Vincenzo Marianella
That everything comes full circle in the world of food and drink is axiomatic – all you have to do is stand still, and the taste for whatever it is you crave, from beef Wellington to Spam kebabs, will come back into style. But the degree to which the finely made cocktail, exquisitely fashioned by the master mixologist, has caught fire is something of a shock.
After a decade or so of gooey martinis (thanks Sex and the City!), I figured it'd be shots and beer, or boilermakers, that would become popular again. Instead, we've vaulted headlong into a realm of esoteric drinks made with arcane ingredients by people who actually know what they're doing – fellows who do their shaking and stirring at hot spots like The Roger Room, The Edison, The Varnish...and Copa d'Oro in Santa Monica.
One of the most highly acclaimed of the new breed of mixologists, Copa d'Oro's Vincenzo Marianella is easy to find at the bar – he's the exotic-looking fellow from
central casting, with the D'Artagnan mustache and chin whiskers, who
never stops moving. And what keeps him busy isn't just mixing gin and vermouth: the bar is situated just a couple of blocks from Santa Monica's twice-weekly Arizona Avenue farmer's market, where Marianella and his staff purchase fresh ingredients for the drinks listed on the Market Menu – basil, mint, rosemary, sage, apple, blackberry, cranberry, grape, grapefruit, orange, passion fruit, strawberry, raspberry, guava lychee, mango, papaya, pear, pineapple, apricots, nectarines, white peaches, plums, watermelon, celery, cucumber, ginger, jalapeño and red bell peppers. As it says on the menu, "Select from our market-fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables to flavor your cocktail. Leave the rest to us..."
Which is exactly what I did one fine evening earlier this summer. I told Italian-born Marianella – who mixed cocktails in London, New York, San Francisco and Australia before coming to LA to stir things up at Doheny and Providence – that I disliked sweet cocktails, and preferred gin or vodka flavored with bitters. His response? "Too generic. I need to know, do you like an aromatic cocktail, like a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned? Or perhaps something like a whiskey sour or a margarita?"
I told him a Manhattan-like libation sounded wonderful. And his hands began moving. He used Martin Miller's gin, Marie Brizard Apry, Regan's orange bitters and a touch of maraschino. The drink he handed me, in a martini glass, looked like a captured Caribbean sunset. It reminded me of the quote, found on the Copa d'Oro menu, from great elbow-bender Ernest Hemingway: "Drinking is a way of ending the day."
And how, I wondered, does Marianella end his day? "With tequila," he said. "I love tequila. It is very complex, very herbal, very much of the land." But not, I said, in a frozen margarita. "Ah yes," he said, "the frozen margarita is a great invention, very refreshing. But it has to be made right. Here, we make it right. It's not a Slurpee. It's a drink."
– Merrill Shindler