Episode 104: Slow Drinks With Danny Childs

Danny Childs turned to bartending as a way to earn extra money between research work as an anthropologist and ethnobotanist. Over time, he merged his interests in the botanical world and bartending, culminating in the book Slow Drinks, which recently earned a James Beard Foundation Award. For this episode, we chat with Childs about his path from field researcher to foraging bartender, and about how his slow drinks philosophy intersects with the larger goals of the Slow Food movement.

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Paul Clarke

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief. 

And I know it’s still the middle of summer out there. And for most people listening to this, we’re still a long way out from having to think about things like Labor Day or back to school specials or the onset of autumn. But really quickly, I want to make a quick shout out to September, because coming up in September is our annual Negroni Week celebration. Negroni Week, of course, is a time to mix and drink Negronis and Negroni riffs and relatives, and it’s something we’ve celebrated every year since 2013. But from the very beginning, Negroni Week’s been about much more than Negronis. It’s been a way for the cocktail community to give back in some way. This year, as in recent years. Negroni Week’s giving partner is Slow Food, a global movement of local communities and activists seeking to change the world through food and beverage. 

There are two reasons I bring this up now in the middle of summer. The first reason is so you can stick the date on your calendar and go looking online to find out more and to get involved. So write it in ink or put it in pixels, whatever you prefer. Negroni Week 2024 takes place September 16th through the 22nd. You can find out more and learn how to participate at NegroniWeek.com.

And the second reason I’m talking about Negroni Week and Slow Food is because for this episode, we’re delving into slow drinks. Slow drinks as a concept and an approach to making and enjoying drinks, but also Slow Drinks as in the book from anthropologist and ethno botanist turned bartender Danny Childs, which earlier this year was the recipient of a James Beard Foundation award. Danny’s introduced lots of people to the concept and practices of slow drinks since his book’s debut, and now he’s working closely with Slow Food on their projects in the United States.

Some listeners may already be familiar with slow drinks, and for others it may still be a somewhat new subject. Whichever camp you fall into, this is a great opportunity to learn more about this concept and practice of drink making. So here’s our full conversation with Danny Childs, talking about his book Slow Drinks, and what led him down this particular path. 

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Paul Clarke

Danny, welcome to Radio Imbibe. 

Danny Childs 

Hey, Paul, thanks so much for having me. 

Paul Clarke

Absolutely. And you know, first off, belated congratulations to you on your book Slow Drinks and its win at the James Beard Awards this year. You know, I’ve wanted to have you on the podcast for a while now and readers of Imbibe are familiar with your work. And especially now in the summer of 2024, with Negroni Week coming our way in September with its support of the work of Slow Food, this seemed a particularly appropriate time to have you on and to share some of the things about your book with our audience.

I was going through the book as I was preparing for this interview and making some notes for myself. An initial thought was, you know, not so long ago at all, if we were talking about using fresh ingredients in the bar, the conversation would have basically been about you know, squeezing your own lime juice, keeping your mint fresh. And that’s pretty much it. From your perspective, how much more was there and is there to discover when we start thinking about the use of botanical ingredients behind the bar? 

Danny Childs

I mean, so much. First of all, thank you for the kind words, but also, like when I think about myself, where I’m at in my journey, I still think there’s so much more for me to learn and so many more people that inspire me that are starting to do these things. And I think that right, this is, we’re on the tail end of the cocktail, quote unquote, renaissance. Right. People are like wondering what’s next. And I firmly believe when I look at the great bars in the world and the great bartenders and the great people pushing the envelope forward in terms of flavor and extraction. This is the next frontier. I firmly believe that. 

Paul Clarke 

And you didn’t come into this as a natural evolution from years spent working behind the bar, right? I mean, what was your path into exploring and sharing this botanically focused approach to drinks.

Danny Childs 

Yeah, I definitely didn’t come at this from a traditional bartending background and thinking that this was going to be the career that I chose. I was pursuing a career in ethno botany, which for the listeners who are unaware, it’s a subset in the field of anthropology that studies how people use plants. So it can be how they use plants for food, for medicine, for material culture and technology, or religious purposes, or it can be how they use them for drinks. And hospitality was what I did the whole time during that process in order to make ends meet, have some cash, be able to travel a little bit.

And, you know, I, I’m sure we’ll get into this a lot, but I spent a lot of time in South America in my undergrad. I took a gap year after I graduated school to do some independent research and pretty much traveled through the whole western part of the continent. And then I moved home.

