Drink 31: The Dutch Drunk Puppet

The Name: The Dutch Drunk Puppet                                                                                 

The Bar: RARE view (152 West 26th Street, NYC)

Before I get into this post, I'd just like to apologize for not posting for two months! The past few months have been really busy and I just haven't had a chance to keep up this blog. I know, this blog is not exactly difficult to maintain. After all, how hard is it to order cocktails? Which is why I shall hopefully be back in the full swing of things! As penance, here is a picture of me sitting on a bench with the silhouette of my doppelgänger in honor of one of this blog's most popular posts. Enjoy!

 

The Story Behind The Name: I've previously talked a little bit about my experience filming the movie Dogville and how, among other things, Lauren Bacall was obsessed with a stuff moose toy. This drink name also has to do with someone I met while filming Dogville, my hair and makeup person Marleen.

Marleen was pretty incredible--an incredibly tall Dutch woman with a huge head of curly hair, Marleen could have easily been mistaken for a rock star. We had a lot of fun together and got to be good friends over the course of the shoot.

Marleen and Miles: goofballs

The basic instructions for my hair and makeup that Marleen had been given were "as covered in dirt as possible," and so I'd show up for my daily makeup application as Marleen inelegantly caked me in fake mud. At first she didn't want to go overboard, but said that every day she'd increase the amount of mud until someone told her to stop. Nobody ever did and by the end of the shoot I basically resembled Pig Pen. Marleen was quite proud of her handiwork.

There was still a week left of shooting when this picture was taken.

But getting covered in dirt is not the only fond memory I have of Marleen. During some downtime on the set, she once taught me a popular "Miss-Lucy-had-a-tugboat-esque clapping game from The Netherlands. Here are the words in Dutch.

Ik stond laatst voor een poppenkraam
daar zag ik zoveel poppen staan
ik zei "wat doen die poppen hier?"
die poppen drinken poppen bier
die poppen drinken poppen wijn
wat zullen die poppen vrolijk zijn
met al dat bier en poppen wijn

And, with Marleen, we came up with a rough English translation that would still fit the rhythm of the game.

I went down to the puppet show
and I saw all the puppets go
I said "why are these puppets here?"
these puppets drinking puppet beer
these puppets drinking puppet wine
oh how these puppets feel so fine
with all that beer and puppet wine.

As you can see, Dutch clapping games are much more fun.

The game is deceptively simple. Here's a good example of two people playing the hand game. Or, in Dutch, handjeklap. As you can see, you really only have to do two types of clapping. One for the general rhythm, and then when you say "poppen," or "puppet," you're supposed to clap with both hands (this is really hard to explain without visuals, so please, please watch that video). That doesn't sound too hard, but given the weird rhythm of the poem, sometimes a "poppen" can take someone by surprise. And hilarity ensues. Here, for example, is a video of a cute Dutch child failing at the poppenkraam handjeklap for almost four full minutes. WARNING: do not watch that video unless you want to be really happy because it's great. Also, that same channel has three different videos of them trying, and failing, to successfully complete the whole poem. It's so wonderful.

Yes, I have introduced this game to most of my friends. Nobody has ever gotten it on the first try that I can recall.

The Dutch children's game about drunk puppets has brought me much happiness, and so I decided that Marleen and her bizarre clapping chant would be perfect for a What's That Drink drink!

Ordering The Drink: I hate to confess it, but I actually ordered this drink two months ago and it has just taken me forever to write about it. Whoops. I ordered the drink at a birthday party for my friend and co-worker Rachel. Rachel, who was turning 21, chose to celebrate at a place called RARE, a rooftop lounge in Chelsea. A rooftop bar sounds excellent--New York has some really lovely views of its skyline, and a rooftop garden is the perfect setting for sitting back and having some drinks.

But, I have to admit, RARE was not quite what I expected. Because it clearly desperately wanted to be a nightclub. It was dimly lit and there was loud music. And there were a lot of well-dressed people not dancing to the loud music.

The vibe was off. Rooftops and nightclubs don't go together for me. The idea of a rooftop is peaceful. A nightclub is youthful and energetic. They just didn't jive. And, considering how sparkly NYC can look at night, the view wasn't all that great.

Meh.

The general concept just seemed poorly conceived to me. But if they had wanted to go the nightclub route, they could have at least been a good nightclub. But this one was weird. The DJ seemed to have arrived in a time machine from the 90's. I counted three separate Backstreet Boys songs. But these were not any ordinary Backstreet Boys songs. These were being played...unironically!!!

In many ways it was comical. This place was trying so hard to be really super trendy and cool. And its music of choice was 90's boy bands. Played really, really earnestly.

