SAN FRANCISCO — At Scoma’s Restaurant in San Francisco, this vacation season ‘s batch of eggnog started 11 months in the past.
The method usually begins in late January, simply after the earlier yr’s celebrations are over. Almost a thousand egg yolks, gallons upon gallons of heavy cream and roughly $1,000 value of vanilla beans are combined with sugar and a mega-cocktail of sherry, brandy and aged rum. The concoction is then saved at 34 levels Fahrenheit and and will get stirred weekly for months.
Is it well worth the wait? Buyer Phil Kenny appears to suppose so.
“It’s a beautiful, specialty drink,” Kenny mentioned of Scoma’s recipe, which has been honed in recent times to reap the benefits of the boozy beverage’ s getting older course of. “This takes eggnog to a distinct degree.”
Kenny and his spouse, Laurie, aren’t the one ones having fun with it this yr.
“A drink that you’d kind of affiliate with grandma and grandpa on the vacations has develop into like a cult favourite right here,” Gordon Drysdale, Scoma’s culinary director, mentioned earlier this month. “We didn’t ever anticipate folks truly being mad at us as a result of we didn’t have it.”
Eggnog’s roots date again to medieval England and a drink known as “posset,” which included sizzling milk or cream, alcohol and spices. Recipes have advanced within the centuries since then, and non-dairy and alcohol-free choices abound in recent times. However some — just like the formulation for the well-known eggnog daiquiri at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Store in New Orleans — keep the identical, and stay secret.
“I prefer to say it’s somewhat Christmas magic,” mentioned Jamie Gourges, advertising supervisor for the open-air bar within the metropolis’s iconic French Quarter. “We don’t disclose any of our recipes at any level however it’s scrumptious.”
Gourges will say, although, that theirs is made contemporary every morning from proper after Thanksgiving till Three Kings Day, also called Epiphany, on Jan. 6. It is a custom going again some 20 years at an institution that was constructed within the early 1700s. Naturally, it is haunted by French pirate and privateer Jean Lafitte, who based mostly his smuggling operations close to New Orleans.
Terry Wittmer, who lives within the Large Straightforward, is an everyday buyer and loves the vacation season on the bar.
“It tastes like Christmas. It’s somewhat cinnamon-y. It’s clean and in case you drink it too quick you may get a mind freeze,” Wittmer mentioned. “I stay a block away so I’m right here day-after-day however I’m happier throughout Christmas.”
Even for vacationers who got here for the bar’s signature “purple drank” daiquiri, the vacation beverage beckons.
“It’s not going to have an issue taking place, let’s put it that approach,” Cheryl Abrigo of Florida mentioned as she sipped hers.
Smith reported from New Orleans, and Dazio reported from Los Angeles.
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