he.