Brentwood’s Bar Toscana adds new Ode to Hollywood autumn libations to its cocktail list
by Eric Marsh
A command for a dragon to breathe fire. A middle-aged uncle who lives in his past as a high school quarterback. A 60s sitcom about a group of subversive prisoners of war in a POW camp set in Nazi Germany. These all played a role in the naming of Bar Toscana’s Ode to Hollywood fall cocktails.
Bar Toscana in Los Angeles’ Brentwood neighborhood has been naming drinks based on movies and TV shows for going on two years now, and with each change of season comes new additions to its Ode to Hollywood series. Bar Toscana mixologist Dustin Kern’s creation, Dracarys, is the most contemporary. The cocktail (as many might guess) was inspired by the command that Game of Thrones character Daenerys gives her dragon to breathe fire. Kern’s incendiary concoction melds jalapeno-tequila, mezcal, strawberries, and agave nectar. It’s a spicy, smoky blend that should have you exhaling at least a few plumes of smoke.
Step back a decade to remember Uncle Rico. In the cult classic Napoleon Dynamite, Napoleon’s tanned, mustached, Uncle Rico asks, as he looks at the foothills in the distance: “How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?” Clearly a rhetorical question, but one that speaks to ambition and never letting go of your dreams. In the drink named after Uncle Rico, bourbon gets shaken with vanilla-infused yellow chartreuse, lemon, honey, and mint. Bar Toscana’s lead mixologist Robert Carder created the libation, and in jest says of the eponymous character: “Uncle Rico just seems like a cheap-bourbon drinker, living in his van, reliving his high school football glory days.” But, he adds, “with Buffalo Trace Bourbon as the main ingredient, the cocktail is far more sophisticated.” It’s also just fun to name drinks with monikers that conjure up scenes and lines that elicit laughs from knowing patrons.
Many of Bar Toscana’s clientele work in movies and TV. “I really like the synergy of naming the cocktails this way and the history of Toscana,” Carder remarks. The bar’s older sibling and next-store neighbor, the restaurant Toscana, has been a celebrity haunt for 30 years. This ode then is as much a homage to films and shows as it is to the bar’s denizens who make them.
Bar Toscana opened in 2010 and got a facelift in 2017. It has a postmodern feel with round-back chairs, a tufted-leather banquet, and a deep, wide, dark wood, 15-seat bar. Suitably, movies are projected on the central wall. In addition to its fresh-market cocktails and Italian-focused wine list, a selection of dishes from Toscana’s kitchen is offered until late.
But back to TV, way back to a show called Hogan’s Heroes, a program about a group of Allied POWs in a WWII German POW camp who run a special operations group from within. With their many ruses, protagonist Colonel Hogan and his staff of experts befuddle their obtuse enemies and guards (they even have a network of tunnels beneath the guards’ feet leading outside the confines, to receive drops from planes). The name of the show returned to Carder when he made a guest a Navy Grog. He later played around with the classic tiki drink, and then added his variation to the cocktail list, calling it Hogan’s Hero. It mixes light rum, lemon, grapefruit, ginger, agave nectar, dark rum, and Angostura bitters.
You can hunker down at Bar Toscana now through December to enjoy the $15–$16 Ode to Hollywood autumn additions. And rumor has it that in the coming months you might be able to catch Napoleon Dynamite showing on the bar’s wall, in case you’ve forgotten what a liger looks like.
Bar Toscana is located at 11633 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90049. Hours are 5:30–close nightly. 310–826–0028. www.bartoscana.com
