On the Counter; Apollo

Welcome back everybody. So we know that the creativity of this staffing agency is truly unmatched and that's a big reason for that is this guy right here. Yes, this is Ryan Castellez, their creative director. He is joining us now live to make a very special drink that I noticed is new to the menu. If you're wondering where it is, it's on the experiential side. Experiential. And it is an experience. It's called the Apollo. Walk me through this beverage. Absolutely. So So this menu, you know, we've done this a long time now, so you know, you know, all of our menus are thematic. Yes, which I love. It's so fun. It's so fun. This one is all about mythology. So we're following different Greek gods and goddesses. I love it. And really investigating their whole kind of ethos. So this is actually an Apollo. And it's the first cocktail on our current tasting menu. The first thing I'm adding for my N.A. is this beautiful gin from Undu infused with olives. I was going to say, you, and you put the olives in there. Yes, we do. Mantinea olives. I love this. Beautiful little kind of soft salinity that you get in through those olives. That's my favorite flavor. It's the best. I'm a big olive, yeah. Me, too. Big olive girlie, yeah. Dirty Martini lovers unite, truly. And then a little bit of Little French. This is their kind of white apothie. It's absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite products in the NA space. Yum. From there, we're moving on to a little bit of apricot kernel, honey, and maple syrup. So apricot kernel is the pits of apricots, dried. Oh, yum. And then they almost taste like, they work very similarly to almonds, but they taste like peachy almonds. Peachy almonds. Beautiful. I think I would like that. It's delicious. Lots of pits in here, because we're also using malab, which is cherry pits. Oh. And they have this kind of marzipan, vanilla, cherry vibe to them. Like a nutty. It's gorgeous. Fruit energy. Beautiful flavor. So lots of fruity, lots of nutty, all in this little syrup. Okay. And then, of course, we have a little peach nectar. And this is just a quarter ounce. and then for acidity here we're using acid phosphate have you ever seen this baby before i have not i love your potion so this is like ryan's science lab so acid phosphate four drops this is actually what we used to in the midwest before we could ship citrus so you know we have modern conveniences of refrigerated shipping right we think about that as something we've always had yeah but when the citrus couldn't get here like if we can't grow it here we needed a way to make drinks acidic sorry i'm just everything you're saying makes a lot of sense and i was just like oh i never thought about that it's super wild it is a while to think about yeah we created acid actually from limestone so pharmacists found out that if we dissolved limestone we could create uh phosphoric acid uh and then phosphoric acid became acid phosphate so this is yeah it's awesome you know and this is actually the primary acid that you find in cola so sodas are generally acidified with phosphoric acid almost always in liquid form it has this kind of sparkle to it exactly and when really beautiful so when we need to add acidity things like soda um this is great without that flavor of lemon or lime okay perfect so we're gonna put all that in there now Apollo obviously uh the sun god uh so he had a love and um his love was this little kind of almost wood nymph type human okay um he was chasing her through this the forest and and the the myth goes that Apollo was shot by Eros uh with an arrow of love uh because Apollo was like yo your gift is stupid you just make people love people uh and and Eros is like I'm gonna show you how powerful love is so he shot Apollo with an arrow of love Apollo fell in love with this nymph who Eros shot with an arrow of basically repulsion. So he is chasing this lover who is repulsed by him through the woods. And when he finally reaches her... That's dirty. Literally. The nymph is transformed into a laurel tree. And so Apollo never gets to be with his love. She forever is this tree in the forest. So the moral of the story is, don't trust... Those arrows are strong. Exactly. Love is strong. So we have the sun in here to represent Apollo. Beautiful. That is a peach and cherry wood ice sphere that we make at the bar. And then, to represent his lover, we have a little bit of bay laurel oil. So this is just fresh bay leaf infused into oil. It's got a beautiful color to it. It's gorgeous, isn't it? So I'm going to put that around the sun. And now the idea is, when you swirl this glass, the oil will race around the sun, but they'll never touch. So they can never fully be together. That is so beautiful. This is Kat Doty, our creative director. Really, really quite smart. And I'm just going to finish this with a little bit of club soda. We're going to do about an ounce of club in there. Make it a little spritzy. I also love the color of this. It's perfect. Is it gold? I know. Cheers, my friend. To agency. This is beautiful. A little fruity, a little nutty. And it tells a story. And it tells a beautiful story. It's intentional. It's a, oh, okay. I know I want to try it. So you get that soft, Oh, this is so good. You get that kind of longness of the French, that little peachiness from that peach nectar. Sometimes when, you know, we're making drinks here, it's like, I'm like, okay, there's a lot going on in here. But what never ceases to amaze me is how it all comes together so harmoniously in the drink, and it's not too much. 100%. Like, it seems like, okay, there's a lot of ingredients, but the way they all work together, it doesn't taste like it. That, to me, is the mark of a truly great drink, right? Yeah, it all blends together. It's what we call balance. So how do we bring complexity into balance, chaos into balance? That's largely the work of a drink maker, creating order from chaos. And it's one of the things that I love most about the industry. And you're very good at it. Order from Chaos. Oh, thanks, Fred. In the new menu at Agency, I'm taking a look here. You've got all kinds of, you've got Poseidon. We have five baddies right now. Poseidon, Dionysus, Persephone. We have the beautiful Apollo. So come on in. We're doing a tasting menu with this. Oh, yes. Okay. It's incredible. I saw that. It walks you all the way through the mythology. We bring these beautiful postcards to your table that tell you the stories of the myths that we're talking about and the recipes and Zach Panosky, our incredible chef, has made five beautiful courses of food to pair with these cocktails. So truly an incredible experience. It's only available another week or two. We have Halloween coming up shortly, which is going to be a really fun menu. Oh, I'm looking. So there's a special Halloween menu. Yeah, of course. Why did I even ask? We're doing horror movies, baby. It's going to be awesome. We're doing it. We're doing Frankenstein. We're doing Rosemary's Baby. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to hear about that. Frank Castle has Agency. thank you so much of course check us out it's 17 North Marshall, we'll be right back yeah Double Dot Hotel, right? It's gorgeous, absolutely