Whenever I’m in New York, I have a few drinking buddies all ready to hit a few bars for cocktails with me. One friend who I used to work with at Chez Panisse is at the top of that list and we both like our cocktails the same way: Not on the sweet side. So when we go out, we scan bar menus to find drinks…
While I wish that I could try everything and go to all the places that are suggested to me. I used to keep lists of restaurants and bakeries in Paris that I intended to go to. Then, invariably, a few weeks later, that list would get updated with new places and I’d realize that I’d never make it to the older places. (Or maybe I would, just…
Some say, “You eat with your eyes.” I don’t know about you, but until my eyes start sporting incisors, I’ll continue to use my mouth. Especially when drinking cocktails. I was recently at a bar that specialized in herbal concoctions and ordered a Rosemary Gimlet. I’ve been focusing a little more on gin these days, favoring an ice-cold martini over my usual whiskey or rye-based drinks….
Whoops! A big problem with being a seasonally based cook (and in this case, cocktail drinker) is that things go in and out of season. Compound that with the fact that different things are available in different parts of the world at different times – hello my friends in Australia and New Zealand! – and it’s hard to hit it right for everyone. I don’t…
Growing up in New England, gin and tonic is the classic summer drink. It’s bracing, fresh, cool, and not overly potent. The joke was that they tasted like after-shave lotion, but to be honest, most after-shave lotions smell pretty good. Often they’re scented with lime or something mentholated, at least they did when I was a kid and smelled them at the barber shop. That…
Jennifer McLagan always seems to know what we want to read about, and cook, before even we do. She wrote a slew of popular and award-winning books, which include Fat (which bravely came out during the low-fat craze, and nevertheless was a big hit), Bones, and now, Bitter: A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavor. The book is a celebration of flavors that are on the cutting edge, taste-wise….
As I stumble through figuring out how to use the new features after the site upgrade, I’ve got a backlog of posts and pictures that I’ve been anxious to share. It also has taken me a week to recover from my weekend in Cork, Ireland, as a guest at the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest, where I was a speaker in this year’s line-up. I’d only been to…
A number of decades ago, I was lured away from gin by other liquors; namely whiskey, bourbon, and other non-clear libations. There were no martinis and no gin and tonics in my cocktail repertoire. Back in the day, I used to go out and have 3 or 4 martinis, and have a good time. Sometimes, someone at work would bring a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin…
I was part of a whole generation of San Franciscans that were terrorized by Bruno, a cantankerous, older Persian man who had a bar in the Haight called Persian Aub Zam Zam. I’ve probably mentioned him before, but I recently went down that rabbit hole of the Internet where I found a few stories about him via a search for something else. Then…well, we all…
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