At the newly opened Arthur in Greenpoint, the brioche martini is a buttery delicacy that manages to stand out amidst a crowded field.
As a young man, shopping for clothes with my mother, I was always taken by her delight in fabric. We’d be in the suit section of a high-end department store—”just to look,” she’d say—and I’d see her stroking the sleeve of a woolen suit from Canali or a cashmere jacket from Brioni. “It’s like butter,” she’d whisper, almost reverently.
A lucky few got to share in that sensory metonymy on Tuesday at a preview of Arthur. The new restaurant is in the old Fulgurances space on Franklin Avenue in Greenpoint from a team that includes a Fulgurances resident, chef Kevin Finch. Beyond the absolutely delectable roasted escargots, oysters with rose gelee, and perfectly bouncy beef tartare—upscale samples of the bistro standards that inspired the resto—guests were offered a novel martini, derived from an unexpected (perhaps inevitable in these martini-crazed times) source: the brioche.
“When we were first talking about the menu, Kevin was adamant about making his own brioche and then making this really beautiful tangy, cheesy, cultured butter to go with it,” says Charlotte Mirzoeff, general manager and beverage director at Arthur (she’s longtime friends with co-owners Finch and his wife, Alexa Finch). “I had the thought of making a martini that vibed with the brioche, something that you want at the beginning of the meal. I thought, Why not?”
The Isolation Proof gin is shaken up and infused with melted butter in a process called fatwashing.
The drink, a gin martini that looks to be aperitivo style, includes classic ingredients—Isolation gin, vermouth—as well as Famille Migneron de Charlevoix eau de vie, and then a barley tea that serves to dilute while mimicking the toastiness of brioche. Anyone could combine those ingredients; where Arthur’s brioche martini sets itself apart is in the textured warmth of the butter-infused gin, achieved through a process called fatwashing.
“It’s literally an infusion style,” says Mirzoeff. “It’s almost more of a texture infusion than it is a flavor.” She melts butter, but does not let get too hot, and then shakes it up with the gin. Every time she walks by the container, she’ll shake it up so that it keeps hitting and infusing. At the end of the day, it goes in the freezer, where the butter comes to the top in a fat cap. The fat is broken and tossed, and then the liquids are strained; what you have left is a buttery, brioche-y martini. Eeeeeee(k).
It’s silly, sure, but sipping the drink down, it managed to embrace a salty, rich, round flavor without expressing too many of its origin’s fattier, oilier qualities.
At Arthur, where there is not room for a full bar, the drink menu will be limited, which is actually quite appealing. You won’t be able to have whatever you want whenever you want, but there’s some pleasure in giving that agency over in exchange for real expertise. “Mirzoeff bartended at Maialino and Union Square Cafe and took notes from Booker and Dax, the erstwhile cocktail bar project from Momofuku. “They were fat washing, they were infusing, they were doing a lot of of cool stuff,” she says. “It inspired me. But there was part of it where everyone’s taking themselves a little too seriously, and I just wanted to have fun with it.”
Mirzoeff has always worked in restaurants, not cocktail bars, “So I had to make it culinarily driven,” she says.
The result? It’s like butter.
