Holeman & Finch at Home

On a regular night, trying to score a table at Holeman & Finch can be a challenge.  Trying to fight the crowds at H&F on Valentine's Day is downright suicidal.  Rather than cram into the bar with all of the OTP'ers in town for V-day last night, we decided to recreate the H&F experience at home, and I have to say we did a pretty damn good job.  My brother and I did all of the cooking and cocktail making; the girls were our cheering section.

H&F's reputation is based first and foremost on cocktails, so we could not skimp in that department.  My bar is pretty well stocked with most of the cocktail essentials, so we were able to enjoy some classics as well as a few new ones out of The PDT Cocktail Book.  We stuck to bourbon and rye based drinks because, well, I have bunker full of the stuff and they are fantastic winter cocktails.  Notable cocktails throughout the night were:

• Manhattan:  2:1 ratio of Wild Turkey 101 Rye (now discontinued) and Carpano Antica Sweet Vermouth with 2 dashes of Angostura bitters and the tiniest dash of pure maple syrup.  The king of cocktails.
• Sazerac:  Made with 2 oz. Old Scout 7 year old rye, sugar cube, and Angostura and Peychauds bitters in a Herbsaint-rinsed glass.  Garnished with lemon peel.  
• Improved Whiskey Cocktail:  2 oz. Rittenhouse rye, quarter oz. each of Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur and simple syrup, and 2 dashes Angostura.  Served with a large ice cube and a lemon twist in an Herbsaint-rinsed glass.  Sort of a Old Fashioned-Sazerac hybrid that is greatly "improved" by the Luxardo.
• Boulevardier:  1.5 oz. Elijah Craig 15 year (try finding that one on the shelves!), 1 oz. Campari, and 1 oz. Carpano Antica.  A Negroni for winter.  One of my favorites.

For the food, we decided to pick two items that were delicious and doable at home (Not exactly easy to pick up sweetbreads at the grocery store).  We decided to copy the Sapelo Island Clams and the acclaimed double-stack burger.  (We also had a great roasted beet, walnut and goat cheese salad, though that is not a H&F dish.)

The clams might be the most underrated dish on the Holeman & Finch menu.  The H&F menu says the clams are made with bacon, jalapenos, shallot, rye whiskey, and pain au levain.  Anyone that has ever ordered them knows that that after you finish the plump, sweet clams, the real fun begins.  The broth left at the bottom of the bowl, chock full of bacon, jalapeno and cream is like crack, and an extra order of the pain au levain (buttery griddled sourdough) is required.  

I was able to find a semi-close recipe that Linton Hopkins published in Food & Wine magazine, though I did make a couple of edits.  I subbed Wild Turkey 101 rye for the bourbon that the recipe calls for because the restaurant uses rye (I think H&F uses Old Overholt).  Also, I rendered my lardons (from my home cured bacon) first and then put them in the pot with 6 Tbsp. of butter to start the dish.   The secret to the bread is to butter your sourdough slices and put them on a dry cast-iron skillet over medium high heat.  

In the end, the results turned out better than I could have expected.  The clams I got from Whole Foods weren't quite as sweet and plump as the Sapelo Island clams H&F gets, but the broth was every bit as good.  Our jalapenos were very large, so the broth turned out a little spicier than the original, which everyone really liked.

The hysteria surrounding the H&F Burger is insane.  Most people know by now that H&F serves 24 of these double-stacked burgers every night at 10:00 pm.  You can also get them at Sunday Brunch and at Turner Field during baseball season (or at least until the Braves flee to the Cobb.)  My experience is that you have to get to the restaurant before 7:30 to lay claim to one of these, which you may or may not have enough room for after two and a half hours of eating and drinking.

Fortunately, it is fairly easy to recreate these at home.  The architecture of this burger is pretty simple.  The pan de mie buns are available at H&F Bread Co. and Savi Urban Market in Inman Park.  For the meat, the upscale grocery stores (Whole Foods, Fresh Market) will grind chuck and brisket for you.  Red onion and Kraft Singles are ubiquitous, and there are several good B&B pickles out there, as well as some better ketchup and mustard options (I like the Sir Kensington brand).

Because we had done the standard brisket/chuck H&F burger at home before, we decided to adopt one of Sean Brock's tricks from his Husk burger.  His burger is very similar to the H&F burger, but he incorporates a small amount of ground Benton's bacon into the chuck.  Fresh Market was happy to do this for me (though, they were not so keen on running my home cured bacon through their grinder).  

I have to say the results were pretty amazing.  Just a small amount of bacon (roughly 8% of the total meat) made a huge difference in taste.  There was a very distinct smokiness to the burgers, which was by no means overpowering. 

The secret to making these burgers as close as possible to the H&F/Husk burgers is to get your cast iron skillet screaming hot, which gives you that delicious crust.  Don't worry too much about drying them out; there is a lot of fat in the chuck and and bacon.  Season with salt only, and once you flip the burgers, add the thinly sliced red onion to one half of the patties, and top with the cheese.  

Obviously, there is no substitute for the original, but if you don't feel like fighting the crowds, at least some of the H&F classics can be made at home!

Dave