At Bar Kabawa in New York’s East Village, Kathryn “Pepper” Stashek affords a cocktail menu made solely of rum-based drinks. Unsurprisingly, there’s a heavy Prohibition-era Cuban affect working via it: a Mojito Caballito, a Daiquiri No. 3 (aka Hemingway) from Havana’s El Floridita bar, a riff on the Presidente—and a Golden Glove. Stashek wasn’t, at first, set on together with the latter, forgotten traditional on the menu. However after many pissed off makes an attempt at creating the right Daiquiri No. 2 spec (after one other Floridita traditional)—one that might be the right orange-inflected Daiquiri—“I used to be like, oh, the rationale it’s not hitting is as a result of it must be a Golden Glove.”
Stashek first encountered the Golden Glove within the 1934 recipe booklet from El Floridita, one in a collection from the well-known Havana bar that, together with an analogous collection from Sloppy Joe’s, offers us a vivid image of Cuba’s American-style bars on this interval. However the first time she actually noticed its potential was whereas studying about it in Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean. Although similar to the Daiquiri No. 2, the Golden Glove swaps out the white rum in favor of aged Jamaican rum, omits the orange juice, and, most significantly, blends the combination to frozen perfection.
“I’ve to think about that Constante [Ribalaigua Vert] perhaps had an analogous evolutionary course of when he was creating this drink,” she says, “taking [the Daiquiri No. 2] and bettering it.” Stashek is on a mission to point out visitors that frozen Daiquiris have an essential mixological previous predating their affiliation with vacationer traps and chain eating places, and this drink makes a formidable case.
The unique Golden Glove recipe as written is extremely dry—like many Cuban cocktails of that interval—calling for 2 ounces of rum, half a lime’s value of juice, and only a teaspoon every of Cointreau and sugar. Stashek feels the Floridita spec is fairly near-perfect, and she or he made only a few slight tweaks for her Bar Kabawa model.
For the Jamaican rum, slightly than trying to find the right historic analogue, she wished to make use of one thing that might attraction to visitors’ palates. “I do know loads of bartenders like to dig into, ‘Effectively, what did they imply by Jamaican rum in 1934, what was out there?’” Stashek says. “That’s not my deal.” As a substitute, she reached for the approachable standby Appleton Property Signature, which she says performs the position completely, with out loads of funkiness or hogo.
Although Stashek’s recipe requires only a teaspoon of Cointreau—the identical small quantity as in Ribalaigua’s—she says it offers the drink a “enhance of taste” that layers superbly over the rum and lime. To steadiness the drink, she tripled the unique spec’s teaspoon of sugar, calling for a tablespoon as an alternative. Impressed by Garret Richard’s tropical drinks methodology, Stashek provides the fashionable contact of xanthan gum, which “smooths it out and offers it that good, constant texture.” An orange twist acts as a practical garnish, including one other citrusy kick on each the nostril and the palate.
The Golden Glove isn’t the most well-liked possibility on Bar Kabawa’s menu, however the lesser-known drink is making some inroads. For Stashek, there’s a particular form of satisfaction when visitors fall for the cocktail: “Nothing makes me happier than seeing any individual order a second Golden Glove.”
