Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009...7:38 am
#137: Don’t Drink Vodka
You there, with the coffee mug full of clear liquid, sipping vodka because you think it won’t make you reek of alcohol at your 9 a.m. meeting: I’m not actually talking to you.
No, this directive is aimed at all you casual Cosmo lovers, you Saturday night vodka martini drinkers, you Bloody Mary and vodka tonic tipplers.
You probably developed your taste for vodka way back before you really knew much about drinking, precisely because vodka didn’t have much taste. You could mix it with anything — Gatorade, say — and manage to get efficiently wasted without gagging on any of those overly adult flavors.
Plus, vodka was the new liquor, freshly risen from the Russian gulag, the people’s poison. Drinking it was revolutionary, almost. In 1968.
Which is exactly why the Evil Young have turned their backs on vodka, which is now officially The Liquor of The 52-Year-Old. So what, if you want not to act old, are you supposed to drink instead?
Gin is always groovy. Likewise, most brown liquors, especially Woodford Reserve bourbon or rye, like your Uncle Stanley used to drink. Tequila, not so much. Basically, anything you’ve been drinking all these years is bad, and anything your parents served in the early 60s is good.
If you’ve been to a hipster bar recently, you know that mixology is the thing: Precious cocktails concocted from a drop of this and a dram of that. Last week I went to the most uber-hipster of them all, Freemans Restaurant on the Lower East Side, and happily settled into the hunting lodge-style atmosphere — from before even I was born! – and ordered a Freemans Cocktail.
Never mind that the bartender had, as the New York Times’ Frank Bruni put it, all the charisma of Cujo. The glimmering gold cocktail standing atop the zinc bar beneath the stuffed deer’s head looked so poetic, I was moved to hop off my barstool to take a photo to send to my friends Hugh and Kim, who were supposed to meet us that night but had to go out of town. See what splendor you missed?, I was going to say.
But when I sat back down, Cujo said to me, “I can’t have you taking pictures of the product.”
Wha?
“You can take pictures of yourself and your friends enjoying the place,” she continued. “But you can’t take pictures of the product.”
Whether the “product” was the drink or the animal head or just the whole gestalt, I wasn’t sure, but of course from that moment on all I wanted to do was photograph the stupid place, which I immediately loathed, plus watch Cujo concoct my next Freemans Cocktail so I could broadcast its recipe. So here’s the product:
Although you can find the recipe online in a more refined version, this is how the bartender actually made mine:
1 tsp pomegranate molasses (thanks to my son Joe, this is an item we actually have in our refrigerator)
1 jigger lemon juice
1 jigger simple syrup
2 jiggers rye
a dash of orange bitters
Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Take a liquor soaked orange peel and set it aflame so closely under the nose of an unsuspecting guest that she screams. Sip and feel instantly 20 years younger. Or is it older?
20 Comments
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:14 am
When I’m putting out the trash, I see dozens of mostly empty cans of Miller Lite and PBR in the wastebasket from the 17 year old’s room. Yes, the kids are that brazen, which is bad enough. But PBR? We called this drug beer, becuase it was only drinkable when on serious drugs. Now they like it. So I’d add–no boutique beers. PBR.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:36 am
I’m stickin with Zima
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
oooh – so glad to know I stopped with the vodka before it became passe. Or at least before I realized it was passe. Did move on to gin some time ago – then realized that I now have zero alcohol stamina when it comes to the hard stuff. So I do wine. And yes, beer. And good for you for taking the pic anyhow – I would have had the same reaction. How ridiculous.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
The reason you can’t take photos of a product is because people steal ideas from everything from bottles in bars to items in a store. The bartender was correct and not out of line. Just FYI God bless and happy writing!
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
You can’t get away with photography propriatary items. It is a Federal offense.Learn the law before you complain. He was within his rights. Law was on his side. Hope this helps.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Still don’t think there’s anything proprietary about a brown cocktail under a deer’s head. And I believe Freemans doesn’t want casual photography because they make money from letting people shoot ads and photo stories there. But I feel I should be allowed to shoot my own $14 cocktail.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:11 am
You can’t be a serious drunk unless you drink vodka though. These kids will learn.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Shit. I love vodka. What about Chelsea Handler? Is she old?
June 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I’m going to have to have my people get in touch with her people to set her straight. All I know is that if the two of us were drinking side by side at a bar, people would DEFINITELY assume I was younger. And hotter.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I stopped drinking hard liquor years ago (while still young), except, you know, vodka. Nothing else goes with zakuski, culturally speaking, except maybe champagne. But you have to throw it back, Cossack style. And you never do it alone. What’s old about that?
June 24th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Okay, okay, but ONLY under those conditions, and preferably with a young Cossack!
July 5th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Chelsea Handler may not be old, but she looks it. Maybe it’s just my tv. Still, I’m glad to move on from vodka.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Is Vodka Really ODORLESS in the workplace??
I worked with a 50+ tiny guy who REEKED of mint and alcohol in the morning and even stronger after lunch. He acted posh like he thought he was a movie star. He’d go on & on about how the company was so very broken and how much they needed him to fix it.
He’d show up at 9:30, leave at 4pm, take 1.5-2 hour lunches, and show up burping alcohol, mint and tuna. Nutso as it was a bad economy, within the last year, and he was a contractor.
Bottom line, if he was brilliant, I wouldn’t care–but he’d get lost in the work flow, and have me redo work, over & over, stalling the project for months, eventually killing our project.
He’s now unemployed, fudging his resume to have a Carnegie Mellon “degree”, when it was actually a required PowerPoint certification from a company we both worked at.
July 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Vodka, yuck!
Please tell me Champagne isn’t “old” and even if it is I’m still gonna drink it anyway ahahaaaaa
July 13th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I’ve given up trying to remember what is the “in” drink of the moment. I just order what I like, whether that’s a margarita (How’s that for an oldie?) or a cosmo, or a glass of wine.
Actually, when I turned 30 (many, MANY moons ago!) I decided to stop worrying about what other people think of me. Most of the time, they’re concentrated on what sort of impression THEY’RE making, anyway!
July 13th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Sheesh — surprised he didn’t claim ownership of the cocktail as it washed down your esophagus (which is a wholly owned subsidiary of PRS Inc.) You keep keeping on, cause you’re funny!
July 15th, 2009 at 8:01 am
I agree for $14 you should be able to take a picture of it! Hope it tasted good and didn’t give you a headache.
August 29th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Okay, this is really bad. Not only did I not know that the ice-cold citron vodka martini with a twist that I had as a cocktail last night was a no-no (and the bar was full of people drinking martinis), I now have to find out who Chelsea Handler is. Or, maybe I will just accept that I love my martini, and have for years, and that I don’t care who Chelsea Handler is.
August 29th, 2009 at 8:46 am
You’re completely correct, Ellen, nobody needs to know who Chelsea Handler is. And you can still drink your martini — with Bombay Sapphire gin.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:41 am
I suggest Jack and Coke. That’s what my friends in their twenties always seem to get. I dunno.
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