Craft cocktails are their specialty
Michael Demicco is the owner of The Grey Dog in Manchester, a new addition to downtown’s growing craft cocktail scene. His mission is to present customers with the purest, most attention-grabbing flavors possible in his drinks, he said. Sometimes that involves stripping recipes down to basics.
“I’ve also learned through trial and error over the years,” he said, “how important it is to simplify drinks. I don’t mean dumbing them down, or even making them easier to make, but you shouldn’t over-complicate cocktails, just like you shouldn’t in life. Some of the best cocktails we’ve ever put out are the not basic but just simpler ones where we strip out the unnecessary steps.”
Other times Demicco’s recipes will involve an impressive number of familiar and unfamiliar ingredients to build the flavor he is looking for.
“My personal favorite of our drinks is based on a cocktail I had once in Colorado with my girlfriend at the time,” he said. “We could never figure out exactly how they did it. So we spent most of Covid trying to figure it out.” After months of experimentation, Demicco said, he was finally able to reverse-engineer a cocktail with the flavor profile he was looking for. “It’s called The Jade,” he said, partially because it is a jade-colored drink. It has cachaça (a Brazilian sugar-cane-base spirit like a musky rum), tequila, lychee, agave, lime, matcha and absinthe. “That sounds like a lot — and it’s true that it’s one of the more complicated drinks we make. However, when all blended together, it doesn’t taste like anything you’ve ever had. It doesn’t register as a margarita, despite there being tequila in there. It’s definitely not a caipirinha, even though there’s cachaça in there. The matcha doesn’t taste like green tea because we just use literally a pinch of it, just to get that color. The absinthe is more like two or three drops, kind of like a vanilla extract. It’s turned out to be the busiest cocktail on our menu. It doesn’t taste like anything you’ve ever had before.”
Demicco said one of The Grey Dog’s goals is to provide something any customer will be able to enjoy, regardless of their personal tastes.
“We have everything from Bud Light to some bottles up on the top shelf of the bar that run you $50, $60 a pour and everything in between. I try to keep prices as fair as possible, but the top shelf is called ‘top shelf’ for a reason.”
The food menu at The Grey Dog is fairly streamlined, Demicco said, with a small number of dishes that have been developed for the maximum amount of flavor.
“It’s a tapas-style [menu],” he said, “not actual tapas. I call it ‘tapas light.’ I try to subvert some expectations. Our crispy Thai chili pork belly tacos are made with house-made flour tortillas are absolutely phenomenal. They’re served with a kale/kimchi slaw, fermented vegetables, and a cilantro avocado lime crema. We sell out almost every other day. People just, if we have them in house, they don’t stop ordering them. That is what we served at Taco Tour. We’re going to make them for Taco Tour again next year. We sold out really quickly this year, but we’re going to triple the amount we do next year.”
“My purpose and goal and philosophy behind the things we make,” Demicco said, “is to help people create memories and stories that they will remember. I remember, throughout almost my entire life, memories and cocktails and places I’ve been. I think of some of the things I’ve eaten or drunk during my life, and there’s always a story about where I was and what I was doing at the time. It’s more of an emotional thing for me, I think, when it comes to creating — whether it’s in cooking or cocktails.”
The Grey Dog
657 Elm St., Manchester, 540 -7970, thegreydognh.com
Open Wednesday through Sunday, 4 p.m. to midnight.
Featured photo: Courtesy photo.