To be fair, this might not exactly be RARE's fault. As I was leaving, the woman in charge of operating the elevator (I know, elevator attendants, how much cooler could this place GET?!?!) asked me how it was. I laughed and said, "Honestly, it was weird. The DJ kept playing Backstreet Boys?" She rolled her eyes and said "Yeah, I know. We rent DJs from a company and whenever he's here he always plays lots of Backstreet Boys and 90's music. We always tell him not to and he does it anyway. We've told the company to stop sending him and he hasn't been here for a while but apparently there was no one else available tonight."

If you take nothing else away from this blog post, I hope that you too share my amazement and confusion at this random shitty DJ who really, really, really loves The Backstreet Boys. Who IS this guy?!

Anyway, I hope I'm not being too harsh on RARE. I'm sure there are people who really like the vibe there. And maybe the whole thing would have worked more with a better DJ. Maybe I'm just an old man now because the younger crowd definitely seemed to be having a great time. And, I have to say, the drinks were excellent. Not just decent, but notably excellent. They were well-made, and far more interesting and creative than I would have expected. This is a bar that could have gotten away with serving really basic drinks, but they came up with some intriguing combinations. It was the rare (pun intended) nightclub where I actually was curious about several of the custom cocktails on their menu. A particular drink called the Fashionista made with aquavit, passion fruit, and lychee stands out. It was pretty damn delicious. The bartenders clearly were up to the task of tackling my What's That Drink challenge, and atmosphere be damned, I was going to make them do it!

I asked the bartender if he'd be willing to make a drink based on solely on a name. He smiled and said "Sure! There's a bit of a lull right now," so I gave him the name The Dutch Drunk Puppet and he went at it in his weird little wooden cabana bar shack area.

Nothing else at the bar fit this aesthetic. It was weird.

After a little bit, he brought me my drink and told me the ingredients. I was going to ask him why he thought this drink fit the name The Dutch Drunk Puppet, but by then the bar had really picked up and he had other customers to get to, so I thanked him and walked away.

The Drink:

 

Templeton Rye

Lemon

Lime

Mint

Finished with ginger beer 

Assessment of Drink: Like all the drinks I had at RARE, this drink was incredibly drinkable. And while that may sound like a stupid thing to say, I think you know what I mean: some cocktails just go down really easily. The drinks at RARE are strong, but don't taste strong. And this one was no exception. This drink was basically straight rye whiskey, but the slight addition of a splash of ginger beer on top, plus the three flavorful garnishes, cut it nicely. With the ginger beer mostly on top, the drink got stronger the more you had it, so it was like a nice surprise. "Oh hey, this drink has more whiskey the more you drink it! Huzzah!" Also, I'm a bit biased because I am quite partial to the flavor of mint. I think it's really refreshing and can bring out the brightness in a lot of drinks. So I liked this one a lot. It was very refreshing. I wish I could have sipped it on a rooftop garden instead of a nightclub surrounded by the sounds of 90's radio.

Does It Live Up To The Name: I really, really, really wish I could have asked my bartender why this drink was called The Dutch Drunk Puppet because I can't for the life of me figure out why. The citrus, mint, and ginger could apply to many different cultures, but there is nothing Dutch about them. It felt like a citrusy mint julep. And while I admit that it's practically impossible to think of a flavor that immediately conjures up thoughts of The Netherlands, this drink seemed to be running far in the opposite direction. Even the choice of Templeton Rye was odd. There are some Dutch whiskeys, but no well-known ones so I doubt they had them stocked at the bar. Even so, going with specifically a rye whiskey, which is only made in America or Canada, meant that there was nothing even remotely Dutch about this drink.

"I'll put some ginger beer in it or some shit. I don't know. I'm not Dutch."

What could they have done to make it more Dutch? Perhaps a gin drink? Gin is derived from a Dutch liquor called jenever, which is their national drink and is still widely drunk there. But, of course, this isn't common knowledge (I only found out about jenever when I googled "Dutch Drinks" for the purpose of writing this post). A better choice might have been using a drink that The Netherlands is better known for: beer. There are several well-known Dutch beers, like Heineken and Amstel. It's likely they had a Dutch beer available, and could have perhaps concocted a beer cocktail around one of those.

But even if we were to ignore the Dutch part of the name, what about this drink evoked puppets? Again, puppets aren't exactly the easiest thing to evoke in a drink. But I definitely don't see them in this one.

I guess this drink got the "Drunk" part of the name. But that's pretty easy when you're specifically making a cocktail. So this drink gets about half a point for that. Good job! You made a cocktail that had alcohol in it!

But the drink was clearly really good. So as long as you don't want a drink loosely based on Dutch puppets and an incongruous rooftop nightclub sounds like your jam, head over to RARE and have a great time! You'll get drunk on delicious cocktails and you might hear some Backstreet Boys if no one else is available that night!