I started working on a farm in my hometown Marlton, New Jersey, and I needed cash. I was like, Well, let me do what I’ve always done in this situation. Let me go look at a restaurant. So there was this place called the Farm and Fishermen up the road. I knew nothing about except that they had the word farm in the name. So I walked in and I said, Hey, can I bartend here? And they said, No, but you can serve. So I started there as a server and then kind of worked my way up. It was a farm-to-table restaurant descended from Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Our chef spent six years there as chef de cuisine.

And it kind of started to click between there and working on the farm, and my previous background that A, I don’t have to go to South America to study botany. It’s everywhere, no matter where we are on the planet. But B, the bar is just an amalgam of all kinds of different botanical ingredients, whether they’re spirits or fermented products or juices or syrups or bitters. They all start from some single or collection of botanical ingredients. And then that really kind of piqued my interest, where I started looking at what grows around me, what the historical ingredients are used in different beverages and different beverage ingredients. And I thought, man, how is nobody talking about this? How does this book not exist? And I’m very fortunate to have gotten to write that book. 

Paul Clarke 

And at what point in there where you went from like this, this kind of background interest and then you had your day job stuff, what point did you make that conscious decision to kind of marry the two together and say, you know, it’s something beyond just kind of curiosity at this point. There’s actually some substance here, something that interest you, that you could introduce and that other people could get into as well. 

Danny Childs 

When I was working at Farm and Fishermen, I really started to think about the ethno botanical landscape of my home region critically. And the first thing I could think to focus on was the Pine Barrens, the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It’s just got a distinct culture, a distinct biome, a collection of plants. so then that naturally extended to like, well, Philadelphia has a really rich and New Jersey as a whole has a really rich agricultural history. A lot of the early seed companies were here. And then, you know, Lancaster is not far away and the Amish and their culture the geographic landscape there and the botanical landscape there.

So I started to look more like cultures here critically. But dots weren’t really connecting. And I’ll be honest, the first aha moment was reading Amaro by Brad Thomas Parsons, where it was like the first beverage book I could think of that had a really strong botanical influence. So I started to think like, Well, what what of this grows here wild? But what of this can we grow here and cultivate? And where like certain amari use spices that are imported from elsewhere, are there things that we can substitute in their place and mimic those flavors with what we have growing around us?

And then the second aha moment and now I’m working on a different farm at this point up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. So we’re going to Ploughshare Farms and I would listen to podcasts. I listened to the Speakeasy podcast a lot when I was out there, and they had on a woman named Bianca who started a company called Uncouth Vermouth, and she starts talking about how old world traditions and old world beverages and spirits and vermouth and amari are influencing what she’s doing here. But she has this farm up in the Hudson Valley and how she’s kind of using her local landscape to basically flavor the spirit line. And that was the like aha moment of, well, she’s doing this, you know, for retail and for, you know, her line of products. But this can work really well for a bar program as well.

Farm and Fisherman was, it is, very high volume you know, it wasn’t uncommon on a Saturday for us to do 500 covers. And it’s also like in a strip mall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. So very much not like L.A. or New York or Chicago. It’s, we had dry cleaners on one side and a physical rehab facility on the other. So it was like this very organic, like, all right, how do we do this? How do we present it to people in a way that doesn’t scare them away but gets them engaged? And, you know, I think that if I tried to write this book in year one, it wouldn’t have materialized too much.

But it took almost ten years from starting working there until it became published, where it was like this very natural evolution testing this non cocktail people necessarily, but in real time, you know, like seasons come, seasons go out next year, let’s try this, let’s push this a little further. So it’s a very natural evolution.

Paul Clarke 

And, you know, we’re talking about flavors and ingredients and how these come into play. From our perspective, in the 21st century U.S.A., we may turn to drinks like, you know, a fermented watermelon soda or a homemade amaro, primarily because they’re tasty or they go well in a cocktail. But many of these drinks we’re talking about performed more of a functional value and have that kind of thing in their background. Why did that appeal to you and how did that appeal to you as you were thinking about this? 

Danny Childs 

Yeah, I mean, my background of ethno botany, I was working with shamans and medicine men and women and at home healers to say, like, how they use these things around them and fermented them or made teas out of them and copied them or, you know, infused them in spirit in order to extract their health properties. And so, you know, as you go down this historical rabbit hole of where our spirits came from, they almost always start in medicinal usage. so like for me it just was like, wow, this is, is it that much different than what I was studying before? You know? And, as the further I get into it, the more I see these things that connect those dots.

