San Valentino
Valentine's Day Falling On a Friday Means It's Time to Stir Up a Chocolate Negroni, Order In a Heart-Shaped Pizza, Hit "Play" on Our After-Hours Playlist, and Get Ready for the Long Holiday Weekend
There’s No Time Like the…
Last Saturday night I streamed the movie We Live In Time on the Home Box Office. Released last fall from A24, it’s a time-jumping love story told in fragmented, out-of-chronological-order scenes, hopping back and forth to specific moments and events over the course of a relationship (the movie’s tag-line is “There’s no time like the past present future.”) The British romantic drama, filmed in Herne Hill in southeast London, stars Academy Award Nominees Florence Pugh as Almut (a pragmatic, talented chef on the rise) and Andrew Garfield as Tobias (an affable romantic who works in IT for the Weetabix cereal company). Their unlikely relationship takes them from a memorable meet-cute to becoming parents to tackling much darker, heartbreaking concerns. It was quite charming though bittersweet and melancholy (my primary self-descriptors).
After the credits rolled I started thinking about romantic movies I’ve liked over the years. Not necessarily the “Most Romantic Movies” standards like The Notebook, Titanic, Ghost, and When Harry Met Sally, and Moonstruck, but ones I had a more personal connection with. Movies like Valley Girl (1983), Splash (1984), Pretty In Pink (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), Broadcast News (1987), Say Anything (1989), Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Singles (1992), Reality Bites (1994), “The Before Trilogy” (Before Sunrise, 1995; Before Sunset, 2004; Before Midnight, 2013) Jerry Maguire (1996), The Last Days of Disco (1998), Lost In Translation (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Call Me By Your Name (2017).
I spotlighted two of these examples in last summer’s “Roll Credits!” dispatch, focusing on their memorable final scenes.
In Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan after the last scene the primary characters part ways after picking up unemployment forms after all being laid off or fired, Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Josh (Matt Keeslar), the former assistant district attorney who she’s been seeing, enter the subway on the way to lunch at Lutèce. They silently flirt as the O’Jays’ “Love Train” plays and the pair begin dancing then walk away.
There’s a brief fade and then it comes back up with the song still playing but Alice and Josh are gone but there’s a breaking of the fourth wall as the credits roll and all of the train car’s passengers are now dancing, soon rejoined by Alice and Josh as the subway continues. Even the passengers on the platform are dancing as the train moves on and disappears into a dark tunnel leaving their future unknown.
The ending of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation never fails to move me. While staying at The Park Hyatt Tokyo, a flirtatious friendship develops between middle-aged fading American actor Bob Harris (Bill Murray), whose being paid two million dollars to shoot a series of whiskey commercials, and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a recent college graduate accompanying her photographer husband on a photo shoot.
There’s a relatively chaste kiss goodnight in the elevator on their last night together followed by a bittersweet goodbye in the hotel lobby the next morning. As Bob is in the back of his car being driven to the airport, he asks the driver to stop when he sees Charlotte walking down a crowded Tokyo street. She’s happy to see him. They embrace and he famously whispers a private message into her ear and briefly kiss and say goodbye and each smile as Charlotte wipes away a tear. Charlotte disappears into the crowd as Bob drives off to the airport. “Just Like Honey” by The Jesus and Mary Chain Gang kicks set against a collage of the passing lights, buildings, and roadways before fading to black, ambiguously leaving viewers to wonder if their chapter is over or just beginning.
But when the romance leads to something a bit more on the sexy side (and no, I’m not talking 9 1/2 Weeks or 50 Shades of Gray), nothing beats 1998’s Out of Sight (directed by Steven Soderbergh, written by Scott Frank, adapted from the 1996 Elmore Leonard novel), which I saw opening weekend at the Regal Cinemas Carousel Mall Stadium 17 in Syracuse.
Just look at the caliber of the cast: George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, Catherine Keener, Luis Guzmán, Isaiah Washington, Viola Davis, Michael Keaton, and Samuel L. Jackson. (The cameo of Michael Keaton reprising his role as FBI Agent Ray Nicolette from Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown also established a film geek connection between the Soderbergh/Tarantino multiverse.)
Though billed as an “action comedy,” the chemistry between George Clooney as career criminal Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez as U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco are on full display in two sensual set pieces that are master classes on the form.
The extended scene of Foley and Sisco locked together in the back of a trunk of a car after his he busts out of prison is technically an unplanned armed kidnapping, but the intimate setting, pacing, and dialogue is the beginning of the conflicted chemistry between the two. But it’s in the second half of the picture when Sisco tracks Foley to Detroit and the pair meet again in a hotel bar. As the snow falls outside through the windows the pair role play a game of “What if?” to briefly pause the reality of their situation. In an homage to the 1973 film Don't Look Now, Soderbergh intercuts between the hotel bar seduction and a sensual striptease in Sisco’s hotel room. One of my personal takeaways is the simple act of sharing sips from a single glass of bourbon as the art of flirtation.
San Valentino
Honey I'm a prize and you're a catch
And we're a perfect match
Like two bitter strangers
—Pavement, “Spit On a Stranger”
Happy Valentine’s Day! Two years ago on Valentine’s Day I was landing in Milan with Ed Anderson to kick off a two-and-half-week trip throughout Italy to shoot on location for Drinking Italian. We barely had time to drop our bags off at the hotel before our first stop at Camparino in Galleria for aperitivo, lunch, and cocktails with Tommaso Cecca and Marco Poletti. I remember some window displays decorated in red and pink containing heart-shaped boxes of chocolates but I was too distracted and perpetually single to think about candy and love and a chubby cupid pulling back his bow.
