The Aging Bartender

The Florida Stint: Part One

Twenty one years old, no driver’s license, ponytail. Seemed like a good time to leave Vermont and move to Florida. Drive over 1800 miles through a bunch of red states illegally? Yeah. What the hell? Through the haze of time I can conjure up some of the reasons why I did it. One, I hated

Read more

Recent posts
Recent photos

  • The Florida Stint: Part One

    Twenty one years old, no driver’s license, ponytail. Seemed like a good time to leave Vermont and move to Florida. Drive over 1800 miles through a bunch of red states illegally? Yeah. What the hell? Through the haze of time I can conjure up some of the reasons why I did it. One, I hated…

  • Bartending Videos are a Thing

    I came across a restaurant’s cocktail video yesterday on instagram and instantly felt a combination of seething rage, annoyance, and at the pure pomposity of the whole production. A dude in a button up shirt, face obscured, pouring milk punch from a fancy crystal decanter onto an ice sphere into an overly grandiose rocks glass…

  • Restaurant Review: La Vecchia Cucina

    I’m starting to become even more nostalgic as I age. I watched Mr. Mom the other night with the wifey and ached for the old times of no cell phones where you could be middle class, own a house, and have three kids on one person’s salary. Unibrows, brown, boxy sedans, and bad teeth aside,…

  • Irish Cream Is A Beautiful, Necessary Sham

    I know its delicious. But here’s the thing, it contains Irish whiskey, cream, and sugar so how can it not be? But what other malevolent devils swirl around inside the bottle? Maybe some immoral combination of anti-caking agents and suspension polymers to keep it all falsely suspended together as it squats on the shelf? I…

  • Bar Hack: Berry Syrup

    A lot of these guys out here make their berry syrups by cooking them in a pot or putting simple syrup and berries in a vacuum sealed bag and sous viding the whole thing at yada yada temp for yada yada amount of hours. Sorry, no time for that shit. Plus, I’ve got to say…

  • New Cocktail: Child Prodigy

    I once thought I was a child prodigy but I later learned Mozart began composing at five years old. At that age I wandered the woods with my dog, an insane golden retriever named Morgan, and pretended I was a knight, using a long stick as a sword. No genius, but a grade A smart…

  • Bar Hack: Bomb Strawberry Clarified Milk Punch

    Bar Hack: Bomb Strawberry Clarified Milk Punch

    Clarified milk punch is to bartenders what pork fat used to be to cooks. Weak analogy. I’ll think of another. I haven’t had the correct dosage of coffee yet. The boy came in our room and woke us up at 3:00 a.m. Nightmares, who knows what else. A child’s nightmare soon becomes a parent’s nightmare.…

  • In the Shadow of the Prodigal Son

    Our seasonal strawberry cocktail last year, Prodigal Son, was a big hit. The whole point of it was to pump the strawberry flavor up to max decibels. People loved it, it took a metric fuck TON of preparation, but I’ve got to say it was the beginning of a long string of great cocktails that…

  • Time Change Blues

    Apologies, these blogs posts have gone down the toilet this week and occur later in the day because, for some reason, we still change our goddam clocks around twice a year. I don’t know about you, but this season’s time change is murdering me. Maybe it’s the horrible weather (more complaining about that in a…

  • Why Aren’t Cocktails Part of the Conversation?

    Are cocktails as underrated and underappreciated as the great Scottie Pippen? Maybe. Probably. Who knows? For those who aren’t aware, cocktail construction is both the easiest and most difficult part of the culinary experience. Easiest because sometimes all you need is fresh lime juice and half a brain in your head and you can bust…

  • Restaurant Review: Angel Fruits at Douglas Park

    When you’re the parent of a small child in a city you spend a lot of free time in parks. Kids need the outdoors just like dogs. It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, the positive, you end up getting lots of sun. On the other hand, the negative, it gets reeeeeeeal boring following…

  • Restaurant Review: Blu Jam Cafe

    Late post. Busy morning. Ah, the battle of the sexes! What happens on a foggy, post spring-ahead morning after you, your spouse to be, and your mercurial toddler drop your mother off at the airport and want to go eat for breakfast? When one of you craves greasy spoon and the other the West Coast…