Boozeflash Mark Young, Sela Bar
Where the stars behind the bars reveal their favourite drinks. This fortnight, Watermelon Mojito
Boozeflash: Mark Young, Sela Bar
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Sela Bar’s owner, Mark, tells us as we arrive at the bar that he can’t decide what to serve us: either a Long Willy (ahem), or a Watermelon Mojito. “The Long Willy is a 12-ounce serving of half Becks, half lemonade,” he says. “Actually it’s a little more than half Becks, but…” – he trails off – “…we’ll do the Watermelon Mojito.”
It turns out that the Watermelon Mojito fits in perfectly with the feel of Sela Bar – with its ethos of great jazz, funk and soul – as Mark picked up the recipe on one of his recent visits to New Orleans. “The whole thing behind the drink is that there’s a place in New Orleans called Jacques-Imo’s, which is a restaurant and bar. Whenever I go there, I go with the New Mastersounds, who are doing really well out there, and it’s this real dirty New Orleans style restaurant. It’s quite cool – there’s an old pickup truck outside, which has a dining table in the back, but you’re sat on this really grotty, dusty street on the back of this pickup van!
“They sell alligator cheesecake, which just tastes like a smoked sausage, and they’ve got really good salads, just general New Orleans fare. But the road that it’s on is horrible and dusty, it’s a bit of a ride out of town, through all the new cities with people living under flyovers since Katrina – although the city does seem to be getting better each time we go.
“So it’s the place where we’ve tended to go on the last Sunday of Jazz Fest to have a chillout right at the end. The first year that we went we were drinking these and I spoke to the bartender who gave me the recipe. And the second year we went, I got chatting to the owner and I told him about here, and would he mind if we used it – and he said obviously he didn’t. So there’s a nice connection to it.”
So, as you sit back in Sela and sup one of these, you can imagine yourself on a dusty track in New Orleans, jazz sounds and spicy aromas drifting along in the warm breeze. And it’s a very drinkable cocktail, with a touch of sharpness complementing the slightly sweet, long lasting flavour. The basement bar at Sela is surely one of the most pleasant places in the city centre in which to idle the time away. Is that how Mark envisaged things when he first opened the bar?
“It’s never going to be a mental party bar, but yeah, that was one of the reasons for opening it in the first place. I’d just turned 30 and was a bit fed-up being barged around, you know, the really loud music, shoulder to shoulder – I just never really enjoyed it, even when I was younger. So the idea for opening here was so that you could have background music but still hear it. Over the years it’s got a bit louder down here but we’ve now got the upstairs which just falls back into that nice chillout area.”
Ingredients:
Muddle 4-5 chunks of watermelon with 6-7 mint leaves; add half a shot of sugar syrup; fill with crushed ice; add 1 1/3 shots of white rum and 2/3 of a shot of mango liqueur, and stir.
Price: £5.50
Posted on Wednesday 31st March 2010
SO'H
Sela
20 New Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6NU
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