Results tagged “cocktails”

   

If you're in the know, you know the headline as the original title of Casablanca. If not, well, there's this report from Victoria, BC, with a supporting cast of ne'er-do-wells and barflies from Seattlite.

         

Tini Bigs had us down to try out some "new" cocktails and appetizer plates and we were all like Aw geez do we hafta?! but we went because we knew you'd want to know all about it. No, we're happy to. For you. Besides, it gives us a chance to report on their new late night happy hour, out on the patio. From 9 to 11 p.m., seven days a week, they have select food and drinks for $5.

We asked Smith what he wished to make, and he thought perhaps something with champagne. Champagne, we asked, do we look like we are in a wedding party. You will like this, Smith promised, and he went away and bruised some sprigs of mint which confused us because we did not want to believe he was making a mojito.

Bitters and cocktail drinkers had a falling out some decades back, but Seattle is one of the cities that is bringing them back in a big way. Last night we were in Oddfellows Cafe, sitting at the bar and sampling their cocktails, when we noticed that, of the eight listed, four have bitters in them. In fact, their version of the Blood and Sand cocktail contains blood orange bitters made on the premises. The Toronto cocktail combines Angostura bitters and Fernet Branca to bracing, salutary effect, but the Oddfellows Elder Fashion, which unites Campari, orange bitters, and elderflower liqueur is not for beginners. Don't say you weren't warned.

Seattlest just got a beautiful 250ml bottle of Kemal Kükrer Nar Ekşisi, or pomegranate sour, in the mail--direct from Antalya, Turkey. We fell in love with this stuff on our recent sojourn to the Mediterranean when it was served to us as a salad dressing, diluted with a mild-tasting oil and poured over greens. Now that we have this entire bottle of sweet, tangy, thick, deeply pomegranatey essence here in Seattle, we're wondering what else we could use it for. Cocktails? Could we bake with it somehow? How could we use this with meat? Any ideas?

    

As we were saying just yesterday, there's a new cafe in town. Oddfellows Cafe. They opened in the teeth of weather in the teens last night, so we thought we owed it to them to trudge down Broadway and take a look at the new digs. It's much more spacious inside than we expected, more like Smith than cozy little Volunteer Park Cafe. The menu was limited, thanks to the effects of snowy, icy streets on deliveries. But the bar was pouring cocktails, and the beef stew had already won some hearts. (Sidebar: since we were promised a "great value" on food, can we discuss the $6 side of French fries? Seems de trop, even with a "special sauce." You know, what with the ongoing "longest recession of the post-war era" and all?)

GAMERS GONE WIRED: sudo apt-get PAX-10!!!!11one1!! The gamer convention of the year is upon us. On Friday, "Girls and Games: The Growing Role of Women in the Game Industry" at 4:30 p.m. caught our eye. On Saturday, "Is Casual Killing Core Games?" at 6 p.m. sounded interesting. Ken Levine of BioShock fame delivers the keynote address on Friday night, and there will be music and LAN parties! Ahhh, we just had a nerdgasm.

Chasing last week's patriotic cocktail (generically in support of the US Olympics team), this week brings a shot for Barack Obama. It comes from longtime restaurant impressario Jackie Roberts of The Pink Door:

If this sounds snarky and needlessly mean-spirited, just blame the Chinese. In any event, the marketing wizards at McCormick & Schmick decreed that there would be cocktails with an Olympics theme, so the "Red White & Blue Martini" came into being.

In the kitchen, Staples and chef-de-cuisine Daniel Newell stick to elegantly presented classics: halibut, scallops, duck breast, lamb loin, braised short ribs, pork chops. But if the devil is in the details, it's also in the small plates. Delicate white asparagus from Walla Walla, asking for nothing more than a simple steaming, is instead poached (barely! barely!) in a broth of salted white wine, and served with an egg foam (classic sabayon), lemon, and fried (why?) capers. Five stalks for $13 (twice the going price for big, fat spears of white asparagus in Europe), you wonder what they're thinking.

Fortunate we are, in Seattle, to have lounges for serious drinkers of cocktails, connoisseurs of the art (as opposed to cocktail lounges for "serious drinkers," another category entirely). The best cocktail bars, the ones that care, cluster downtown, in or close to hotels. ZigZag, for one (a cocktail called the Toronto), Suite 410 (that's their Pisco Sour), Oliver's, Vessel. They're not flashy (Milk & Honey in New York is almost anonymous). They hire experts to run the bar; they quickly develop a devoted following.

Cascadia's new cocktail menu (now that we've dispensed with Big City interlopers) includes a classic called Satan's Whiskers, a combination of gin (high-end Plymouth, ideally), sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, orange juice, Grand Marnier and (very important) orange bitters. All ingredients we're very fond of, so let's go for it.