Well, if you are looking for a
one-of-a-kind evening experience,
look no further than hell or high water.
It's on Washington St.
this Speakeasy is part upscale nightclub,
part library, part something you've never,
ever seen before.
And their new winter menu is out.
We're excited to have James Siegel,
the bar manager and Matt Clements,
lead bartender,
assistant manager here with us in the
Charlie Wilson KitchenAid Kitchen.
Guys, welcome. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
So top secret, it's just exciting
to have you both here, right,
because we set it up like it's a Speakeasy.
There's no password.
But the whole point is it's
not like super identifiable.
It's like a secret to know how to
get there. Yes, we want to give you
an authentic Speakeasy experience.
So we don't kind of tell you where we're at,
but we let you find this adventure.
Yes, it's an adventure, but
that really ties into the experience.
Correct. Right. Like getting in is
is a super great experience. Yeah.
And we like to provide them with
that experience through the entrance,
which is covered by a door.
So again, you don't really see the entrance.
But once you come in, you go down the
stairs and you see the really beautiful
bar with the red velvet lounges,
very art Deco style, and the library,
beautiful library there.
All those books are curated. So yeah.
And I'm sure that when people leave,
they, it's word of mouth.
Everybody's sharing about this
great time that I've had.
And and one of the reasons, Matt,
that they love it so much is because
of your creative drinks, right?
Because things are just so
unique and so different.
And so you have this new mint winter
menu that we're kind of like showing off.
On the show today, yeah.
So let's jump right on in.
Show us what you absolutely,
absolutely. So we're gonna start
with our kind of flagship cocktail.
This is one that kind of makes its
appearance here and there on the menus,
kind of pops in and out, but is one
that we've kind of become known for.
And people can really kind of
know that they have at least this
option every time they come in.
And that's the calling card.
Calling card. So this is,
people love to say that it's kind of like a
mix between an old fashion and Manhattan.
For me personally,
it sits a little bit closer to a Manhattan.
So we'll just go ahead and get
started and I'll talk you through
some of these ingredients as we go.
So we'll start with just
our Angostura bitters,
a pretty standard ingredients whenever
we're operating with bourbon cocktails.
Next we're going to use a demerara syrup,
which is just like a dimmer
is a style of sugar.
So it is just a little bit richer and
has some more like caramel molasses
notes in comparison to just like your
standard simple syrup which is made
with your like white granulated sugar.
So we're gonna start with
1/4 ounce of demerara,
OK? You must have a ball switching
up the the menus like and thinking,
what can we do to serve up something
that people are gonna say.
I've had this drink right.
And it was so good and I never could
have believed what all he put in
it. Yeah, we do. We do seasonally.
Yeah. Smells great.
It's one of my favorite cocktails.
So yeah, we do three,
about 3 minutes a year and we
just have a lot of fun there.
There's no standard template
and we just like to be creative
and create the best cocktails
for our guests, try things
out. If it works, it works.
If not, we're not going to
add that to the next year.
We're not going to put that on anymore.
We got a pretty good idea
pretty quick what people
like, what they keep ordering.
Yeah as well, alright,
where are you jumping
off to? So we've added just a little
bit of sweet vermouth and dry curse out.
Dry Curacao is an orange liqueur,
but it's just a little bit drier than
like your your quantrell triple SEC,
something like that.
And then we've got our paralia
which is an Alpine Amaro,
very Piney and flavor and kind of what
makes this such a great cocktail,
especially for the winter months.
Is the Piney kind of smell to it, right?
Yeah, cozy. It's warm. Yeah,
little winter cozy.
So lastly, we're adding
our old Forester 1920,
obviously a historic distillery
around here and and definitely
one of James and I's favorites.
I think they do a great job of offering
a consistent product to their customers,
especially given the kind
of rise of bourbon over
the past. Everybody and their
brother has a brand and there
they are still the mainstay.
Boom, boom. Still in there, exactly.
Some ice there and then
we're gonna ohh, he served
for all of us. We offer
the best service here on great day
in the morning, in the morning, right
practice of champions. So we're just
going to give this a few stirs,
make sure we're getting some great dilution,
helping bind all of those flavors together.
You must feel so lucky to work
with the place you do. Ohh, I'd
give you the creative freedom.
Yeah, right. Like that's part of the
joy of of working in a place you
love to have the freedom to say,
you know what, I've come up with
this idea and you have the space
to kind of do that. Definitely.
Absolutely. So we're going to finish
this off with kind of one of the,
I would say, most overlooked parts of
this cocktail or really any cocktail
that's involving an orange peel and
that is these absolutely fantastic
oils that come out of this. Deal.
So we're gonna take it and just kind
of roll this through our fingers and
scrape through all those feel there.
Absolutely.
And then we just kind of give
it a little bit of a touch on
the bottom because we want that.
We want that smell to be consistent
all the way through. You know,
a heavy part of your taste is your smell.
So it's really important that we
get that smell through the whole
time and not just that first
couple sips looks beautiful.
So that would be Our Calling card.
Look at it. Beautiful.
I'm going to try a little bit.
If you want to go and
start the second one.
Absolutely wrap things up.
You don't mind, do you?
No, absolutely.
Cheers. I'm just gonna jump in real quick
into our gold fashioned so this is a rift.
That's not even right. Like our
our small batch Louisville here
and they're like we're here to make
pancakes and she's drinking over there.
What is going on, right,
what we are known for our strong cocktails,
super strong and you know with that too.
Remind everybody you do
have an appetizer menu.
So we do have light bites,
yes, couple of things
for sure, bites and things like that
so that you know, you can munch on a
few things and you know keep drinking
and music as well.
Thursday nights normally starts around
8:00 PM. Yeah, so very fun nights.
And reservations are so important with this.
You know, we're telling people
it's kind of secret to get to,
but you do need to go ahead
and make those reservations.
We are mostly reservation 99.9% reservation.
We have a you can check our website
out hell or high water bar.com.
And then just check
it out. OK. I'm sorry,
you need to explain something.
Gold fashioned gold fashion,
gold fashioned yes. Yes.
So a little bit of an homage
to an old fashioned in a sense,
because we're here in Kentucky
and obviously people love
their old fashions. And
I feel like it's like hit this
resurgence all of a sudden, too.
Definitely. Definitely. Yes. Yes, yes,
yes. I think a lot of it just has to do
with the drinking culture and whiskey and
bourbon kind of coming back into focus.
And obviously an old-fashioned is a classic.
You know, it's been around for a
long time for a reason and and it
really is a fantastic cocktail.
For me personally though, you know,
I've, I've born and and born and
raised here in Louisville had drank
plenty of bourbon over the years.
And so I like to kind of breakdown
some of those barriers.
So this is kind of a little bit of
a a barrier breaker I would say,
hopefully for the people who
really like old fashions,
but you're looking for something different,
something new.
So this is what we call a riff
on an oil well, old fashioned.
The basis is rum, coffee and sugar.
So we're just kind of swapping up
some of those ingredients from.
Yeah, that's right. Yes, yes.
Breakfast cocktails,
breakfast cocktail,
breakfast cocktails.
He's putting the finishing touches.
We're gonna remind everybody
I'm thank you all for coming in,
by the way. Thank you.
I feel super lucky that we,
we got you all in today, right.
So remember, reservations are
required at hell or high water.
So guests can reserve a spot
on the new resi app or you
can head to their website,
hellorhighwaterbar.com.
They have some appetizers as well.
New Winter menu is out right now.
Final product.
Can we show this before we leave?
The oil say, what's the name?
It's a gold fashion.
The gold fashion.
That's right.
There we go. Alright.