Fellow restaurant geeks and industry cv nerds, this paragraph is for you. Everyone else, skip to para 2. Ame > Toronto Temperance Society > The Ritz Carlton > Lucid > The Museum Tavern > and now the L-eat group of properties featuring Paese and L-Eat Express… ace bartender and mixologist Moses McIntee gets around. Which is good because it has dragged me out of the house, following him hither and yon over the years. At Lucid, he was heavily into molecular mixology – lots of flasks and frozen gases. At The Museum Tavern it was more about barrel-aged cocktails (O M G – that aged Negroni!). Then, a couple of weeks ago, he left to join the group of businesses operated by Tony Loschiavo, an influential and excellent group including Paese (almost 25 years old, up on Bathurst), the new Paese on King Street West, L-eat Catering and L-eat Express. Tony himself handles all the wine stuff for his establishments – he is a brilliant sommelier, avid collector, dedicated vertical-vintage fan of such immortal luminaries as Quintarelli, Tignanello, etc, and also one of the very good guys in this tricksy hospitality business. Moses is his new Bar Director – and therein lies the meat of this posting.
As a sort of announcement of his latest position, Moses has made public (“shared” as we say in the merry, bustling world of social media) a flipbook of new, original, seasonal cocktails that he has created for Paese on King Street West. If you click here, http://snack.to/ft3l48fm, the book, with all its fascinating recipes and plangent background anecdotes, will miraculously appear! Meanwhile, let me offer some pictures of the Inspirato Dal Maestro cocktail (gin, Campari, orange juice, prosecco granita) manifesting itself before your very eyes. The finished version stands proudly at the top; the necessary steps below. I’ll leave you to imagine the swirling flavours you would experience if you made your way to Paese and ordered the cocktail from Moses himself… Consider it a commandment.