So like last year I went to Mexico with David Suro and his son Dan, who David just won the other James Beard Award, and we’re working together on their project as they relaunch in Philadelphia after a fire. But we were seeing people that had mezcal infusing with wormwood or garlic or rue, you know, these old medicinal herbs. Because the same reason that when I was in the Amazon and I got sick, they were giving me things, infusing in aguardiente de cana. This was like this extracts properties from plants and preserves them. And that could be for medicinal purposes. And, so there’s a million examples of that. It’s only been in the last hundred and 50 years that that then went into hedonism and bartending and cocktail culture, which is, you another piece of fascinating history. 

Paul Clarke 

And, you know, for someone who wants to explore this practice of converting seasonal, local ingredients into something tasty to drink, obviously you have a book with recipes and techniques in it. But what’s a good way to get started? What’s an easy on ramp for somebody who wants to kind of like make their first journey into this? 

Danny Childs 

All right, there’s a few answers here, I think, because I use an array of different ingredients that I either forage, grow or source from a farmer or the farmer’s market. So I would say a start to go to your farmer’s market, talk to your farmers, see what they’re growing. If you have the space and the capabilities, try growing a few things. Something as simple as mint or basil or like herbs are so simple and such an easy way in. And then three for foraging. And this one really tends to kind of freak people out, but start simple.

So the dandelions that inevitably grow in your yard or in the cracks of your pavement, pine trees, juniper trees, spruce trees, which are all around us, look on the side of the road. Look in parking lots. you will probably find things like staghorn sumac and black walnut or any sumac or any walnut. There’s a lot of different species in this broad genus that are able to be used and like, don’t think that you have to go into the middle of the woods to find these things. Start in your immediate vicinity.

And then as far as how to extract the flavors and how to use them, you don’t need to get a rotovap and you don’t need fancy equipment buy some overproof spirit, let them dry and make tea out of them, use them fresh and make a syrup, but you can blend them or or just pour hot water on them and then dissolve some sugar in there.

For fermentation, a lot of things have wild yeast, also people ask me like all the time, like, where do I start in your book? And I always recommend people start by making a ginger bug because it’s easy, it’s fun, it’s versatile, your whole family can enjoy it. This will be a process. It’s still a process for me. I’m still exploring and trying new things and learning new things. Don’t feel like you have to be an expert when you start. Just start. 

Paul Clarke

And you know, we’ve had Camper English on the podcast before and one of his projects over the years is focused on the safe use of botanicals in making drinks. What are some of the safety guidelines that people should keep in mind when getting started? Because, you know, everything exists out there in the botanical world. You want to make sure that you’re going out there with a sense of adventure, but also a sense of reasonable caution. 

Danny Childs 

Definitely. So I always recommend people do two things when they start this journey. Number one, get a local foraging book and to download an app on your phone, a foraging app. The foraging apps are not 100%, but they’re pretty good. And it’s a good place to start. The foraging books are good because it opens your eyes to what grows there. And then like definitely refer to resources like Cocktail Safe, Camper’s website, and make sure that you know what you’re going to be working with is okay and safe.

And, you know, there are some things where I look at, something like yarrow, which has had thousands of years of use in beverage and I think Cocktail Safe says don’t use yarrow or wormwood, which same thing. So, sassafras is another one. Like, you know, sassafras is the first root beer ingredient. There are things that like anything in high concentrations, it’s just like alcohol, the high concentrations can be harmful. Know what they are. you want to, I make sassafras root beer maybe twice a summer, and it’s like my favorite thing ever. The studies used to sort of classify it the way that it has been classified, and basically the entire foraging community is in agreement that it was blown out of proportion.

But still, it’s good to have that knowledge as you as you get into this stuff. It just makes sure that you know what you’re harvesting. Join local Facebook groups. You know, there’s a group here called the Wild Foodies of Philly that has been a wonderful resource for me on this journey. Maybe friends with some local foragers and just know what you’re harvesting, know it’s uses, you know, elderberry is another one like it. They say if you use them under ripe it can make your stomach upset. Some mushrooms, if they’re not processed the right way, can make people’s stomach upset. You just know the implications and know like, you know what hazards can be associated with things. And then take your time trying to make sure your body doesn’t react adversely. And everything in moderation.

