As per the name, think of this one as a counterfeit or poor person’s Naked and Famous, the semi-famous cocktail created by the one and only Joaquín Simó down in New York’s Death & Co. back in the day. It uses almost none of the ingredients but still contains the quaffable weirdness of the original. The smoke is toned down and the bubblegum is turned up. I went there once and probably had this but it was so dark in there I could hardly tell what I was drinking. This was 2005 and I went with some friends in the know. Whatever that means. Anyway, the Ranfer made me a Naked and Famous once a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away and it’s been up there as one of my favorites ever since. The biggest problem now with the drink is the great chartreuse shortage we’ve headed into. Yeah, the monks are over it. Green is still sort of easy to find but yellow is going the way of the dodo. Just think, someday the shit will be extinct and we’ll regale the young barbacks and budding bartenders about the days of chartreuse.

Someone (I can’t even remember what they looked like) came in the other day and said their son wanted to be a barback. Oh dear, oh dear. “He’s 16,” they said. I wanted to tell them, “Keep him away from restaurants. Coddle him, try to push him into HVAC maintenance or electrical work. Get him into a vocation, one of those two year tech schools, anything but a damn restaurant.” Ugh.

Unfortunately, I was hardwired for restaurant work. Depression and ADHD have taken me hand in hand toward never being able to work a “regular” white collar type of job where I sit and am organized and am a normal person. Throw a few other big issues in there and we’ve got ourselves a restaurant lifer. Hey, what’s normal anyway? The world has changed. the great American Dream (house, two kids, two cars, one job that pays for your retirement) is unattainable for many of us, especially those who remain in a bizarre, twisted landscape like Los Angeles. The big dream, once promised, once fantasized, has instead shifted toward something else now, what that is I have no clue but I do know living in L.A. is like being with an abusive lover–you know it’s wrong but sometimes it feels so right. I don’t know. I’m just a country boy far removed from the solace of my Green Mountain home where my soul resides. How I ping ponged around from city to city over the last two decades is a beautiful and terrible saga where I’ve explored my own existence and laid myself bare to the four winds at times. It’s made me strong, it’s made me weak. I’ve seen the edge and I’ve been to the mountaintop. I always think of the Prince’s wise words on the secret to life: “To want what you already have.” Yeah, that’s profound. I’m the sort that never sees how good it all is until it’s gone but I’m working on it.

To Live and Die in L.A.

1.5 oz. Tequila

.5 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. Lime Sherbet

.5 oz. Bananum

.5 oz. Strawperol

I love daisy cocktails that use no “actual” syrups. Now that I just said that, I’m looking at the lime sherbet as a syrup. Ok. Ok. Spoke too soon. Well, it could be tweaked in some way. We’ll look at it from another angle next week but until them, this little quaffer is pretty damn good the way it is.