It’s that time of year again. (No, it’s not time to hang the lights on the gutters — not yet anyway.) It’s the season when we reluctantly trade in our summer clothes for cable-knit sweaters and willingly sit in traffic for seemingly all eternity for what we’ve long recognized as the tastes of fall — apple cider, pumpkin spice, and homemade apple pie.
“The inspiration for this tribute cocktail came from the annual festivities in my home during the holiday/fall season, which included the making of pumpkin pie with a graham cracker crust,” says Joe Scalice, general manager at View, about the waterfront restaurant’s pumpkin Martini. “My mom would wake up early and get everything set and then call my brother and me to help her make the pumpkin pie.”
The three of them would then gather all the ingredients and measure each item carefully.
“We watched eagerly as the pumpkin pie cooked in the oven,” Scalice says. “We loved when mom would open the oven door to see how it was cooking, and you get the wonderful aromas of pumpkin and vanilla and spices. Finally, it was taken out and left to cool, and then we had to wait until the guests arrived, dinner was served, finished, and then finally the pumpkin pie was served.”
In creating the pumpkin Martini, he wanted to “recreate all of those sensory items,” he says. But he also wanted to add more dimension and texture, so he added “the graham cracker crust to the rim of the glass, which complements all of the wonderful aromas and tastes of pumpkin, vanilla, and fall spices,” he says.
The cocktail is made up of Stoli Vanil (vodka), pumpkin pie liqueur, graham cracker rim, and cinnamon.
As far as guest feedback goes, “They love it,” he says. “It is a nice cocktail segue from all of the summer drink offerings.”
“It is more like a dessert than a cocktail,” Scalice says. “It really is a cocktail that is based upon the season and is meant to set the tone for the season, upcoming holidays, and to inspire a sense of movement into the next season.”
View is located at 3 Consuelo Pl., Oakdale. It can be reached at 631-589-2694. lessings.com/corporate/restaurants/venue/view.
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