Drink 38: The Curse of the Oyster Bar (Part I)

The Name: The Curse of the Oyster Bar                                                                                

The Bar: Death & Co. (433 E. 6th Street, NYC)

The Story Behind The Name: I'm not a superstitious person by any means. I believe that most of the more mysterious things in the world can be explained, either through logic or plain chance. But even I have to admit that sometimes some weird things happen. Last year, for Halloween, I talked about one such weird thing: my mom's cat who seemingly came back from the dead. This year, my Halloween drink is about another odd occurrence: a seafood restaurant that seemed to have a specific curse targeting my family.

Near the apartment where I grew up, there used to be a restaurant called Dock's Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill. That particular restaurant closed a few years ago but they do have another location in the city. The food is very good, especially if you like seafood. But when it closed, my parents and I rejoiced. Because it seemed like every time we went to Dock's something terrible happened.

And I don't mean little things, like we'd lose a lucky penny or something. I mean big things. Really major, horrible things. And they would happen typically within a day and a half of us going to Dock's.

The curse began before I was born. While my mom was pregnant with me, my parents moved into a bigger apartment in expectation of baby Miles. To celebrate their new apartment, they decided to go to Dock's as they'd heard it was supposed be a good, slightly more upscale neighborhood place. The next morning, less than 24 hours after their first time at Dock's, they did a walk-through of their new place, and my mom slipped and broke her shoulder. 

 A few years later, one of my mother's cousins was visiting New York City with his family. My mom and this particular cousin had always been close, and my parents were more than happy to host them. They decided to go to Dock's. While there, my mom and her cousin got into a huge argument that completely ended their friendship. They haven't spoken since. 

A few years later, we went to Dock's again. The next day, my dad was fired from his job unexpectedly.

It was around this point that we started to feel there might be a trend. The meal at Dock's was always perfectly fine, but it just seemed like trouble followed us whenever we left the restaurant. And it's not like we went to Dock's a lot and sometimes bad things happened, bad things happened to our family EVERY SINGLE TIME  WE WENT. Almost like clockwork. After my dad lost his job, I think we really became aware of just how worrying this trend was. We started piecing together the various horrendous occurrences that seemed to accompany every meal. There were more, by the way, the ones I've mentioned here are just the ones that immediately come to mind. I'm not sure, but I think that one time we went, and the next day learned that a relative had died. The whole thing became a joke to us. We'd walk by Dock's and go, "We're never going THERE again" and we'd laugh because obviously the restaurant couldn't REALLY have been cursed...could it?

One year, when I was in middle school, my parents, my grandma, and I were going to go out to dinner on Valentine's Day. We decided to throw caution to the wind and try Dock's again. "Hopefully nothing bad will happen, haha!" we said. My mom called and made a reservation. This was on February 12th.

The next day, February 13th, I broke my leg in gym class.

With my freshly broken leg, I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but I didn't want to ruin the evening's plans, so on the 14th we went to Dock's. My parents wheeled me over on my grandma's walker. They were doing construction work on the streets so the streets were particularly bumpy. My leg throbbed in pain at every bump in the road. We had a nice meal at Dock's, even though I could hardly eat anything because the pain was too distracting. We joked that at least this time, the horrible thing that usually accompanied our Dock's meals had already happened!

Two days later, my grandma had a stroke and had to be admitted to the hospital.

We never went to Dock's again.

This grey awning haunts my nightmares.

It is worth noting that the food there is great. And if you are worried about the curse somehow following you, you should know that the curse never seemed to affect anyone else. We know multiple people who would eat there with no negative side effects, so if there was some sort of supernatural hex associated with Dock's Oyster Bar and Seafood Grill, it was very specifically trained on my parents and I. And the curse seems to have ended once Dock's closed and changed locations. My mom has been to the restaurant that now occupies the space multiple times for lunch and we've never observed anything happening. Still, the curse of Dock's remains ever-present in our family. It was simply too reliable to just be a coincidence. Truly horrendous things happened to us every single time we went there. The oyster bar must have been cursed. Like a particularly bad Final Destination movie.

Ordering The Drink: I met my good friend Arun, who has accompanied me for several drinks in the past, at a bar called Death & Co. I've wanted to go here for a while. I've heard consistently amazing things about this bar, and have often been tempted to be their signature cocktail cookbook which is often considered one of the best guides for the budding home mixologist. Plus, with a name like Death & Co., I figured this would be the perfect place for a spooky Halloween drink.

