During the birth of L.A.’s craft cocktail movement in 2009, Matthew Biancaniello was the crazy guy foraging in L.A.’s local forests for wild ingredients so he could put “candy cap” mushrooms reminiscent of cotton candy into Cynar, macerating seasonal guavas from the farmers market into tequila, or making egg nog with white truffles.
His cocktails threw people off because they were so outside the scope of foundational cocktails. Many still crave perhaps his most famous cocktail: the Roquette, his variation of a gimlet with muddled arugula that tastes more like a cold-pressed green juice than something that is going to get you fucked up.
Matt was the bartender at The Roosevelt Hotel from 2008 to 2012, where he grew most of his cult following. His cocktail book “Eat Your Drink: Culinary Cocktails” cemented his culinary approach to cocktails.
And while he still occasionally offers underground cocktail tasting dinners out of a back yard in Ladera Heights for his die-hard fans, the 57-year-old father of two has taken on a new obsession: marathon swimming.
Last week, Biancaniello completed an 18-hour and 19-minute swim from Catalina Island to Los Angeles, which measures out to 21 miles. More than half of which he swam in the middle of the Pacific at night, in pitch black conditions … in a part of the ocean that has been measured to be at least 3,000 feet deep (ten football fields), and yes, sharks were most definitely lurking nearby as he freestyled across.