The Modern Bar Cart Podcast

This is Earth No Patio (Episode 9), where Eric provided some voice-over work as inspiration for Ben Turner, who produced this strange and amazing piece of audio art in return.  

Some of the topics we discuss with Ben Turner, creator of Earth No Patio include: How Ben’s experiences in the art and culinary world led him to this structured, yet highly associative experiment of pairing recipes with soundscapes. Why some of the best (or most efficient) recipes can seem almost boring or banal, but tend to be extremely thoughtful in their structure and sequence. The intuitive process by which Ben selects the recipes he features on Earth No Patio - from bland, unassuming Italian eggplant recipes, to Ayurvedic dishes that comment on bile color and bodily excrement. Why Ben views cocktail recipes as punctuation in his podcast, as well as a few thoughts on the wild and funky barscapes he’s been playing with in recent episodes. What to drink while chatting with Avante Garde composer and artist John Cage, And much, much more.

In this episode, Eric catches up with Chris Kiertz (@cocktail_chris) about his pet project, The Home Bar Awards - an inclusive monthly cocktail competition hosted on Instagram designed specifically for home bartenders. Some of the topics we discuss include: How Chris fell back in love with the spirits and cocktail industry and fused it with his love of marketing to build a number of extremely popular cocktail instagram accounts. What The Home Bar Awards are all about, including how to participate in this wide open competition and what some of the monthly challenges have entailed to-date. The way that Chris went about creating connections in the service industry and how his dedication and hard work resulted in collaborations with some of the top bartenders in the world. His latest project, a cocktail rating app called “Sidecar” (see, I told you we’d come back to it) - and how this foray into the tech space can help people evaluate drinks at their favorite bars. Advice for taking beautiful pictures of the cocktails you make at home What New Jersey cocktail to drink with legendary entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk And much, much more

In this second installment of our three-part series on the art of the recipe, we emerge from the depths of ancient history and trace the recipe from its early modern origins to its current manifestation. Some of the texts and topics we cover include: The Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean-Enthelme Brillat Savarin (as translated and annotated by M.F.K. Fisher) Modern Cookery by Eliza Acton Advances in weights and measures standardization in Europe and North America Modern research on 19th century drinks by David Wondrich Contemporary recipe narratives in popular culture Advice for constructing excellent recipes in the food and cocktail space And much, much more

We take a trip into the deep past to locate the origins of the recipe. From the African Savannah, to Babylon, to Rome, we sift through clay tablets and scrolls with some of the world's oldest recipes to see what they can teach us. Along the way, we dabble in Epicurean physics and explore the parable of Don's Mix.

In this episode, we take questions from our listener mailbag and answer the most burning questions about spirits & cocktails. Some of the topics we cover include: How to flavor egg whites The best way to smoke cocktail garnishes Which popular bottles might vanish from the shelves as a result of the COVID-19 Coronavirus The most popular herbs for at-home cocktails How to support Modern Bar Cart during this crisis And much, much more

In this juniper-perfumed discussion with gin expert, author, and spirits judge Aaron Knoll, some of the topics we cover include: The story of how Aaron fell in love with gin at 3am at a dive bar in Buffalo, NY. How he developed his pentagonal (and later, hexagonal) visual representation of gin flavor profiles. We then do a sample tasting using this visualization to demonstrate how to systematically break down the flavor profile of an actual gin in the glass. In addition, we chat about some of the contemporary trends in the gin world How to distinguish a contemporary gin from a London Dry gin, from an Old Tom gin What trends Aaron is most excited about from his recent statistical analysis of Consumer Taste Preferences And much, much more.

In this amaro-driven conversation with Nick Fisher of Cocktail Chemistry, some of the topics we discuss include: How Nick started his incredibly popular YouTube Channel and how he organizes his videos by subject to appeal to different audiences Why he decided to subject himself to a comparative tasting of nine different domestic and imported Fernets Where Fernet fits into the larger world of Amari and herbal liqueurs, and why it’s a deceptively difficult category to define Where in the world Fernet is the most popular, and how the people of Argentina have created their own signature method of drinking Fernet and coke. We also do a comparative tasting of two different Fernets from Nick’s video to give you a cross-section of different tasting notes, we talk about the flavor science supporting Fernet’s complexity, and we also discuss the merits of using really nice whiskey in cocktails.

In this lush, verdant conversation with herbalist Colleen O’Bryant of Wild Roots Apothecary, some of the topics we discuss include: Which herbs, flowers, and succulents are blooming right now and just begging to be harvested and enjoyed. The various ways to prepare your foraged or cultivated plants, whether that’s in a DIY bitters, a sweet and tangy Oxymel, or even a flavorful hydrosol. How to use different parts of plants for different applications, both as food and as nutritive medicine to help your body thrive. Ways to expand your plant horizons even when you’re living in a city, including urban gardening, composting, and even wormaculture. How to properly and effectively employ herbs and flowers as cocktail garnishes Where Colleen would stage her perfect outdoor cocktail setup And much, much more. Colleen is like the Yoda of herbs. She knows the science, the physiology, and the technical scientific terms for everything, but instead of throwing around big words, she takes a very grounded, mindful approach to educating. “Ask the plant if it wants to be harvested,” she says. “Let it tell you how it wants to be used.” She’s a wonderful advocate for the flavors that can be found all around us in the natural world, and we’ll have links to Colleen’s online shop and social media on the show notes page, so definitely head over there and stock up on all her wonderful bitters, syrups and teas to help you enjoy the emergence of spring all the more.

We discuss the effects that COVID-19 Coronavirus has had on the spirits and cocktail industry and then examine the history of spirits during times of plague in bygone eras. Some of the topics we discuss include: How to make a Penicillin cocktail The legend of Four Thieves Vinegar Aqua Mirabilis (Miracle Water) and distilling technology Plague Water, feat. opium tears, viper flesh, and ambergris What plague doctors were hiding in those beaks How to drink well while quarantining or social distancing And much, much more