A Quest to Find a Decent White Russian in the Bay Area
Since immersing myself into the Silicon Valley startup scene, I’ve worked and hung out with a lot of Russians, all of them white. They find it funny that I’d want to drink them.
Yes, I’m that dude, though not to be confused with The Dude, the character played by Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.” The Dude’s preferred beverage is a Caucasian. So is mine, though I choose to use the drink’s more socially acceptable name: White Russian.
I’m that dude who walks into a bar and asks, “Can you make a White Russian?” I’m that dude typically met with confused faces. Who orders a White Russian in the cocktail mecca San Francisco?
“Are you trying to be The Dude?,” I’ve been asked more than once since I moved out here two years ago.
I don’t like White Russians because of The Dude. “The Big Lebowski” was released in 1998, and it’s only been five years since I made the White Russian my drink. I will acknowledge that I’m anticipating the drink’s resurgence once “The Big Lebowski’s” sequel is released.
I’ll note here that the drink isn’t named because its Russian in origin; it’s because the primary ingredient is vodka, a liquor favored by many of the Russians I know.
I was spoiled by Michelle, a bartender at Hampton Street Vineyard in Columbia, SC, whose delicious concoction included a frothy top.
I’ve been hard pressed, though, to find a decent White Russian in the Bay Area. A lot are light on the vodka, and some are too creamy. It’s been hardest in San Francisco, a city where craft cocktails typically don’t have vodka as the base. On my birthday, a friend and I went to several bars in the Mission in search of one.
“We don’t have any cream,” I’m frequently told.
You don’t need cream. According to Wikipedia, “A White Russian is a sweet cocktail classically made with vodka, coffee liqueur, and cream served with ice in an Old Fashioned glass. In modern times, many establishments have substituted milk for cream.”
Vodka, Kahlua, milk, ice — that’s my homemade recipe, heavy on the vodka. Kind of like The Dude.
The recipe at Plum Bar, a downtown Oakland establishment illuminated by candlelight and old school hip-hop, isn’t really a recipe. The one I ordered recently was made on the fly.
“Can you make a White Russian,” I asked the bartender.
“Absolutely,” she said.
She picked up a glass vial from the bar top made from reclaimed wood and then dropped something into the drink.
“It’s cacao and some coffee bitters,” the bartender, Krista, told me after I inquired about what she was pouring into the glass.
She added cream.
“It’s not traditional,” she said. “A lot of people try to use milk, and it’s just not the same.”
The bitters provided the color, a substitution for Kahlua.
“We don’t add any artificial color to what we make here,” Krista said.
Krista’s White Russian was light, but it also had a bite. Her creation gave me hope — or, at the very least, a go-to place to drink.
Dude, my quest to find a decent White Russian in the Bay Area has ended.
[This story originally appeared on Ripple.News]
