Drink 42: Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire

The Name: Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire                                                                             

The Bar: Joe's (480 Amsterdam Ave., NYC)

The Story Behind The Name: Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last post. Sorry to the fans of this blog--I'll try to order more weird drinks with more consistency! Although, in reality, the problem isn't that I haven't been ordering weird drinks, it's that I haven't been writing about them. In fact, a month ago, I played What's That Drink and just haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

One of this blog's most avid fans (and one of those waiting most patiently during this two month hiatus) is my friend Christine. Christine has been following What's That Drink since the beginning, and was present when I ordered The Murdered Moose. Christine recently visited New York City and said she was determined to once again appear on this blog. So one night, I met up with Christine, her girlfriend (and my friend) Cheyenne, and her friend (and my new friend) Katie. We decided to do a mini barhop on the Upper West Side, so a What's That Drink cocktail was bound to happen. We just had to figure out what drink to get.

Me and Christine at The Dead Poet

Our answer came while we were in The Dead Poet, where I'd ordered The Lord of Sealand. Among The Dead Poet's many charms is a jukebox with a great song selection. Luckily for us, no one played Tom Jones' "What's New, Pussycat?" But even more luckily, someone did play "Hungry Like the Wolf." The reason this was so lucky was that, on top of just being a great song, Katie had a particular anecdote about it. One night when Katie was particularly drunk, she happened to hear the song and was struck by how good it was. And it was so good that she wanted everyone to know. So long after the song was over she began wandering over to people to inform them that "Hungry Like The Wolf is Fire."

She had a variety of responses to this, with many people agreeing that, yes, that song is "fire," but others simply looking confused and replying, "...okay?" Still, Katie was undeterred by this skepticism. She was so determined to let the world know that "Hungry Like the Wolf is Fire" that she tweeted it at 1:00 in the morning.

  There's something about the wording of the phrase that just makes it particularly funny. For example, using the word "fire" as an adjective for cool. I must admit that I'd never heard this particular turn of phrase before. I've certainly heard the term "on fire," but never simply "fire." Since getting this drink, I've asked people whether they've ever heard someone use "fire" in this context before. Like "That's so fire!!!!" But no one had. Until, completely out of context, I was at work and I heard someone say it. So it appears to be a select term that is very popular with anyone who's four years younger than me. Yet, hearing the phrase, even if you haven't heard it before, you still know what Katie was trying to say. And, I think, that pretty much everyone would agree that she's correct. Hungry Like the Wolf IS fire.

Ordering The Drink: We left The Dead Poet so we could get the drink elsewhere. Partly because I've already ordered a custom drink at The Dead Poet, and partly because there's no shortage of great bars along Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. This is the neighborhood I grew up in, and I can vouch that Amsterdam used to have nothing of note, but has really taken off in the past few years. And there are a ton of great bars lining the avenue starting in the high 70's. One of the better ones is Joe's, which has both good food and good drinks. We had also been there earlier in the evening, and knew that one bartender in particular--a good-natured and jovial guy with a big bushy beard--would probably get really excited by the What's That Drink challenge. As we walked back into Joe's, he saw us and waved.

We didn't sit at the bar, though, we got a table, so after a little while, a waitress came over to take our drink order. As I explained the idea behind ordering a drink based on the name, I included my typical caveat that, if the bartender didn't want to do this, I'd completely understand. "Oh no," our waitress replied, "he'll DEFINITELY want to do this." After I said the name of the drink, she smiled. "I already know what I'd do for this," she said, "but we'll see what he comes up with."

After a little bit, she came back with the drinks, grinning. "He had the same exact idea as I did," she said.

The Drink:

Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire
Angostura Bitters
Sugar
Water

Assessment of Drink: Anyone familiar with cocktails will immediately look at these ingredients and go "Why, that's an Old Fashioned!" And you're right--it IS an Old Fashioned. But it's an Old Fashioned made with cinnamon whiskey. And, frankly, I'm amazed that I've never had a cinnamon whiskey old fashioned before because that's an absolutely brilliant idea. The Old Fashioned has always been one of the most subtle cocktails, and one that really highlights the whiskey, using slight additions like bitters, sugar, and water, to transform the whiskey into a separate mixed drink. And while whiskey purists will always prefer the regular plain Old Fashioned thank you very much, there are now some really good flavored whiskeys in the world that are worth trying, and logically, the way an Old Fashioned works with regular whiskey, it works just as well with flavored whiskeys. It's, at the very least, an intriguing idea.

The one downside to this is that flavored whiskeys--and cinnamon whiskey in particular--does tend to put the flavoring front and center. Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire is VERY cinnamon, and while I really enjoyed the drink, having the whiskey's flavor intensified by the bitters and sugar means that you taste the flavor even more. I mean, you could smell the cinnamon as soon as the drink was placed before us, and I do think that--although it would have violated the simplicity of an Old Fashioned--the drink as a whole might have benefited from having something else to cut down on the cinnamon flavor. I know that Katie in particular, the one for whom the drink was named, found the cinnamon REALLY overpowering. So, while I definitely liked the drink and would recommend it, my recommendation comes with the caveat to make sure you REALLY like cinnamon whiskey if you want to try and make/order this drink for yourself. Personally, I think that if you want to get a flavored Old Fashioned, a subtler flavor like Jack Daniel's Honey might be the more popular choice.

Does It Live Up To The Name: The thing is that, whether the cinnamon flavor was overpowering or not, this drink matched the name PERFECTLY. The word "Fire" was in the drink, so I would have been disappointed if cinnamon was not front and center. Our friendly bartender at Joe's absolutely nailed it in terms of matching the drink to the name. When I come up with these cocktail names, and try to guess what my bartender will come up with, I typically break the drink name into words. So I was thinking, "What will the bartender do to evoke a Wolf in this drink?" But, stupidly, I didn't think of the obvious route to actually acknowledge the song. At this point, Hungry Like the Wolf is a classic--it's a familiar song that pretty much anyone knows and which has a lot of popular appeal. So taking a well-known cocktail, especially an Old Fashioned, as your starting point is a great way to evoke the spirit and feeling of the song. And then, adding cinnamon whiskey (especially one with the word "Fire" in the name) is a perfect twist to add to acknowledge the addition of fire into the drink name. It was a simple approach to the drink name, but I honestly can't think of any approach that would have been better--this really is the perfect drink to match the name. Duran Duran themselves would have been proud.

Basically what I'm trying to say was that the Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire is fire. And even a drink I'd consider ordering again. Although perhaps with a bit more sugar or bitters to cut through the fiery cinnamon flavor.