New Spring Cocktails at Olive + Oak

In our most recent interview, we went over to a restaurant that has remained #1 on our list since its opening: Olive + Oak. We interviewed newlyweds Morgaine Segura and Charlie Martin about some new cocktails they are featuring on the spring menu. Their creations are fresh, innovative, and arrived on their menu just in time to celebrate springtime in St. Louis. We hope you enjoy getting to know them as much as we did!

How long have you been at Olive + Oak?

Morgaine: I’ve been here just over a year last February and Charlie started about seven months ago.

Charlie: This first cocktail we want you to try is one we just came up with, the #16. We took some kiwi puree, mixed it with coconut puree, added a little bit of rum, and to give it pops of herbaceousness we added a little bit of green chartreuse.

#16

How often do you change the menu?

Morgaine: We change it whenever we come up with new ideas. We like to be seasonal though. For us, it makes more sense to run out of a cocktail before we put a new one up. We bring a few cocktails on at a time and then add a couple more and we also like to make plays on what the kitchen is also doing, especially for desserts and apps. Something cool the restaurant does is called Sunday Suppers, where someone from the front or back of house has an idea of what their family ate growing up, so they make that the special for the night. Mark (Hinkle, owner) was back there cooking an Italian dish a few weeks ago. So to accompany that every week we try to do a Sunday Sipper to match those flavors.

What’s with the numbering system?

Morgaine: Chelsea Little was the bar manager when Olive + Oak opened and she started at number 1 and went through 200 as she created new cocktails. Once she left it worked out for us to keep the same system. I also don’t know of any other bar in the city that does numbers, so it’s unique. When people see a numbered cocktail on Instagram, they know where it came from.

Charlie, where were you before Olive + Oak?

Charlie: I ran the bar at Moonrise Hotel for six years. Before working here and Moonrise I had never worked before in the industry. I needed a job after graduating college and my sister actually was the food and beverage manager at Moonrise and she was like hey you should come work here, so I got a job as a barback and then rolled into bartending within the first three months. We grew up running a catering company so food was always a background for me. Cocktails were another expression of that. That’s how I fell into doing this.

How did you two meet?

Morgaine: Charlie has known my parents for at least six years. I moved back to St. Louis two years ago and they happened to move like two streets from Moonrise. They suggested I try to get a job there and within a week of working there we started dating.

When did you get married?

Morgaine: In November, and we’re currently planning the reception, which has been fun to plan. For us, we throw parties every night so when we have the opportunity to throw our own we want it to be the biggest ever!

Do you guys cook at home?

Charlie: I’m gonna let her answer that…

Morgaine: I saw the look you gave me (laughing)…

What’s your favorite thing to make at home, Charlie?

Charlie: Chicken noodle soup. Whenever I make it, it’s a five hour process but we have enough for like a week. She’s so sick of it now.

Morgaine: He also cooks me a lot of steaks, that’s the thing that I crave.

Charlie: This next cocktail is the #31: It has a little bit of orange and sherry dessert wine, so it’s super light and totally drinkable. It’s sweet but won’t cause cavities too sweet. It’s wine based so it will play really nice in the summer.

#31

Where do you like to drink when you’re not working?

Morgaine: We drink really crappy things when we’re not working, like beer and a tequila shot. Depends on the bar, really. But we really like Taste, and recently went to Billy Jean and we were really impressed. The food was incredible. We’ve been looking for that place that wows us with everything that comes out, and we’ve found it.

Usually that wow factor place is usually here at Olive + Oak, right?

Morgaine: Yeah, we are spoiled here so it’s hard for us to go out to other places.

Morgaine, where were you before Olive + Oak?

Morgaine: I was at Libertine and also at Eclipse. For a while I would work here and Eclipse at the same time and it was nuts.

Do you have a favorite cocktail to make?

Morgaine: The Last Word. Charlie introduced me to a Last Word plus mezcal. If someone asks me to make them a surprise cocktail, that’s probably going to be it. We also got this smoking gun and we’ve been having fun with that recently.

Charlie, what’s your favorite drink to make?

Charlie: I actually love making mojitos. Getting a really great mojito is life changing. It’s a very easy cocktail to mess up but once you get a good one, it’s great. I put in way more mint and use a really nice rum in mine.

