The Aging Bartender

The Florida Stint: Part Seven

Continued from Part Six. My time at B. Merrel’s was limited, temporary. I knew that walking in. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15 an hour. After a month or so, I began looking for better opportunities. After scanning the local newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat, I found something a little closer to my wheelhouse, a…

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  • The Florida Stint: Part Seven

    Continued from Part Six. My time at B. Merrel’s was limited, temporary. I knew that walking in. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15 an hour. After a month or so, I began looking for better opportunities. After scanning the local newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat, I found something a little closer to my wheelhouse, a…

  • The Florida Stint: Part Six

    Continued from Part Five. The wing shack, B. Merrel’s, was run by this guy named Marv, a short, jacked older white guy with a crazy jagged scar across his forehead and a lazy eye. Maybe the two were related, maybe not. After the interview we shook hands and he took me through the kitchen to…

  • The Florida Stint: Part Five

    Continued from Part Four. After a few drunken days with the boys in Maryland, I said my silent goodbyes (they were asleep) and drove to Tallahassee in one big go, about 14 or 15 hours of straight driving. The old gold Golf held true. Route I-95 the whole way until Jacksonville, then a big right…

  • Restaurant Review: Taste of Tehran

    Until I wrote this blog post, I had no idea what Persian meant. I always thought it was a blanket term for anyone from that part of the world. Nope. The word describes the ethnic group of people and their language who come from ancient or modern Iran. That’s all. I drive through this section…

  • The Florida Stint: Part Four

    Continued from Part Three. Yeti emerged from his slumber around noon, disheveled and confused. A mass of man, chin, and fur. “When did you get here?” He said. “You let me in.” “Oh.” The first floor apartment was small and dim. I sat up in the wan light and pushed aside space for my feet.…

  • The Florida Stint: Part Three

    Continued from Part Two. The next blizzard started as soon as I hit Western Massachusetts. This one was a complete whiteout. Big, dry walls of snowflakes opposite from the heavy, wet, slick dump that occurred in Northern Vermont two days previous. The throttle on the old Golf held true and didn’t stick, although it was…

  • New Cocktail: End Zone

    It’s not going on the menu (no seasonal ingredients) but it was approved by the J&L duo last night. Sort of just came to me after getting pounded mercilessly in the well for four hours straight. It was National Cocktail Day yesterday. Not sure what that means. I wanted to call this the widowmaker but…

  • The Florida Stint: Part Two

    Continued from Part One. I woke and went to the mechanic early to get a jump on the day, eager to get some miles behind me. Ah, there she was in the parking lot. My magnificent steed! The little trusty gold five speed VW Golf. A triumph of German engineering from the late eighties. Dull…

  • 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…