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This Cocktail Tastes Like Pork Roll
Photo: Jeff Brown/
The highly partisan debate over the proper name for the overgrown hot-dog-like meat logs from Trenton, New Jersey, has the potential to start fights. Whether one refers to the processed product by its original brand name from 1856, Taylor ham, or the generic term, pork roll, most Garden State residents aren’t likely to consider both names acceptable. This friction is the jumping-off point for the Pork Roll for Patrick, a whiskey drink that’s served at a Pop-up Called Pancakes, a new bar that is open on weekends until the end of the month, somewhat suitably, at S&P.
Izzy Tulloch and Danielle De Block are the duo behind the temporary bar. They met while working at Milady’s and began planning the pop-up in earnest earlier this year. It was Tulloch who solicited advice from some former bosses — Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross — before landing inside their lunch counter.
Though the pop-up serves pancakes — plus latke sliders — Tulloch and De Block don’t actually consider the bar breakfast themed. “Pancakes are such a fun anytime food,” Tulloch says. “There aren’t a lot of places where you can get a late-night pancake and a crispy, cold martini.” De Block concedes she was against the name at first, “but Izzy sold me on the idea that the ethos of pancakes is about being accessible to everyone, something that’s comforting and celebratory.”
To make the fat-washed Taylor Hamhattan, Tulloch first caramelizes Taylor ham to render the fat, deglazes it with whiskey, then pours the mixture into large Cambros filled with Jack Daniel’s and overproof rye. The mixture is frozen overnight and the solids are strained out, leaving the pork-roll–infused whiskey. For the drink, it’s mixed with Peychaud’s bitters, cream sherry, and Montenegro amaro.
It’s a salty, smoky nod to New Jersey, where Tulloch and De Block both grew up, hailing from Union and Wyckoff, respectively. Concerning the question of pork roll versus Taylor ham, the instructions used to train staff are unequivocal on the matter: “You should call it Taylor Ham,” the manual reads. “You can call it Taylor Pork Roll. But if you just call it Pork Roll, you’re wrong because if it’s not Taylor it’s trash.” The official “Pork Roll for Patrick” name is for Steve Patrick, a fellow bartender who Tulloch says insistently calls it by the “wrong” name: “You don’t call a Band-Aid an ‘adhesive bandage’ because Band-Aid is the best brand of Band-Aids.”
The rest of the cocktail menu is kitschy but shows off Tulloch’s serious bartending — a sake-and-cognac drink made with pineapple shrub, and an ode to ants on a log — while the food leans after-school snack-y, like peanut-butter-miso mousse dip served with sliced apples, carrots, and celery and bags of Cracker Jacks. S&P’s famous cream-cheese-and-olive white-bread sandwiches (invented back when the space was still Eisenberg’s) make a cameo appearance, too.
Transforming a lunch counter into a cocktail bar every weekend is a surprisingly heavy lift. The narrow space presents some significant operational challenges. “There’s no well,” says Tulloch (referring to the ice basin at most bars). “We’re working out of a giant rolling ice cooler that we push back and forth behind the bar.” Tulloch has also been known to hoist herself over the counter by standing on a shelf below to pour a cold Gibson out of a syrup dispenser into a chilled coupe.
The duo hope that the pop-up isn’t the end of the road: They want to take it to other cities and establish permanent residency in New York. Tulloch thinks the time is right for this kind of bar: “Life feels a little uncertain and a little weird right now. If we can offer people some amount of joy, then for us it’s a success,” she says. “Our main goal is to get out of it alive and for everyone to enjoy it while it’s happening.”
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