Out of wine and beer?

What pairs with meat loaf? Hands up if you’d suggest a gutsy red wine or beer. Good strategies. But what if I were to qualify the question with the word cocktail? Any thoughts?

Mixed drinks and comfort foods – not just the lowly loaf but also such cold-winter standards as macaroni and cheese, Granite Whisky Stones manufacturers chili and short ribs – can seem like strange bedfellows. But must they present an impossible match? What if you’re out of wine and beer on a snowy meat-loaf Monday and still fancy an adult beverage? Does the home bar, assuming it’s reasonably well-stocked, present options?

I put the challenge to a few creative Canadian mixologists. Remarkably, they were quick with ideas (and didn’t laugh me out of the bar).

“Meat loaf – I’d go Manhattan right away,” said Frankie Solarik, co-owner of Bar Chef, the vaunted cocktail emporium on Queen West in Toronto, and author of The Bar Chef, a splendid new drinks book. He says the earthy ground beef is a natural counterpoint for the herbal-sweet profile of red vermouth and the nutty mellowness of corn-based bourbon (he prefers bourbon to the more traditional, spicy rye whisky).

My own embellishment: Be liberal with the bitters (two parts whisky to one part red vermouth and three or four good dashes of Angostura bitters); the loaf won’t take offence to the extra kick.

Lauren Mote, bar manager at Uva Wine Bar in Vancouver and co-owner of a company that makes the Bittered Sling line of extracts for cocktails, granite whisky stoneshad a meat-loaf pairing. She suggests a drink called Peater Rabbit, which she created recently for the Uva list. It’s a riff on the Rob Roy, the Scotch-whisky-based variation of the Manhattan.

Combine 11/2-ounces Glenmorangie single malt whisky and 1/2 ounce Ardbeg 10-Year-Old (an especially peaty, smoky single malt) with 3/4 ounce red vermouth, 1/4 ounce Benedictine liqueur and 2 dashes Bittered Sling Cascade Celery Bitters in a shaker with ice; stir and strain into a cocktail glass; garnish with an orange-peel slice.

My next proposed item: beef chili. “Looking at the heat and spice, you need some sweetness,” Solarik said. “I would definitely go Old Fashioned because then you have the notes of the orange as well.”

A foundation of the classic-cocktail canon, the Old Fashioned could not be simpler. A mix of whisky (ideally bourbon or rye) with an Angostura-soaked sugar cube (a splash of water helps dissolve the sugar along with two dashes of the bitters) and a citrus twist on the rocks, it lets the chili do the talking while fanning the flames with a cold, subtly fruity caramel-whisky mellowness.