I never gave the Old Waldorf-Astoria more than a glance after it came with a shipment of other cocktail and cook books nearly a year ago. Boy what a mistake that was. I dug it out the other day, remembering it included more than a handful of gin-laden cocktails. To my surprise, [...]

Cafe Du Monde and Some Liquor Finds
10:30am (now on Friday) - We found out the the Tales breakfast at Brennan’s was way over-RSVP’d and that if we hadn’t signed up, we should search elsewhere to soak up all the drinks from the previous night. A quick Google search revealed Cafe Du Monde. Their [...]

Bourbon, caressed by a hint of Galliano and doused with aromatic bitters; juice from a plump, ripe orange, cognac and the sweet herbalness of Benedictine; sweet creme de banane sedated with cognac and prodded with orange bitters; a generous helping of reposado tequila and Barbados rum, tightened up with grapefruit and pineapple juices; a [...]

I had the opportunity to try Old Raj gin this past summer at a bar in Ithaca, NY. Though after browsing the cocktail menu and watching the bartender, I knew that I had better play it safe. So I decided I’d ask for a martini with tons of vermouth; “way more than you [...]

Now this, my friends, is a drink book.
I’ve spent so many hours looking through my library searching for that one, secret, cocktail that I could add to the Kaiser Penguin archives. Books were flying on and off shelves like a wizard at work, yet nothing excitingly potable was to be found. Baker seemed [...]

Gaze upon the words of Charles H. Baker, Jr. and be instantly transported to the high mountains of Luzon, the pre-prohibition days of New York, or to Jamaica where you’ll dine with a retired British army man named Wilson. It doesn’t matter where he takes you - it’s always interesting, and sometimes dangerous.
After reading [...]

For 95% of bar goers, “bitters” are an unknown substance. And of that 5% who have discovered the secret treasure, probably less than 1% actually know bitters as anything beyond that mis-wrapped bottle with a yellow cap crusted to the top with sticky brown goo.

Then again, those few people probably have a blog and [...]

Pernod is intense. And lot’s of people find the pungent combination of star anise and aromatic herbs quite unpleasant. To be honest, anise used to be on my top five hated foods list as of four months ago. I didn’t really discriminate between licorice and anise, either. Nearly everything with those [...]

I must say, I don’t think I’ve experienced better customer service from a company in a long while. My phone conversation went something like this.
“I don’t believe that your product is distributed to my area; is there a way I can still order some syrups?”
“Of course! We will gladly ship them directly to [...]

I hate licorice. Well, ok, I hate licorice at about 40% as much as I did 3 months ago. Why the drastic reduction of hate, you ask? I’ve been forcing myself to eat as many things flavored with licorice as possible. Why on earth would you do something like this?, you ask. [...]