Death & Co. is very sleek and sophisticated and cool. The suspenders-clad bartenders clearly know what their doing, and the drink menu is superbly laid out. It's divided by spirit--the whiskey drinks, the tequila drinks, the gin drinks, etc., and also designated which drinks are shaken and stirred. The sheer number of cool cocktails is staggering, but they make it easy to navigate, and easy to actually figure out what you want since everything sounds so delicious. Plus, the menu is decorated with various famous quotes about drinking, and some cute illustrations.

I arrived before Arun, and ordered a drink called The Waning Moon. Every drink I had at Death & Co. was wonderful, but this one was by far my favorite. The bartender called it "fall in a glass," and it had lovely flavors of apple and maple and lemon and whiskey and, most intriguingly, pine. As the bar wasn't too hectic, the bartender talked to me a bit about how they got the pine flavor in--using a pine tree brandy called Eaux de Vie Douglas Fir. It was really neat, and both this drink and the entire menu made me really excited to see what he would come up with for my custom drink. All in all, Arun and I were having a really great time at Death & Co. Especially when we got some truly delicious truffle mac and cheese.

After two drinks, we decided to go for the custom drink. There were two guys working the bar, and the one who had been making drinks for us was helping someone else, so the second guy came up to us and asked if we were ready. I launched into my usual spiel when I order drinks for this blog. "I have a bit of a weird request, and you can feel free to say no if you want to and I'll order something else. But I was hoping you could make me a drink based on the name of a cocktail. So, the cocktail doesn't exist yet, and you can put anything in it that you want as long as you think it would fit that name. Would you be willing to do it?"

When I finished, he was glaring at me slightly, shaking his head no, and said, "No. Order something off the menu."

"You're not going to do it?" I asked.

"Absolutely not."

I thought back to the other bartender, who had been very friendly and had talked to me about the Waning Moon and the pine.

"Can I ask him?" I asked.

"You can try, but he's going to say the same thing I did."

I decided to not risk pissing both of the bartenders off, so I ordered another cocktail off the menu--called the Blood & Thunder--which ended up being absolutely delicious. The bartender was incredibly friendly and polite for the entire evening.

So, I got rejected. After 38 drinks and almost two years, this is only my third time being rejected (I haven't written about one of the rejections yet--soon though--but you can read about my first drink rejection here) so getting rejected is a pretty rare occurrence. I have to say I was quite surprised. Sometimes I go to order the drink and think, "They might really not be into this...," but not at Death & Co. I not only thought that they would make the drink, but I was expecting one of the best drinks I'd ever get for this blog, considering their clear passion for cocktails. The reason I find this blog fun--and the reason it seems other bartenders have had a lot of fun with the premise--is because it's meant to be a celebration of cocktails. It's a fun little challenge where the bartender is encouraged to be inspired and to play. It's clear from the craftsmanship of the cocktails that the bartenders were up to the challenge, and it's clear from the menu that this is a place that thinks outside the box when it comes to classic cocktails. My weird little game seemed like it should have been right up their alley.

  

But it wasn't. And I can't blame them for that. I always say right at the outset that they can say no if they want to, and he was quite ready to use that out. I didn't push him for an explanation for why he was saying no, but my guess is that this cocktail menu has been carefully crafted and that by ordering from off the menu he felt like it was a slap in the face. Almost as if I was saying "I know you have an award-winning cocktail menu, but I think you can do better."And I hope he didn't take it as an insult because, of course, it wasn't meant in that way.

If I had asked the other bartender, maybe he would have done it. I don't know. I was certainly disappointed that Death & Co. didn't want to participate in What's That Drink, but I understand. And every drink that Arun and I had was quite incredible (we closed out the night by each getting a vintage egg nog prepared in the classic style, which were pretty excellent). I certainly recommend Death & Co. as a great bar in the city...just don't try and order off the menu. But, with a menu as great as theirs, you have more than enough options.

It seemed like the curse of Dock's was following me for one last time and preventing me from getting my custom drink! Luckily, a couple night later, I had another chance to try The Curse of the Oyster Bar, and this time I was able to get a drink. Read part II here!