While perhaps not as eventful as pulling up to Milan, last year’s Valentine’s Day was a literal event, marking the final date of my five-week “Brad’s Corner” Aperitivo Hour Wednesday Residency at Caffe Dante. For five consecutive Wednesdays I spent three hours each of those afternoons hosting an Aperitivo Hour, guiding guests through the featured menu speaking to some of the Italian bars where they were from and discussing bitters and amari and my love of Italian drinking culture. I had copies of my books for sale and each week I brought in some “suitcase bottles” and other special pours from my personal collection for guests to sample.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I featured a lineup of red bitters, including double-magnums of Campari and Vecchio Amaro del Capo Liquore D’Erbe di Calabria (the remainder of that bottle now sits behind the bar at Red Hook Tavern), Campari Cask Tales, St. Agrestis Cherry Ratafia, and Matchbook Distilling Co. Day Trip Strawberry Amaro.
I brought along several bags of Valentine’s Day-branded snack-size candies to share—including Cherry Blow Pops, Starburst, and Sour Patch Kids—as well as some classroom exchange Valentine cards to share with special guests. One of those, among the many service industry professionals stopping in to have a Sbagliato or Spritz before their shifts, was a special someone on whom I had/still have a major crush. In addition to plying her with candy and a mini-card, before she said goodbye to head to work I also sent her off with a to-go bag of cannelloni I had ordered for lunch but never had time to touch before things got too busy.
After the event a group of friends wanted me to join them for heart-shaped pies at Emmett’s On Grove but I was spent and didn’t want to fight the coupled-up restaurant crowds claiming all the two-tops on Valentine’s Day. Later that night I texted the cannelloni woman to thank her once again for coming by. “I only wish you could’ve stayed longer. And with your leftover cannelloni I think we technically had Valentine’s Day dinner together (sort of). Happy Valentine’s Day!”
Chocolate Negroni
Linden Pride, Caffe Dante | New York, New York
The photo above of Caffe Dante Eloy Pacheco and their Chocolate Negroni is a sneak-peek from Drinking Italian, shot by Ed Anderson. After the “house Negroni” served on draft, the Chocolate Negroni is probably my favorite among the dozen or so variations on Dante’s popular “Negroni Sessions” menu. It’s vibrant red hue and chocolate overtones—including dark crème de cacao, chocolate bitters, and a fat orange wedge covered in chocolate shavings that evoke a Christmastime Terry’s Chocolate Orange—would be a perfectly appropriate drink to stir up this evening for your loved one or yourself.
(Makes 1 Drink)
1 ounce gin, preferably Fords Gin
3/4 ounce Punt e Mes
3/4 ounce Campari
1/4 ounce dark crème de cacao, preferably Tempus Fugit
3 dashes chocolate bitters, preferably The Bitter Truth
Garnish: orange wedge, plastic stirrer, grated Valrhona chocolate
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice and stir. Strain into a rocks glass over ice and garnish with an orange wedge and grated chocolate.
And for an even more convenient at-home Chocolate Negroni experience, pick up a pre-batched bottled version from The New York Cocktail Co. Crafted by award-winning bartender and Dante’s Beverage Training Director Renato Tonelli, the perfect combination of bright, bittersweet Italian bitters and vermouth along with natural cacao comes in a stylish decanter-style glass bottle adorned with decorative fluting. Each 375 ml bottle serves 4 cocktails and is priced at $26.99.
LAST CALL: After Hours
As I finish up this dispatch, it’s a sunny, cold, and blustery Valentine’s Day in New York City. I’ve been listening to KEXP’s annual Valentine’s Day show, “Songs of Love and Lust,” hosted by “The Morning Show’”s John Richards, which in addition to love songs also dips into “the darker facets of love—heartbreak, lust, longing, the dark underbelly of the Hallmark teddy bear” (Kathleen Tarrant, Run).
I would definitely have a short list of excellent songs to set the mood. While certified classics (I resisted going with “bangers” here), there’s no denying the mood-setting allure of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” “Let’s Stay Together” or “Tired of Being Alone” from Al Green, George McRae’s “Rock Your Baby,” “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” by Lou Rawls, Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and “Try a Little Tenderness,” “Sexual Healing” “Got To Give It Up” and “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye, and the complete Barry White songbook. While all of these songs hold a special place in my heart, they risk crossing over into the parody of a romantic mood-setter if any of these came on the speaker.
Instead, among the many playlists I’m constantly curating is one called Chill Moves, which is less about setting the scene for snogging and simply made for chilling, whether it’s to fall asleep to or something else.
With that as inspiration, I’ve created a 50-song virtual box set I’m calling LAST CALL: After Hours, featuring 3 hours and 39 minutes of great songs spanning the BTP songbook. So tonight, whether you’re alone, hanging with friends, or with that special someone, stir up a Chocolate Negroni, order in a heart-shaped pizza, and hit “play.”
Listen to or download this full playlist on Spotify.
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LAST CALL logo and design by Ed Anderson.
We missed you at Emmett’s that night!
Thanks for the chocolate Negroni recipe! We are enjoying ours very much. Substituted orange bitters for the chocolate. Will have to try it again when we have chocolate bitters.