Notes From The City: An Abundant Life - Blossoming Where You Are

The first time I visited Saku in Hoboken, it was shortly after the restaurant opened. I am a fan of the owner Dan Grey's restaurant Grand Vin, and when I heard he was opening a new restaurant I asked if I could stop by for a blog post. As I wrote at the time, Saku is a truly magical place, with gorgeous design and delicious Japanese inspired fusion tastes on the menu. The cocktails were delicious as well as being inventive and fun as everything else was. I went back to visit and bring friends and recommended it to everyone, and then one day when I was talking to the Mixologist Stephanie O'Neill, she said that she was planning a trip to visit with Melanie Carugan, the Bar Manager and Mixologist at Saku, and asked if I'd like to join her. She had never been to Saku before, but she had met Melanie online on Instagram and they had a mutual admiration and wanted to meet. I was more than happy to join Stephanie, because as I have written about her in these pages, I'm an admirer of her creative ideas and delicious cocktails and we always have a great time when I visit her when she is working at Antique Bar & Bakery and at the Hyatt in Jersey City. And so we made a plan and one evening found ourselves sitting at the bar at Saku, meeting with Melanie Carugan while she worked behind the bar.

We tried lots of delicious tastes that night, with cocktails that Melanie created and also a flight of Sake she took us on a journey with, and of course we ate the wonderful food at Saku which goes wonderfully well with the cocktails as well as the Sake. And we had lots of fun, because how can you not have fun with two women who both love to craft delicious and inventive cocktails, talking shop and tasting delicious and interesting things? Mixology is a craft of its own, in some ways like being a Chef with liquid, and though parts of the ingredients can sometimes be cooked or heated or infused or vaporized, for the most part a Mixologist is dealing with things that are chilled, shaken, stirred and mixed in their natural state. It takes a very special kind of palate to pull the flavor notes out of a type of alcoholic beverage, combine them with things that will compliment each other and bring everything together into something that tastes delicious and is presented with beauty and style. And then there is the question of Garnishes, or the Garnish Game as Melanie will sometimes admiringly describe someone else's ability to add those lovely additions on the glass that finish the cocktail and make it oh so perfectly photographable. Deciding what to put on a glass, how to place it, should it be combined with something else or several things or allowed to be simply itself, these are all questions that Mixologists answer, sometimes deciding on the spot if they are making a new version of a cocktail or using a classic ingredient or if they are following after or riffing on an older recipe.

Just after meeting with Melanie, I saw on her Instagram page and the page for Misunderstood Whiskey, one of my favorite Whiskeys that I have also written about, that a cocktail she created had been featured in Forbes for their "13 Delicious Chocolate Dishes and Cocktails for National Chocolate Day". Her cocktail, "Crazy About Bou" was made with Misunderstood Whiskey, Bouvery CV Chocolate Liqueur, Negori Sake, house made creamy chai and aromatic bitters, and was garnished with Cookie Crisps. A lovely and whimsical twist on cookies and milk for adults, she had decided to serve it in a glass that was made to look like a clear, small milk carton. If I hadn't already met Melanie and didn't know that her cocktails were on point, I would have wanted to go there immediately to try it anyway because it looked and sounded so luscious and so charming.

When I sat down with Melanie the other day to talk a bit for this blog post, she told me that she had been working in restaurants since her earliest jobs, and that she liked the atmosphere and the people and the experience of that environment. She had worked in nearly every restaurant job by the time she had been hired at Saku, and because of her experience, hard work, creative ideas and great personality she had moved up to the position of Bar Manager. She told me that she gets her creative ideas from everywhere, and that though she enjoys a challenge, her favorite alcohol to mix with is Vodka because it blends so well and can be used as a base for just about any other flavor or combination of tastes. Prior to working at Saku, she had worked at Corgi Spirits and at some other high end restaurants, and in each place she excelled and grew, working hard to learn and master the art of whatever it was that she was being asked to do wherever she was placed. The name Saku means "To Bloom" and after meeting Melanie Carugan I think she may have found the place that suits her best, because though she is able to bloom wherever she is, she is certainly blossoming there.

Melanie Carugan

At Saku
https://sakuhoboken.com/
Photograph Credit Zack Perl, The Bacyard