Paul Clarke 

And, you know, one aspect of the book and the topic I found really enjoyable is that the cocktail world, the drinks world, has become very specialized and very diffuse over the years. And I mean, in some ways that’s great because I love exploring the variety found in different rums or different whiskeys. But that same extensive variety can be overwhelming for many and out of reach for many more. You know, it’s just unavailable because of its limited amount. By focusing on individual ingredients and botanicals like ginger or fresh fruit or rhubarb or tomatoes, you really are calling all the shots. At that point, you’re taking something that is readily available to you and creating your own outcome. Is that part of the appeal to you, and is that one of the things that you like people to kind of discover as they get into this? 

Danny Childs

Yeah. Like for me as when I try my drinks or when I create a drink or when I present a drink to somebody at a bar or a guest in my house, whatever, I want to know that they’re tasting the ingredient and that I am making the drink with, that is the most important thing for me. And so you’ll notice in the book, I really don’t call out spirit brands by name. I call out modifiers because those can be pretty specialized.

But I want people to focus much more on the ingredient and the process used to transform the ingredient and what the final form is that ends up in the drink rather than saying like, you need this top shelf bourbon or this top shelf vermouth, like a lot of cocktail books kind of make you feel like you need to drop a couple thousand dollars to stock your bar. And that’s not attainable for many.

So for me, it’s like, you know, there’s I can think of quite a few cocktail books I’ve read where I’m like, I’m just going to make this recipe with what I have. And I think it’ll be pretty good because it’s just, it can be a little crazy. I wanted people to not feel intimidated by these recipes that they didn’t have the perfect gin or whatever. I use a very broad framework, like a London dry gin or a rye or a blanco tequila, things that you probably have some representation of in your bar already, but don’t feel like you need to reinvent the wheel to make this drink. Just make it, have fun with these ingredients, and enjoy them and a delicious beverage. 

Paul Clarke 

It’s July at the time that people are hearing this, peak summer. What kinds of projects might we find you working on or enjoying at this time of year? 

Danny Childs 

Well, I just got in from harvesting staghorn sumac. I’m still kind of picking my last bit of green walnuts for the year. They’re kind of just over that like, true nocino phase that I usually like the harvest them out, but I just am gathering as many as I can right now. Might just pick some wild blackberries today.

This is typically the time of year, like late June or early July is very like still kind of wrapping up my foraging. So blueberries as well. You know, it’s very seasonal, but from now through about early September, it’s garden time. And so I’ve been a little neglectful in my garden this this year just because I’ve been kind of busy. Now it’s I’m out there and like getting everything staked and happy and ready to really, like, do their thing over the next few months and then it’s garden preservation time.

I’ll be doing a lot of tomato fermentation, hot sauce, grabbing the last of my elderflower and making liqueur and kombucha, getting my elderberries and making wine and shrubs, got my hops are just starting to flower so I’ll, I’ll be doing some fun things with them in about a month. So there is a lot always to do Sometimes I wish there were two of me to do them all. this is the time of year that I dream of in the winter, you know, it’s all happening. 

Paul Clarke 

Now I mentioned at the outset, Negroni Week is coming up soon. And as in recent years, this is done to benefit Slow Food, and slow drinks like slow food isn’t just a descriptor, it’s a concept, it’s a philosophy. Why did you embrace that early on? How does that kind of align with what you were talking about earlier with your approach with with anthropology and with ethno botany, and how has your work brought you into alignment with Slow Food and the Slow Food movement?

Danny Childs

The first way that I learned about Slow Food was the Ark of Taste. And for those who are unaware, the Ark of Taste is, you know, kind of like the metaphorical Noah’s Ark that we board these ingredients on onto and the ingredients are things that are at risk, underappreciated and endangered. And when I was saying that, I was like, really getting into the ethno botanical landscape of my home region. This was an amazing resource for me to learn about, like the fish pepper or Jimmy Nardelos or like Brandywine Purple Tomatoes, like Cherokee, purple tomatoes, paw paws, ramps, like all these things that really still are very important to my yearly processes, I learned about from the Ark of Taste.

When I was thinking about, you know, the program we were building at Farm and Fishermen, I was like, there’s only so much you can put on a menu, right? And I was like, I really want to like, put this out there on Instagram for people to geek out with me and like, you know, learn about the way that we’re making drinks, because I thought it was distinct and unique. And so I was like, well, you know, the best the closest thing I could think of is Slow Food.

