Dakota Jazz Club back bar
I’m sitting at the Dakota Jazz Club bar staring at soft, amber lights. My thoughts wander. Soon I’m standing at the end of Jay Gatsby’s dock seeing lights across the water. That green one, that’s on Daisy’s dock. Daisy…she wasn’t complicated, she said, she was “just a whole lot of different simple people.” I order gin.
Born in St. Paul MN in 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald became the voice of the Jazz Age through his novels and short stories, his finest being The Great Gatsby published in 1925. Inspired by lavish parties Fitzgerald attended on Long Island’s north shore, Gatsby explored themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, excess, and social upheaval and created a portrait of the Jazz Age considered a cautionary tale about the American Dream. Or, be careful what you wish for.
There are more than fifty jazz clubs in the US ranging from Birdland and Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York, to Yoshi’s in San Francisco, the Preservation Hall in New Orleans. The Dakota is their equal and has offered live performances by jazz, blues, country, soul, pop, and rock music greats nightly in Minneapolis since 1985. Tonight it’s jazz legend Ramsey Lewis. He leads with “The In Crowd,” his first gold single from long ago which the audience immediately recognizes. DeeDee Bridgewater, a legend in her own right, joins him on stage to sing later in the program.
The Dakota serves lunch on weekdays and dinner every night. The food is elegantly prepared with exotic and distinctive ingredients and is excellent. Main fare includes tuna, crab, pork, salmon, beef, halibut, and poultry along with appetizers, snacks, and the chef’s feature of the day. The menu assures that “All our produce, meat, poultry and fish come from farms, ranches, and fisheries guided by principles of sustainability.”
But I’m at the bar and I want another drink. Tap or bottle beer is here, of course, but the cocktail menu offers intriguing thematic opportunities. Dakota isn’t just pouring shots and churning out martinis here; expertly designed cocktails commemorate well-known songs and musicians.
Consider the Satin Doll Martini made with pear vodka, cava, and elderflower liqueur and named for the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn hit of 1953. Straight, No Chaser, constructed of bourbon, chipotle maple syrup, and fresh lemon, brings memories of the Thelonious Monk album of 1967. Pull Up to the Bumper made with plantation rum and pineapple-apricot brandy recollects a 1981 song by Jamaican singer Grace Jones.
And it goes on: The Avalon contains sauza hornitos, grapefruit, and lime sweetened with house-made hibiscus syrup and recalls the 1920 popular song performed by Al Jolson. Come to My Garden made with cucumber-infused prairie vodka and seasonal herbs honors the 1969 song and album of Minnie Riperton. The A-Train Martini made with Bombay Sapphire gin, Griottine cherries, and elderflower liqueur brings back the 1939 hit Take the “A” Train, Duke Ellington’s signature tune and the most famous of many compositions resulting from his collaboration with Billy Strayhorn.
Lurking elsewhere on the menu is the Papa Doble made with plantation rum, fresh grapefruit and lime juice, and maraschino liqueur and named not for a song or musician but Fitzgerald’s close friend and contemporary, Ernest Hemingway. The drink is actually a Hemingway Special, but a double.
I order a Sazerac. It and a few other cocktails on the menu have no musical association so my wandering thoughts begin to look for some. What music, for example, would come to mind drinking a Minnesota Martini? What’s in it? Come to the Dakota and find out. And as you’re sipping and pondering, remember Fitzgerald’s rallying cry: “Here’s to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.”