February 2012
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“First, the mindfulness-seeking bartenders in the workshop are asked to make a...”
– I’ll Have the Enlightenment, Please, and Make That a Double - NYTimes.com
I don’t know if I buy into this whole mindful eating thing. But bartenders who actually give a damn what your drink tastes like? That’s a concept I’m willing to get behind.
January 2012
2 posts
Nice Job, Einstein
In the early days of the Dry Era, nobody on the Federal Prohibition Bureau infiltrated and took down more NYC speakeasies than master-of-disguise agent Izzy Einstein and his partner, Moe Smith.
But sometimes it took more than clever deceit to fool a wary bootlegger. Sometimes it took cold, calculated honesty.
One of Izzy’s first assignments was to bust a Manhattan speakeasy that had a...
“You have your folk remedies or your comfort foods or your routine that all help...”
– Best day-after breakfast, according to science: eggs and a tropical smoothie.
Happy new year, Drinkers.
December 2011
4 posts
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A man, a woman, a caper and a bourbon
“Tell it to me again,” Robin said. They were sitting in her kitchen with an open bottle of something called Black Maple Hill on the table between them. It was the color of very good, very expensive mahogany furniture and it tasted of cherries and caramel and wood smoke. They apparently aged the stuff for 21 years in white oak barrels down in Kentucky, and Albert paid about two hundred dollars a...
November 2011
7 posts
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“One cold morning many years ago, a grouchy old New Yorker cranked out a letter...”
– So begins the Slate’s Troy Patterson’s article on everything you wanted to know about everything you wanted to know about the Old-Fashioned. The good, the bad and the foolish.
The old-fashioned: a complete history and guide to this classic cocktail. - Slate Magazine
Perfect for your...
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New York has a problem
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California has wine. New Orleans has bourbon. The South has the mint julep. New York—New York, I submit, has a problem.
Its problem sauntered into a trendy downtown bar in highlighted curls and lowlighted roots and an inexplicable pink tutu in 1998 and didn’t leave until 2004 and spent all six goddamn years ordering cosmopolitans.
Because before Sex and the City made it...
October 2011
4 posts
Drinking Games
Drinking Games by Malcolm Gladwell
“So we go in,” Dwight went on, “and there was a couple of little white-haired guys there. And they said, ‘You’re tanned. Where have you been?’ And I said Bolivia. And one of them said, ‘Well, can you tell me how they drink?’ ” The building was Yale’s Center of Alcohol Studies. One of the white-haired...
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Back to School Special
At the end of a busy school day, kids need some love from a relaxed, supportive parent. At the end of a busy work day, some of us need a little help to become that parent. Here’s what to do when the closest mixer is a juice box.
Playground Vacation
1 box tropical fruit juice 2 oz. rum squeeze of lime
Pour ingredients into a sports water bottle packed with ice. Shove bottle in diaper bag;...
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September 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Free the hooch!
Imagine if America’s bars had nothing but Bud on tap, and restaurants only poured Gallo. Or if you had to ignore your hankering for carne asada and onions on a fresh tortilla because the only taco allowed this side of the border was Taco Bell.
Scary and un-American, right? But that’s pretty much been this country’s liquor situation for decades.
The U.S. booze industry is dominated almost...
David Lynch opens a nightclub in Paris
Inside David Lynch’s Paris nightclub - The Guardian
You do feel you are descending into another world as you go down the six flights of stairs into Silencio. Buddhist cocktail bars with their own bijoux cinemas, library, dream forest and stage straight from Twin Peaks are thin on the ground, even in the second arrondissement. One minute you are in the dark, the next you are in a golden...
August 2011
17 posts
Vodka Nation -> →
The other component was marketing. David Embury concedes:
My hat is off to the American vodka manufacturers and their advertising departments, particularly Heublein, manufacturers of the Smirnoff brand, for what I regard as the most outstanding job of advertising and sales promotion that this country has ever witnessed. I am not so keen about the claim that vodka “does not have an...
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Some Idiot's Guide to Tequila
If you’re like me, you wear a novelty eyepatch you won playing skeeball at Chuck E. Cheese in 1987 and you’re obsessed with tequila. Plenty has been written about those former qualities, but here I’d like to expound on the latter. As tequila’s global popularity rapidly rises, it’s imperative that newly interested parties step into this delicious world with their...
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Mistakes were made
Before I tell this story, I’d like to apologize to bartenders everywhere on behalf of my wife.
Years ago my wife, a twenty-something bar hopper at the time, was in Fell’s Point in Baltimore with some friends, out to have a good time. At the bar she orders “a Myers’s and cranberry.”
Finding a spot with her friends, she took a sip and I’m not clear on whether or not there was an actual spit...