So I wonder who’s doing slow drinks. Let me just look on Instagram for that. And then I searched it and I saw it was available and I was like, you know, I made a new email address and I start, I snatched it up and then I sat on it for eight months and I’m like, I have this this thing. What is what is a slow drink, you know?

And so in that time I began working with Slow Food officially on the Ark of Taste Committee for the Northeast and New England states. And I really got learn a lot about that. I started to form this partnership where I traveled to Denver with them when they were still doing Slow Food Nations, which was kind of like premier North American Slow Food Conference at the time.

I did a pop up and I used Ark of Taste ingredients then this pop up to actually. So I connected with local growers in Denver and I found these heritage ingredients and said like, this is what I think Slow Food looks like in the drinks realm. And then, you know, as I’ve, as time has gone on and I’ve looked at the Ark of Taste for, you know, many countries around the world, like I look at it in Peru where I work I look at it in Chile and it’s like this is such an important thing because it’s enshrining these things on this database.

The Ark of Taste has this wonderful motto, which is eat it to save it. And then I started saying, Well, it’s eat it and drink it to save it. You know, you there are two ways to consume these things. you know, as I’ve learned more about the organization, you know, when their motto of good, clean and fair, I extend that into to what I do in drinks. And there are two more words I would say in the good, clean, fair, biodiverse and sustainable.

And so like when I think about what I do, like number one, is it good? Because if it’s not, nobody’s going to want to eat or drink it clean. So are these seeds coming from a reputable source so that, you know, non-GMO seeds? Are you growing them in a clean way, harvesting, processing them in the clean way? And then lastly, are they fair? So like if you’re sourcing from a farm, that farm compensating their workers fairly, and when you’re selling them at a bar, you’re selling them at a fair price, Are you selling them all at a price that only people the upper echelon of the economic strata of society that can afford?

And then lastly, biodiversity is like use these Ark of Taste ingredients and the vast variety of things that grow around us. And sustainability, I think is just inherent. If you follow those first four things making sure that we’re not making our planet worse off than we found it and hopefully making it better. You know, slow food I was I’ll be honest, I was always like a little nervous like, are they going to, like, hit me with the cease and desist for using the name slow drinks or are they going to, like, be mad about this?

But I think it speaks volumes about the organization where they’re like, we love what you’re doing. We want to make it a part of our organization. So, heading these two trips with them. Thanks to the Negroni Week fundraiser, two Tales of the Cocktail and two Terra Madre and Turin, Italy. And Slow Food Editori at the Italian publishing branch of the organization just translated our book into Italian. you know, it’s it’s a great partnership. And we’re also we’ll be launching officially at Terra Madre, the Slow Beverage Initiative, which is, there are all these subsets of slow food like slow meat, slow cheese, slow being slow fish and there are some beverage equivalents as well, like slow wine, slow beer, slow cider, but slow meat and the other food ones fall under slow food.

There’s not an umbrella category for slow beverage as a whole. So we want a home for slow spirits and slow cocktails and slow coffee and tea and, you know, all of these things to have a home base of other like minded people that are doing following these same principles and whatever their craft is. And so it’s a, it’s a really big initiative. I honestly like, I thank Negroni Week for that because I think that they’re seeing a that the beverage community wants these things but be you know there’s there’s a lot of possibility for growth as an organization as a whole in this community.

Paul Clarke 

We’re moving toward the exit here. Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share? 

Danny Childs 

You know, I always say to people, go forth and make slow drinks of your own wherever you live, whatever your bar program or your home bar looks like, just start to experiment, go outside, interact with your environment, grab a copy of the book and or like, look at my Instagram. There’s plenty of videos that show people how to do these things and just start to experiment and get your hands dirty. It’s very fun. And I really, truly believe that it is the next wave of things to come in this industry. 

Paul Clarke 

Well, Danny, thanks so much for being on the podcast, for taking the time to chat and I really appreciate this. And I can’t wait for people to to dig in and learn for themselves. 

Danny Childs 

My pleasure, Paul. Thanks so much for having me. 

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Paul Clarke

You can find Danny on Instagram @slowdrinks. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes to get there. And once again, here’s that calendar shout out. Negroni Week is coming up before you know it from September 16th through the 22nd. Head to NegroniWeek.com to find out more. 

And that’s it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. You can find our full back catalog online along with so many recipes and articles you won’t believe it at our website Imbibemagazine.com. Keep up with us day to day on Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, and Facebook for all our social media coverage. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues, let’s get you on the team. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes and we’ll be happy to help you out. I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.