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Dining With Dara: A Last-Minute Gift Idea!

Posted at 7:37 AM on December 21, 2011 by Steve Seel
Filed under: Dining with Dara


Minnesota Monthly's Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl checks in today with her pick for an ideal stocking stuffer:

"Looking for a last minute holiday gift? I can't say enough good things about Northstar Cocktails, a cocktail recipe book, kind-of, sort-of, by legendary local bartender Johnny Michaels and the rest of the the North Star Bartenders' Guild.

I say it's a cocktail recipe book sort-of because it's so much more than that, it's laugh-out-loud funny (in spots), deep and philosophical and moving (in patches), it's a dead-on portrait of Minnesota cocktail culture over the last brief, brilliant five or six years, and it has recipes too, some very usable, some very whistle-in-amazement and don't dare attempt.

To say Michaels is a local legend doesn't quite capture it, he's famous in culinary circles for having started the artisan-, boutique-, culinary-, whatever you want to call it (most just call it great) cocktail movement, when he led the bar at La Belle Vie, beginning in 2005 when they relocated from Stillwater to Minneapolis, and continuing till today. But he's equally famous for starting the cocktail programs at: Café Maude, Barrio, Smalley's, and many others, as well as nurturing the careers of other bartenders, especially Pip Hansen, today of the Marvel Bar, who started working for Michaels and went on to his own great heights. (Hansen and Michaels are currently business partners, jointly operating a cocktail consulting firm.) This book is largely written in Michaels own wry, seen-everything, accepted-everything voice, which is terrifically appealing, but the recipes are both his own and those of his fellow members of the North Star Bartenders' Guild, a loose affiliation of 40 or so of the most passionate local cocktail makers, who band together now and then to raise money for charity and trade recipes. There are great recipes here from Nicholas Kosevich and Ira Koplowitz (once Town Talk, now and ongoing Bittercube Bitters, soon Eat Street Social), Dan Oskey (Strip Club and Joia Soda), Andy Truskolaski (BANK), Gina Kent (Bradstreet Craftshouse) and many more.

Oh, and every dollar from the sale of the book goes to charity! The Society for the Protection of Animals, International; reflecting Michaels great love of dogs. It's always been neck-and-neck with dogs and cocktails, which really is man's best friend? Another great bonus of this book: Now you don't have to choose.

The book is available where every books are sold, and at the Minnesota Historical Society's website; they're the publsher. If you really want to knock someone's socks off, present it with a bottle of something you made from the book - or hand it over beside a drink at your favorite local fancy cocktail bar.

Northstar Cocktails, by Johnny Michaels and the North Star Bartenders Guild, Minnesota Historical Society Press, $19.95."

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Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl, veteran Twin Cities food and dining authority, is a five-time James Beard Award-Winning food writer who is also Senior Editor at Minnesota Monthly and author of Drink This: Wine Made Simple.


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