RESTAURANTS
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electric refrigeration in the early part of the 20th century finally sank a pick between the shoulder blades of the natural ice industry, with ice finally available in a convenient form — the cube — at home. INTERESTING ICE FACT NO. 4 Permanent snow and ice cover about 12 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Eighty percent of the world’s fresh water is in this form. Névé is the name given to the snowpack that forms on mountaintops, eventually forming a glacier. Someone else with a passion for ice is Michel Dozois. The Montreal-born bartender, who has shaken cocktails at forward-looking Los Angeles restaurants like Church and State, and Comme Ça, is obsessed with the stuff. Standard ice cubes, he believes, are problematic. They dissolve too quickly in the shaker or the tumbler, overly diluting the drink. They don’t make the drink cold enough, until they’ve diluted it excessively, and they continue to water down your tasty — and these days, expensive — beverage as you nurse it. What’s more, cubes not made with purified water can leave behind foul odors and flavors. Now, Dozois is not the first guy to have noticed this. That’s why mixologists and bartenders like Eric Alperin and Chris Bostick at downtown L.A.’s intimate lounge, The Varnish, have been carving huge cubes by hand for their immaculately crafted libations. But, points out Dozois, this is laborious and time-consuming. The solution, he believes, is larger chunks, frozen longer, that can’t be made with traditional ice-making apparatus. And in a move worthy of the aforementioned Frederic Tudor, he has started his own L.A.–based ice-manufacturing company, Névé Luxury Ice, whose Pasadena clients include such foodie-friendly establishments as Elements Kitchen and the Langham, Huntington Hotel & Spa. Using a process as secret as the mys14 ~ JULY 2010 ~ ARROYO
tery ingredients in Coca Cola, his company makes perfectly cut cubes of ice from ultra-purified water, stylish enough to be used on the set of Mad Men. But it isn’t just the clarity of the water that he says sets his ice apart from mere, well, ice. His cubes are frozen for 48 hours — which slows down their dilution rate — and fashioned into distinctively sized products: the “Rocks” cube and the “Collins” cube. The “Rocks” is a gorgeous cube, 2 inches across on every facet. It isn’t molded but cut instead from a much larger block. This gives it a brutal, sculptural quality as it nestles in a tumbler. Actually, it doesn’t so much nestle as crouch, with its corners almost touching the sides of the tumbler. The volume of the single cube is 50 percent of the volume of a rocks glass, which is the amount of “normal” ice you’d put in. And it takes forever to melt. His cocktail-shaker cubes, with their corners cut off so as not to break in the shaker, add about 20 to 35 percent more liquid to a cocktail during the shake. Regular cubes can add up to 75 percent of additional liquid to the drink. The “Collins” cube, designed for tall drinks, is a fat spear of frozen water. Also available for custom orders are ice “spheres” crafted in different colors and flavors, incorporating fruit, herbs or flower petals. A mixed 10-pound bag of Rocks, Collins and shaking ice retails for $20. I watch as Dozois slowly drinks a Mint Fizz at the bar at Elements Kitchen. He sips it for at least 25 minutes as he tells me all about the travails of enlightening bar owners about the importance of ice. It hasn’t necessarily been easy, especially in this economy, to get people to change from a familiar product to something as novel and seemingly exotic as his ice. So he spreads the word at occasional “The Art of Ice” evenings at restaurants around town. At the end he says, “I believe I’ve been put here for a purpose, and that is to teach people about ice, and make their cocktail drinking experience the best it can possibly be.” I look at his glass, with the ice apparently still intact. The answer is clear. AM Névé Luxury Ice is available for purchase at Bar Keeper in Silver Lake. Call (323) 343-1507 or visit neveice.com.
PHOTOS: Sidney McMullen
“I BELIEVE I’VE BEEN PUT HERE FOR A PURPOSE, AND THAT IS TO TEACH PEOPLE ABOUT ICE, AND MAKE THEIR COCKTAIL DRINKING EXPERIENCE THE BEST IT CAN POSSIBLY BE.”–MICHEL DOZOIS