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Cocktail Cherries
The fruit that made Oregon famous1
By the early 1900s, maraschinos were all the rage in the United States, largely bobbing around in cocktails like the Manhattan. A New York Times story from Jan. 2, 1910, captured the nation’s maraschino-cherry mania: “A young woman engaged a room at a fashionable hotel and, after ordering a Manhattan cocktail, immediately sent for another. Soon...
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Get your Drink on.
Raise a glass. We’ve sold out.
Yep, after over a year of living the “Just doing it for fun!” lie, your pals at American Drinkcorp, LLC have managed to shake the integrity bug and muscle our way up to the corporate teat for a big ol’ mugfulla Sellout Punch. No, we aren’t signing a sponsorship deal with Bison Grass or planning a low-cal recipe series for Pama Week. It’s way...
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Other New Orleans Bars of Note
As our friend at Cocktail Garnish pointed out “[…] a good drink has as much to do with the ingredients outside the glass as those in it.”
Sadly, more like thankfully, we couldn’t make it to all of New Orleans’ fine bars. But we sure did try. Each of the following are a guaranteed to serve a fine drink.
Bar Uncommon - 817 Common St. Call ahead to see if the gravelly voiced Chris...
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New Orleans - Final Thoughts
This city, man, I tell you. I can’t stop talking about New Orleans. I can’t stop writing about it and since I left, details of the iron and stone work, wood beams and even the grass growing between the streetcar tracks keep making their way into my head. This city is ornate and down to earth, decadent and noble, traditional and unconventional. This city has many reasons to hold its...
WatchCheck out the Speakeasy Cocktails iPad book. It’s packed with over 200 recipes from the best bars around the world, tons of HD video tutorials on techniques from separating eggs to playing with fire and recommendations for stocking your bar.
More info at Open Air Publishing - Speakeasy Cocktails.
(h/t Buzz Anderson)
Link: Rowley's Whiskey Forge: Even the Ten Dollar... →
I knew he was a hustler from the very second I laid eyes on him. Handsome, mid-20’s, jeans, white tank top, muscled but skinny. He was leaning against a brick wall, scoping out the room. Given my line of research, a certain amount of criminality is expected. This guy was screaming it. I avoided eye contact. That is, until I forgot about him and happened to look across the bar directly...
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New Orleans - Two Bars
Your night out is a labor-intensive affair. Restaurants are able to hide much of it behind walls or portholed swinging doors. Bars on the other hand put it front and center. There’s not much between you and your drink. Just a rail, a bartender and some tools. Their only cover is the speed at which they make drinks. It’s obvious when they’re busy and the best, almost...
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New Orleans - Steve
“On the Galatoire Goute, what do the two prices mean,” I ask.
“The Goute Petit is $18 and the Grande is $32,” Steve answers.
JT wisely points out that we’ll be ordering an entré. “Which do you recommend?”
Steve looks first at JT, sizing him up, then at me.
“The Petit.” he nods.
Galatoire’s is a restaurant on Bourbon street, just three doors down from Larry Flint’s Hustler...
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New Orleans - Straw Hats
I spotted the first two at the airport on the goddamn 6AM out of SeaTac. Then another at Louis Armstrong International. In the half-block walk from my hotel to the historic Hotel Monteleone – host of the famous Carousel Bar where the Vieux Carré originated, home away from home to Faulkner, Hemingway,Tennessee Williams and birthplace of Truman Capote1, — I couldn’t keep count of them. They flowed...
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New Orleans - Tales, Tallboys and Locals
I’ve never been so I had to go. Cruise around a few cocktail blogs and within half a dozen clicks or so, you’re going to see Tales of the Cocktail referenced if not revered. Tales is a cocktail conference where the last elusive thing is uncovered, the next exclusive thing is revealed, and, unfortunately, some lousy thing will spooge into the world’s eye— straw hats may be that thing. I don’t...
July 2011
8 posts
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An American Tales
I was riding shotgun for my wife, out on Saturday errands when the email came. I never check email on weekends, but it’s even less common to find myself in a passenger seat with some free iPhone time, so the rare combination of freedom and boredom broke me down.
From a glance, the subject line didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Credit – You’ve been approved.
Ugh. DELE-but wait. There was...
Bloody Mary Fairy.
indefensible:
A thing I do sometimes is around 11am on a Sunday go to the houses of friends who partied like Andrew WK the night before and bring a bag of ice, a bottle of vodka, some celery, Tabasco, Worcester, some Spicy V8, lemons, and a whole bunch of other shit (liquid smoke - bam), and make them the best hangover drink of their lives.
Then I leave.
You should do it for your friends some...
June 2011
5 posts
2 tags
Taste with your brain, not with your pen.
Overpriced barware and flavored vodkas aside, there aren’t many drinking topics I find more off-putting than the far-flung and flowery language of tasting.
Whether it’s Bourbon or Bordeaux, nothing turns my curiosity into contempt like having to trudge through some gasbag’s highbrow appraisal of a spirit’s “initially buttery palate, transitioning into a smooth,...