Joe Gilmartin doesn’t know too much about cooking, but that’s okay because

Joe Gilmartin doesn’t know too much about cooking, but that’s okay because he owns one of the coolest clandestine bars in Seattle. When asking this longtime barkeep if he had a recipe to share with Voracious readers, he quickly turned to a tried-and-true Crock Pot recipe from his bachelor days. After more prodding, he also supplied a recipe for the most popular drink at his lovable tiny Pike Place Market tavern, White Horse. Following are both recipes. Surely, you can use at least one of them, right? Joe not only grew up with five sisters who loved to cook, he grew up having to sometimes fend for himself, thus, his meatballs and beer recipe: “You just have a small Crock Pot and a frozen bag of meatballs,” says Gilmartin whose dad would buy bags of meatballs for the family. “You put them in the Crock Pot and add one bottle of beer, a lager or a lighter beer, and one half-bottle or full-bottle of Jack Daniel’s barbecue sauce. You put that on a low setting and let it cook all day. Stir it once in the middle of the day and that’s like two meals right there.”Asked whether Gilmartin still makes this dish at home: “No, I have a wife now. She would never allow that in the house. When I was single, that’s all I ate.”If you’re not a meatball and beer person, Gilmartin’s most popular drink at White Horse might be more up your alley. “Right now our most popular drink is the champagne cocktail. It’s easy to make. It’s an old-school drink you can look up in any bar book. It’s just dry French champagne with a small amount of sugar, which is equivalent to about 1 sugar cube, Angostura bitters, or any dark bitters, and two drops of lemon juice.”Gilmartin says the pale ale and the champagne cocktail are the two best sellers at White Horse. “Our entire menu is just a couple of items. Basics, like red wine, white wine, the champagne cocktail…simple stuff.”Follow Voracious on Facebook and Twitter.