The bartender adds a scoop of ice cubes to the rocks glass, following with Tanqueray gin poured up to the halfway mark. He tops that off with tonic water and adds a lime wedge, spearing a straw into the glass for his mic drop.
And there his creation sits, sparkling, cool, inviting. On a hot Tampa afternoon it’s nearly irresistible.
It’s 3 p.m. on a Tuesday – post-lunch and pre-happy hour – so there’s no crowd, regular or otherwise, shuffling into The Dan, the bar-restaurant on the ground floor of Hotel Flor, Florida Avenue and Cass Street in downtown Tampa. It’s Hemmingway’s “Clean, Well-Lighted Place” come to elegant life.
We’re at The Dan to meet Alex Savchenko, the man behind the bar, to talk about gin, gin and tonic, tonic and gin and, by extension, Billy Joel.
(It began as a discussion about September being National Piano Month, which led to a discussion about Billy Joel and the HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, and then we talked about Joel’s “tonic and gin” lyric and, next thing you know, we’re in a bar. That’s writers for you.)
Joel’s “tonic and gin” lyric is from his song “Piano Man,” inspired by one of Joel’s pre-fame gigs, playing requests and standards in a Los Angeles piano bar.
Joel’s been criticized and ridiculed for reversing classic drink’s name, but it’s mostly catty nitpicking. Singing “gin and tonic” would have destroyed the song’s rhythm and rhyme, and lyrics often don’t – and don’t have to – follow standard speech patterns. So lighten up.
And So It Goes paints a fuller portrait of Joel than we’ve seen before. Famously pugnacious, sometimes to the point of belligerence, Joel drops that façade, mostly, to reveal a vulnerable, romantic artist who has struggled with addiction and heartache, and used his trials to create a body of work that remains popular more than 30 years after his last pop album.
Besides, both of his ex-wives still speak fondly of him. That’s got to say something.
Now sober, gin, tonic and the rest are behind Joel. We, though, here at The Dan, are face-to-face with what appears to be a perfect gin and tonic as well as a gorgeous French 75 cocktail, made with a gin base and topped with champagne. Alex describes the cocktail as “a sweeter gin and tonic, more feminine.” That doesn’t exactly mean soft, though, as the 75 does pack a kick and is, in fact, named after the World War I-era French 75-millimeter field gun.
When we say gin and tonic, the gin most often associated with the drink is the London dry variety – Tanqueray, Beefeater and the like. There are, though, several different types of gin, which makes sense because it’s one of the oldest distilled spirits. Some historians have traced it as far back as the Middle Ages, and it was all the rage in England by the end of the 17th century.
It’s still going through modifications as distillers bring out flavored gins and small-batch producers use locally-sourced botanicals for site-specific spirits.
“There are so many modifications you can make with gin, it’s ridiculous,” Alex said. “And it’s getting better and better all the time.”
Alex’s favorite is Hendrick’s, a Scottish blend that is favored with cucumber and rose petal in addition to the standard juniper berries.
After decades of flavored martinis, Mojitos and Moscow Mules, Alex is seeing a return to more traditional tipples. “They’re coming back now, the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan,” he said.
The gin and tonic is a staple of saloons, speakeasies and swanky joints like The Dan. The simplicity of the recipe balances the complexity of the gin to create a cool, refreshing cocktail that looks like an oasis on a hot Tampa afternoon.
The Dan is a Straz Recommends Preferred Restaurant Partner. For more information, click here.