Congratulations to Miles Macquarrie of Kimball House, the 2024 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta Exceptional Cocktails Award Winner!
Located in a historic train depot in Decatur, Kimball House finds inspiration from the iconic Kimball House Hotel. Research from the Atlanta History Center found an 1890s menu from there featuring Blue Point oysters paired with a Manhattan cocktail.
Today, the cocktail program at Kimball House has its own takes on the classics, in a way that is impressive thanks to Partner and Beverage Director Miles Macquarrie. Cocktails are thoughtful and elegant, making the toughest choice of each visit narrowing down your selection.
Learn more about Miles’ journey in the industry and his favorite drinks below. Cheers!
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How were you introduced to the world of cocktails?
Many years ago, I was working at a beer bar, and we did an employee exchange with Holeman and Finch that was run by Greg Best and Regan Smith (of Ticonderoga Club). They sent one of their employees over to learn about beer, and sent me over to learn about cocktails. Greg Best made me a Sazerac. Never had one before. This was early 2008. And it just blew my mind and changed my perception of cocktails.And then I had the opportunity to open a restaurant called LEON’s Full Service as the bar manager and set the cocktail program up from the beginning. I just really fell in love with it and had to teach myself a lot of things. Dug into books and the internet and was following what a lot of the New York bartenders were doing. My job was my hobby at the same time.
How have your cocktail tastes changed over the years?
A lot. As many young bartenders, I'm certainly guilty of trying different trends and techniques. Over the years, I've found my own style and have learned to still try a lot of fun new things, but also do it with a level of restraint in certain ways as well.If the menu has something listed on it, I want people to be able to taste that ingredient. Finding ways to dive into flavor and still presenting things in vintage glassware and making it feel really kind of like grandiose and classic, but surprising people with flavors at the same time.
What are you drinking these days?
A martini variation called the Garden Vesper. We're showcasing one ingredient from our garden and using a gin to complement that ingredient, and then taking that ingredient and putting it into spirit, extracting it via a rotary evaporator. It’s a really flavorful Vesper that has terroir to where we are, because we're growing lemon verbena outside.I've been known to drink Absinthe now and again. I love champagne cocktails later in the evening. I really like rum drinks. I love cognac, I love eau de vie. The beauty of this job is that it is still a hobby of mine. The basement at our house is converted into a home bar, and I do some R & D there and like to test things on the wife.
What’s the biggest misconception about mixology or cocktails in general?
A lot of people refer to it as alchemy or mad scientists because you see things in droppers and bottles. But, our bar team is sort of like liquid garde manger. They're working like chefs that just happen to be in an open kitchen at a bar.The biggest misconception still is that it's hard to do these things at home, where it's really not. You can make a simple ingredient for a cocktail and make these drinks at home.
What’s your ideal meal and pairing?
One of the classic American staples and pairings is martinis and oysters. Our house cocktail is a simple variation on a martini. It's called the Kimball House. We make our own olives, our own orange bitters for it. It's just a vintage glass, our house-marinated Castelvetrano olives, and a lemon twist.We have many different variations on martinis that we keep on our menu because we think it's a great aperitif, and it’s an American icon in liquid form. So, we've really stuck to our guns. I'm so happy because now I think the martini is back with a lot of staying power.
Favorite non-alcoholic drink?
Right now, my wife and I are obsessed with this particular flavor of Waterloo that only comes out in early fall. It's sparkling water, spiced apple flavor. Another is [Kimball House’s] variation on a penicillin that has a ginger yuzu cordial.
Do you have any sustainable initiatives with the cocktail program?
We try to utilize ingredients in many ways. Flavor stacking. We have a heavy preservation program. If we make a peach cordial, we get three uses out of it. As we process the peaches, we'll make a syrup out of the peach pits that we use at a later date. Our peach cordial recipe is sliced peaches with sugar water, citric malic acid and some creme de peche, and we do a cold vacuum infusion for a week. When that comes out, after we strain the peaches off, we take all that pulp and the pits, and we infuse that with inexpensive white distilled vinegar at cool for six weeks, and then that vinegar will get used in cocktails and in vinaigrettes.We have a sizable garden that we grow a lot of our own things in. We let the seasons and what we have at our disposal from local farmers and our garden dictate our menu. From our own garden, we grow lemon verbena, tarragon, lemon thyme, roselle (hibiscus pods), three different types of basil, French sorrel, and lots of edible flowers – from bachelor’s buttons to globe amaranths, marigolds.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be in a position like yours?
Be curious, stick with it. More than anything, execution will always trump creativity. Learn how to execute classic cocktails first. Think about temperature. Think about dilution. Think about what your ice is doing and your mixing glass of your tin, and really hone in on that. At the end of the day, this is a craft. There's art in it, but it's also a craft.
Hero image: Andrew Thomas Lee / Miles Macquarrie
