On Sept. 17, Martha Stewart\u2019s favorite bartender, Matthew Biancaniello, will be popping up \u2014 for the first time since 2020 \u2014 at Evangeline Swamp Room in celebration of oyster season. Biancaniello will be serving alcoholic oysters and other on-theme cocktails to accompany a \u201c222\u201d Palette of Oysters prepared by Marcus Christiana-Beniger, chef\/owner of Evangeline Swamp Room and the restaurant next door, Little Jewel of New Orleans.<\/p>\n
One of Biancaniello\u2019s oyster creations will feature Nikaido Shochu (a traditional Japanese distilled spirit), pieces of kalamata olive tapenade and lime-basil oil. Another one is dressed in Green Chartreuse, jalape\u00f1o relish and fried capers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like a little meal,\u201d said Biancaniello. \u201cWhen I left The Roosevelt Hotel\u2019s Library Bar in 2012, one of the first things I started doing was alcohol-infused events, like alcoholic ice cream. I was already more of a food person than a drink person.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEat your Drink,\u201d the title of Biancaniello\u2019s first book, which was published in 2016, was an idea that his customers drummed up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe customers were saying: \u2018This is like eating your drink. This is more like a meal,\u2019\u201d he explained. \u201cIt was really what they were mirroring back to me as opposed to me saying, this is who I am. That\u2019s how my identity was shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biancaniello is half Greek, half Italian. When he stumbled onto the Santa Monica farmers\u2019 market, it reminded him of his grandparents\u2019 garden, and when he started to focus on the drink game, \u201cit felt like everything was fair game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was at his first bartending job at the Library Bar that he unexpectedly gained cocktail fame. Biancaniello had no idea what he was doing. His yoga pal offered him the job \u2014 because he needed one. On his first night, he had to duck down and ask the bartender next to him, \u201cWhat\u2019s in a cosmopolitan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know much about alcohol, but I did know ingredients, so I started going to the farmers\u2019 market and replacing all of the things on the menu with fresh things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
About eight months in, he won a Chartreuse competition. In the finals, he remembers facing off against Matty Eggleston. When the last two drinks returned from the judges\u2019 room, he saw that his was completely gone, and he thought just maybe he was the winner.<\/p>\n
Within a year and a half, he was featured in the LA Times, The New York Times, Forbes, Playboy and CNN. In 2017, he launched a TV series, \u201cGood Spirits,\u201d on the FYI network.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became this culinary free for all taking everything I saw and trying it in a drink,\u201d explained Biancaniello. \u201cI didn\u2019t think about right or wrong. It wasn\u2019t about whether I thought this was going to be good or not, whether this was supposed to happen or not. It was me wanting to try it and see what happened. Everything I was doing, it was produce driven.\u201d<\/p>\n
A great bartender once told Biancaniello that alcohol is like the protein of the meal. The lime, sugar, herbs and fruits, that\u2019s like sizzling the onions, garlic and olive oil.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s great is that I put so much into the saut\u00e9ing part of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Even Martha Stewart raved about Biancaniello\u2019s cocktail skills, calling him her favorite bartender. Just before COVID, they both attended ChefDance at Sundance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first two drinks, she didn\u2019t like them,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI gave her something with garlic and something smoky. She said, \u2018I don\u2019t like garlic, and I don\u2019t like smoke.\u2019 I said, \u2018Tell me what you like,\u2019 and I made her a drink. She goes, \u2018That\u2019s the best drink I ever had in my life,\u2019 and then I made her a second one. She said, \u2018This is absolutely incredible.\u2019 Those were with guavas and rhubarb and citrus, and that was something she could relate to because she grew them on her farm. She was impressed, and it was great because when you have somebody who\u2019s well known but also critical, it\u2019s a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
To have come this far on the back of food and alcohol is pretty ironic for Biancaniello. His mom was an alcoholic, and when he was younger, he had an eating disorder. He wasn\u2019t comfortable around food. When the opportunity to bartend came along, he began to explore his culinary interest through alcohol. About a year and a half after he began bartending, he had a realization.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were taking pictures of my drinks,\u201d he relayed. \u201cThere was this one woman, she was savoring everything. I could see her excitement. I stopped and said to myself: I know what I\u2019ve been doing now. I have been rescripting my relationship to alcohol and making it beautiful and something that I savor.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Sept. 17 from 6 to 9 p.m., Chef Marcus will be offering a \u201c222\u201d Palette of Oysters ($36) consisting of: two baked Sanctuary Oysters Rockefeller in a Pernod bath, two Chef M\u2019s Derby port-wine-drenched charbroiled oysters with prosciutto and BBQ shrimp topping and two fried Washington Oyster Angels on Horseback with Cajun Lightning Remoulade.<\/p>\n
Also on the menu are the Oyster Experience ($55) and the Premium Tasting Ticket ($75) that includes the complete oyster progression plus one full cocktail.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis collaboration with Biancaniello feels like the culmination of a very organic progression of events for us,\u201d said Eunah Kang Beniger, wife and business partner of Chef Marcus. \u201cIt\u2019s CA farm to glass meets oysters, meets LA in LA.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evening will be first come, first served with no reservations, and early attendance is recommended as seating is limited. The Evangeline Swamp Room is located at 701 North Spring Street, Los Angeles. Learn more by calling 213-620-0461.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sept. 17, Martha Stewart\u2019s favorite bartender, Matthew Biancaniello, will be popping up \u2014 for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[387,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-463331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-business","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}