For so long as folks have been overindulging on the dinner desk, they’ve been attempting to quell indigestion—typically within the type of an natural, alcoholic elixir. However the place digestivo usually concludes a meal as a approach to settle the abdomen, the Normans in France took the idea in a barely totally different route. What if—they need to’ve thought to themselves—as a substitute of ready till after the meal, we took a shot proper in the course of the meal, thereby making room for, effectively, extra meals? 

Enter the Trou Normand, or, actually, “Norman gap.” Usually consisting of a calming shot of Calvados—or typically Calvados-soaked apple sorbet—the custom is designed to create space, or a “gap,” for extra programs, toeing the road between extreme and epicurean. “It’s France’s fernet shot, primarily,” explains Sarah Morrissey, bar director at New York’s Le Veau d’Or, a storied French bistro on the Higher East Facet. 

There, Morrissey has created her personal tackle the palate-cleansing shot. “I completely love Calvados, I really like photographs, and I really like the concept that they often serve it with sorbet, so I needed to make a play on that,” she explains. Although she adores the French apple brandy, Morrissey opts, as a substitute, for blanche Armagnac, an unaged grape spirit—saved within the freezer for a wealthy texture—as a substitute. Paired with fresh-pressed Granny Smith apple juice, her Trou Normand is served in a shot glass tucked right into a mattress of crushed ice in a classic crystal ice bucket. 

True to the French traditional, it manages to really feel concurrently indulgent and restorative—simply what I would like on the finish of a meal. It nearly looks like choosing a fruit plate instead of dessert. In spite of everything, as Morrissey describes, “it’s so clean and tastes like biting into a chilly apple.”