Category Archives: Ideal Cocktail Bar, Media

Waters of Spain and the world

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This year has been published the book Waters of Spain and the World by Faustino Muñoz Soria, a book we highly recommended for all of you who are interested in gastronomy or simply in your health: water is a basic good and it is important to know what does it contain, what sorts of water we drink, who bottles them, and where they come from. Josep Maria Gotarda has collaborated on a small note about how water is an indispensable element in the world of cocktails. Water is present in the world of the cocktail from the ice cubes that refresh the drink (which must be made with the purest and most neutral water available) to the refreshing glasses of water served before a good cocktail. We leave here the note of Josep Maria and we encourage you to be more interested in the world of mineral water, we all consume water daily and it is important to know what we drink.

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Barcelona’s Resilient Bar Culture

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This week we’ve been featured at The Daily Beast in their article Barcelona’s Resilient Bar Culture we recommend you to take a look at this article which is about all those bars that survived Franco’s dictatorship and are still going strong to the present day, bars as our Ideal that have demonstrated extraordinary strength and perseverance, along with us they also highlight the Club Caribbean, the Dry Martini and Bar Boadas as examples of other successful pubs that have been around for several years and are still trying to innovate and improve day by day.

“I don’t want to talk about modern bars. Instead, I want to talk about the old ones. The ones that were around during Franco’s reign and the years of reconstruction that came in his wake, and are still, amazingly, here today. Not only are they great bars, but, after an evening spent visiting perhaps (OK, definitely) too many of them, I think they also have a message for us.”
- David Wondrich, The Daily Beast’s Senior Drinks Columnist and the James Beard Award-winning author

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Ideal Cocktail Bar in Cuina magazine

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In the last issue of Cuina magazine Ideal has a little reportage about the Manhattan, one of the favorite cocktails of Josep Mª Gotarda. This cocktail is one of the most iconic in the mixology world and its relation with the city of New York is indisputable, at Ideal you can enjoy its classical version made out of whisky or rye but Gotarda has his own preference and makes it with bourbon or, if the client desires, he makes it with vermouth. However, this cocktail doesn’t need any extra change to be perfect in its own way with the traditional recipe and that’s what makes it so famous amongst other cocktails. Here we leave you the recipe for a good Manhattan and the pictures of the reportage.

Manhattan

Ingredients

  • 6 cl of bourbon or rye
  • 2 cl of black vermouth (at Ideal we use Martini)
  • 2 touches of Angostura
  • 1 marrasquino cherry

Preparation
Cool down a martini glass, put in a shaker some ice and shake it, take out the water excess and add the bourbon, the vermouth and the angostura, mix it up to cool everything down. Put a cherry in the glass and pour down the liquid in it filtering the ice with a strainer and it’s ready to serve.
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Ideal in Le Shaker

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Le Shaker magazine has reviewed us in their last number of June, Ideal Cocktail Bar can be find inside the report of Barcelona’s best cocktail bars along with other great bars of the city, besides the review we talk to them about our very own Ideal Cocktail, here we leave you the extracts of the magazine and the recipe for the Ideal Cocktail.

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Ideal Cocktail

Ingredients

  • 5cl of White Mezcal from Ágave Espadín
    1/4 of orange
    2cl of cinnamon and chile syrup
    3.5cl of strawberry purée
    2cl of lime juice

    • Elaboration
    Put in a shaker the chopped orange and pestle it, after that add the rest of the ingredients with quite a lot of ice. It will be served shaked in an individual jar with enough crushed ice. To decorate put a piece of pink grapefruit and a piece of papaya, both of them dehydrated.

