I feel like I should restate that choices of ingredients are personal, and when I request a bartender to make his or her "best" Manhattan, I am judging their choices against my personal tastes. However when it comes to Manhattans, I must say my personal tastes for ingredients are excellent, and not too far off what other critics say. So when I say 18 Seaboard did everything wrong when I asked for their best Manhattan, I really mean it.
Carmen and I went to 18 Seaboard for Raleigh's Restaurant Week. It is a very nice restaurant with excellent seafood and steaks and a pretty well appointed bar. We got there early, so we had an aperitif at the bar. I asked for my usual. The bartender's face lit up as she said "Oh, I love a good Manhattan!" So, naturally, I was excited to hear that. It went downhill from there.
She chose Rittenhouse bourbon instead of rye. Bad choice. Rittenhouse makes an excellent rye for Manhattans, but only a mediocre bourbon. She then chose Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth and Agnostura bitters. No imagination. Actually, she asked a fellow bar tender to hand her "the bitters" and she took the Agnostura handed to her without even looking.
Then she filled a shaker and shook the poor mixture to death. I could literally here the ice breaking up and bashing the fragile bourbon esters. Then to top it off, a maraschino cherry.
As you'd expect the drink was floating with ice chips, watered down, and utterly tasteless. Carmen got it right in her post claiming a good Manhattan has 5 ingredients, not just 3, and unfortunately 18 Seaboard got all 5 of them wrong.