Toasted Old Fashioned

►by Mixologist Joshua Garcia of Papillon Restaurant

Walk toward the beautiful butterfly mural behind the bar at Papillon to order a drink, and mixologist Joshua Garcia will ask about your taste in cocktails. “If someone tells me ‘I like pineapple. I like elderflower,’ we're always open to working with flavors that they’ll like,” Garcia says.

^{— Photography Kenneth Theysen}

Joshua Garcia
Mixologist

Papillon Restaurant

Equipped with the knowledge of your flavor preferences, Garcia may also recommend one of Papillon’s crafted cocktails—from the list he helped create. “When you have a cocktail that you like a lot, you will remember the moment when you drank it,” Garcia says. Whether it’s a balance of new flavors you’ve never experienced in a cocktail, a choice from the extensive wine list or a taste from the exclusive collection of bourbons behind the bar (Elijah Craig 23, Old Fitzgerald, Blanton’s Straight from the Barrel and more), there’s something for every guest to remember about their experience.

Many of the cocktails on the menu, like the toasted old fashioned, are well-known cocktail recipes with a Papillon twist. “We have a spicy smoked margarita, which is absolutely outside of the realm of any other cocktail we’ve ever done,” Garcia says. The chef asked if he could make a cocktail with a yellow bell pepper and Garcia accepted the challenge. The result was the margarita with yellow bell pepper spice.

The toasted old fashioned is an aromatic play on the classic cocktail. “I wanted to make the old fashioned as traditional as possible,” Garcia says. It has the added flavor of burnt orange peel, burnt rosemary and orange bitters, which enhance the aromas of pekoe tea, new leather, cinnamon, cedar and jasmine in the Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel bourbon. 

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Toasted Old Fashioned
Makes 1 cocktail

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Ingredients     

1 slice of orange peel
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
Orange bitters
Fee Brothers Old Fashioned 
Aromatic Bitters
Simple syrup
2 ½ oz Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel bourbon
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1. Singe the orange peel and rosemary with a flame. Cover the singed garnishes with an old fashioned glass to trap the smoke and aromas. Let sit while preparing the cocktail.

2. Add a splash of orange bitter, a splash of Fee Brothers Old Fashioned Aromatic Bitters, a splash of simple syrup and Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel bourbon to a
   cocktail shaker with ice. Stir the cocktail.

3. Flip the glass upright to let out the smoke. Set the orange peel and rosemary aside. Add fresh ice to the smoked glass and strain the cocktail into the glass.

4. Garnish with the singed orange peel and sprig of rosemary or with a dehydrated orange slice.

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SIMPLE SYRUP     

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
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1. Add sugar and water to a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved.

2. Store in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container for up to one month.

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