    Josep Mª Gotarda interview at Catalunya Ràdio’s “El Suplement”

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    This Sunday we had the pleasure of chatting about gintonics with the guys of the radio program El Suplement of Catalunya Ràdio, along with Pep Nogué, Roger Escap and Jordi MIllán. The program took place at La Terrassa del Duquesa and we want to thank all the people who made it possible, you can hear the radio program here (in Catalan):

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    Divine Barcelona

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    Last week we were featured in Barcelona Divina magazine. We were in a top 5 of the best cocktail bars of Barcelona which were challenged to create de “Barcelona Divina’s Cocktail”. Our barman Manel was inspired by the uniqueness and explosiveness of this city to create his cocktail Barcelona Divina, in it he mixed the citric of oranges and limes, the sweetness of cinnamon and strawberries and the final touch was the adding of a spicy chile all of that mixed in Mezcal. Manel defined it like:

    “This is a refreshing cocktail, fruity, with smokey and spicy details and with a slightly peppery final touch”.

    Here we leave you the ingredients as well as the elaboration if you want to try it at home!

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    Ingredients

    • 5cl of White Mezcal from Ágave Espadín
    • 1/4 of orange
    • 2cl of cinnamon and chile syrup
    • 3.5cl of strawberry purée
    • 2cl of lime juice

    Elaboration
    Put in a shaker the chopped orange and pestle it, after that add the rest of the ingredients with quite a lot of ice. It will be served shaked in an individual jar with enough crushed ice. To decorate put a piece of pink grapefruit and a piece of papaya, both of them dehydrated.

    Seagram’s Gin Barcelona vintage guide

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    In the latest Seagram’s Gin vintage guide written by Mario Suárez and Anabel Vázquez they have devoted a few pages to Ideal Cocktail Bar also they made a little profile on Josep Mª Gotarda. In the guide you’ll find some of the history of our bar, for example how it has been opened and managed by the same family since 1931, firstly with Antonio Gotarda and nowadays with Josep Mª Gotarda, also you can get to know which personalities have come to visit us along the years, from Charlton Heston to Josep Pla.

    “I learned from my father everything I know about mixology, a classic but pure mixology.”

    Josep Mª Gotarda.

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    Seagarm’s Gin Cocktail: Green Promenade

    • Pour in the shaker 5cl of cold macerated with fennel leaves for a couple of minutes gin.
    • Filter it and add 2.5 cl of Agave syrup and 2.5 cl of lime juice and enough ice.
    • Shake it and pour it in a cocktail glass.
    • Add air that has been previously prepared with mineral water, brine and sucro, which is known as “manzanilla olive brine air”

    Barcelona stirs the shaker

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    Last saturday the journalist Patricia Castán wrote in El Periódico an interesting article about the evolution of the cocktail scene in Barcelona, over time we have passed from the gintonic revolution to, little by little, seeing new places all over the streets of our city specialized in premium mixology. A better educated public with a strong interest and taste for cocktails along with the democratization of this kind of drinks prices are the key concepts that explain why every day there are more of this bars in Barcelona. Due to this exciting change in the scene El Club del Barman has crafted a “tour” guide featuring the best 30 cocktail bars in Barcelona, each bar has been selected by the 200 members belonging to the club presided by Josep Mª Gotarda who states that “just for the quality, Barcelona already stands out as a cocktail capital city”.

    Among the selected bars we can find a diverse range: from the very first and classic mixology bars such as Ideal Cocktail Bar itself (stablished in 1931 and making cocktails since the ’50s) which has been witness of the renewal of its clientele as well as the rebirth of the cocktail culture, to the newest additions like Mutis or Bocachica or the kitchens of grand hotels the kinds of Ohla or the Mandarin Oriental whose bars are already taking part of this mixology revival. If you want to read the rest of the article follow the next link: Barcelona stirs the shaker.

    “When I grow up I want to be a chef”

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    Recently the newspaper Ara made an extent article about the students of the Escola Superior de Hostelería de Barcelona (ESHOB, the Barcelona’s superior school of hostelry), nowadays catalan cuisine is one of the most famous and looked up to cuisines in the world therefore lots of girls and boys decide to take hostelry as a career. In the ESHOB Josep Mª Gotarda is one of the professors that teach this future chefs all the things they have to know, each monday at ten in the morning they have mixology class, and there’s where Gotarda teach them not only the preparation for every cocktail but the secrets hidden in each ingredient and the different ways one can prepare the the same cocktail. If you want to read the rest of the chronicle follow the next link: Jo de gran vull ser cuiner.

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