Velvet Curtain

We built this one backwards. The bar was painted a colour nobody could name — somewhere between garnet and bruise — and we wanted a drink you could hold up against the wall and lose. Aged Jamaican rum does most of the work; it arrives with the funk and the sugar already negotiated. Blood orange keeps it from going syrupy, and a bar spoon of a bitter Italian amaro drags the whole thing back toward dry just as you’re deciding whether you like it.

Build: two ounces aged rum, three-quarters of an ounce fresh blood orange, a quarter ounce amaro, a scant teaspoon of demerara syrup. Stirred, not shaken — shaking aerates the citrus and turns the colour cloudy, which defeats the point. Strain over one large clear cube in a rocks glass and express an orange coin over the top, then drop it in.

It is a slow drink. Order it first, before the room fills, while there is still somewhere to sit.