Charlie: This next cocktail, the #25, is totally “us.” It’s a lot of what we like to drink, but it’s also our riff on a margarita. Tequila, mezcal, lime juice, house made orange syrup. We leave the orange peels in for a bitter pith flavor. The rim is something we thought would pair well with the orange flavors. There is a tradition in places that serve mezcal that sometimes you eat an orange with cinnamon, sugar, and salt on it, so that’s what we did here. Ground cinnamon, salt, and aleppo pepper. This is a patio pounder. It’s earthy, spicy, salty, mixes well with citrus and has just a bit of heat, but nothing offensive. I love working with peppers in cocktails but working with dried peppers is just easier to control.

#25

How many bartenders do you have here at Olive + Oak?

Morgaine: Three. There are some people that rotate in, but we’re two of the three.

Charlie: The next cocktail is our ode to our St. Louis bartending. This is a cocktail invented by Ted Kilgore: the industry sour. We took the industry sour and deconstructed it and then built it again from the ground up. It has lime juice, simple syrup, instead of fernet we’re using our house-made amaro. We spent the last five weeks curing an amaro in our house, it’s super awesome, and a hybrid between fernet and green chartreuse. We also substituted the herbaceous liquor (which is usually green chartreuse) with Underberg, which is a German bitter that’s really good for digestion. It’s big in anise flavor, and we just take the whole bottle and jam it in the drink, so as you drink the cocktail it’s going to leech out of there and totally change the flavor. We don’t have a number yet for this drink because the amaro isn’t fully aged. We just wanted you to try it.

Industry Sour

So, why Olive + Oak?

Morgaine: We spent a lot of time eating and drinking here, maybe three nights a week. We spent so much time here we figured we should probably start working here too, ha! I started working here first and absolutely loved it. It was definitely the next step in my career. They’ve been nothing but generous and awesome to work for. When they were looking for another bartender, I thought that we have to bring on Charlie. They were a little hesitant at first but Mark and Jen run Olive + Oak and a few others that work here are married and work together everyday, so they know it can work. It’s a cool environment.

Charlie: Next is the #214. It’s our tribute to Webster. It’s totally slamful. Strawberry, lemon, basil. It’s a crowd pleaser and our springtime sweet cocktail.

#214

What’s the most bizarre thing someone has asked you to make?

Charlie: A dirty apple martini. It was horrifying. I couldn’t not try it though. Another was a bloody mary made with Three Olives cherry vodka. It tasted like fruit punch.

Morgaine: A lot of people that come in here will sit at the bar will just ask us to make them something good. They want unique things and it can be frustrating because for example, today I made six NEW things! Do you want to try one of those? That we just put on the menu? Nope. They want something different.

Charlie: Another thing we’ve been wanting to do is restart our ice program. We found our own way of making beautiful cubes. It’s something I used to do at Moonrise that I am going to continue doing here. You can totally do it at home and it’s easier than you think. Just go to Menard’s and get a small cooler. Take off the lid and fill it up with regular water, and throw it in your freezer. Since all of the sides are insulted except for the top, it will directionally freeze from the top down, and trap all the impurities in the base of the ice block. So you’ll have 4-5” of crystal clear ice at the top. Then, use a pruning saw to saw off the impurities and you’re left with really beautiful cubes.

What are your favorites of the new spring drinks?

Morgaine: I’m really excited about that industry sour.

Charlie: I really like the #31, the sherry cocktail. I’m not big into sherries or dessert wine but I feel like when it gets really sticky and hot this summer, that’s going to be a great cocktail. Obviously I also like the one we created for ourselves, with the lime with the chili and the cinnamon, the #25.

Charlie: This last drink is our take on a boucherie. Classically this cocktail features rye, sweet vermouth, cognac, benedictine, and some bitters. But we decided to throw some rum in there, so we have Angel’s Envy rye, Plantation pineapple rum, Smith and Cross Jamaican rum, and we add Camouvie cognac, Punt e Mes sweet vermouth, Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters and let it age in the Angel’s Envy barrel to let the flavors come together. It’s a solid old school bourbon cocktail. The orange garnish is one I saw on Instagram, and I fell it love with it and had to recreate it. This is the #203.