TASTEBUD
SO MUCH TO TASTE. SO LITTLE TIME.Archive for whiskey and whisky
Bacon and Whiskey: An Ode.
Who doesn’t love them? Here’s a gem by my old friend Kristy Athens, which, among other things, explains the range of bacon ordering doneness, from limp to “cook the sh*t out of it.” We used to be in a writing group together, which mainly consisted of eating and drinking for hours and hours with a few similarly-inclined pals, which is why I love this clip. Move over Scorsese, now there’s something meatier.
Reading For The (Self-Administered) Apocalypse
Everyone has a preferred hangover helper (mine’s a steaming hot spicy bowl of pho noodle soup, aspirin, and ‘Rushmore‘). Others go for hair-of-the-dog, spa treatments, cheeseburgers, or, hell, all three at once. But such methods fail, a story in today’s Times points out, to address symptoms beyond the usual nausea and exhaustion—the much worse ones based in existential darkness, self-loathing, and regret. To a certain sort, such side effects from revelry require more than folk remedies (see Joan Acocella’s recent gem in The New Yorker, A Few Too Many) they require a good long read. One that takes you to a deeper, more despondent place, in fact, so your return to personhood can be felt even more satisfyingly. Enter ‘EVERYDAY DRINKING: The Distilled Kingsley Amis’ (Bloomsbury). Three of his long out-of-print books on the art of drinking have been compiled into a single volume with the added kick of an introduction by another legendary prude, Christopher Hitchens. Here’s a few choice excerpts thanks to Dwight Garner’s review, the first on diets:
“The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.” On why serious drinkers should own a separate refrigerator for their implements: “Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice-compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food.” On the benefits of sangria: “You can drink a lot of it without falling down.”
See you at the bar, friends.
EVERYDAY DRINKING
The Distilled Kingsley Amis
By Kingsley Amis
302 pages. Bloomsbury. $19.99.
Play. Pour. Drink. Repeat.
In this month’s issue of Outside Magazine (May), I got the chance to team up with some other thirsty writers to wax about the best things to drink when off — well and truly off — the beaten path. We did the painstaking research on where to find the best buzz-inducing drinks from Italy to Bourbon County. The question is, what’s more memorable in the Scottish Highlands — the highlands or the Scotch? Tough call. UPDATE: ASME, or the American Society of Magazine Editors, picked up this story for its Magazine Article Links of the Week.
Smith: Restaurant Row? More like Liquor Lane
With a name like “THE JAKEWALK”, there’s already good reason to look forward to the latest addition to Smith Street, fast becoming more a street for boozy haute cocktail-soaked pub crawls than leisurely dinners (though you can find me happily hiding out in with a minute steak in Bar Tabac often enough). But with the (coming-soon) Clover Club, the timeless Brooklyn Inn, Brooklyn Social, and winebar Black Mountain, I’m going to pronounce Smith Street Brooklyn’s favorite lane for drinking as well as eating. And hell, when you cast your gimlet-eyed gaze on the fair borough of Brooklyn as a whole, the arrivals of Weather Up, Beer Table, 4th Avenue Pub, Pacific Standard, Cherry Tree, Radegast, and so many more make for a rosy picture indeed.
There Will Be Bird
This week at Picholine, chef Terrance Brennan will be cooking up the wild mallard ducks and pheasants he and his hunting party shot on the last day of shooting season — with the help of some hardy spaniels — during a recent hunting trip in the Fife region of Scotland. The trip, organized by Andrew Hamilton of Scottish Wild Harvest, was a success despite driving rain and winds that closed several roads in the region. The happy hunting grounds? Birkhill estate, a 2,000-acre beauty (with 700 acres of rolling woodlands) owned by the Earl and Countess of Dundee. There, Terrance and Andrew met up with a group of hunters from Holland who were not only crack shots but dressed the part, all natty tweeds, ties, and green wool britches called plus-fours. The birds, taken under the guidance of veteran gamekeepers (in other words, fairly) were delivered fresh to Picholine over the weekend. Chef Brennan will cook these 10 mallard ducks and 10 pheasants up this week, so hungry game bird lovers might want to make a rezzo on the double.I, Distiller
Early Monday evening the 23rd of April the wood-paneled lobby bar of the Four Seasons on East 52nd and Park was humming, the spicy, sweet scent of bourbon born aloft. The proprietors of the Hudson Valley’s Tuthilltown Spirits, which fired up a German still in a refurbished eighteenth century granary a few years ago—were on hand, armed with plenty.The occasion—alcohol for alcohol’s sake—nevertheless called for some decorum: ‘The most perfect Manhattan….JACKETS REQUIRED FOR GENTLEMEN’, the invitation read. Still, at least one schlub showed up wearing a dingy grey T-shirt. Tuthilltown, a tiny concern, had thrown the party to mark the release of the first—or first legal, at least—rye whiskey made in New York State since Prohibition. Crisply dressed bartenders mixed it from stubby, apothecary-like bottles into Perfect Manhattans—2 ounces Rye, one half ounce dry vermouth, half ounce sweet vermouth, two to three dashes orange or Angostura bitters, and lemon twist, over ice, garnished with maraschino cherries—and passed them out as the partygoers snacked on sushi and warm cheese puffs. Hey, sushi and bourbon, why not? Read the rest of this entry »
