Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages: be advised that tonight and tonight only, a cohort of San Diego bartenders are going mano a mano in the fourth annual Bartender Challenge.
Held each year at El Dorado cocktail lounge, the challenge pits bartenders making drinks against each other in elimination bouts until only one remains, a champion bestowed with $200 in walking around money, the coveted Otis Buffalo Memorial Trophy, and a bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon.
The twist? Each round a new secret ingredient, Iron Chef style, is introduced to the mix. Bartenders mix a drink on the fly using the secret ingredient and an arsenal of bitters, modifiers, juices, garnishes, and whatnot in four minutes.
Come on down; the Bartender Challenge is always a fun time and a chance to meet up with staff from some of the city's great watering holes in one place. I'll be there, taking a rare weeknight break from a handful of book projects while projecting the mien of a sober and stoic judge.
For the first few rounds, anyway. Judging cocktails is thirsty work.
Trevor Easter — West Coast Brand Ambassador for Beefeater/Plymouth Gins
Lindsay Nader — Brand Ambassador for Absolut Spirits
Brooke Arthur — Brand Ambassador for House Spirits Distillery
Levi Walker — Craft spirits manager at Young’s Market Company
Matthew Rowley — Oh, hey, that’s me. Historian and author.
Details
Fourth Annual Bartender Challenge
7pm Tuesday, November 19th 2013
El Dorado Cocktail Lounge
1030 Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101 http://eldoradobar.com
Now that Summer is on us, I’m serving light wines and aperitifs more frequently. A few homemade aperitifs, such as the vin d’orange and Pamper Moose, remain tucked away, still maturing in the dark. Except, of course, when a bottle wants to be broken out. For store-bought versions, we tuck into Aperol, Pimm’s No 1, and Dubonnet. The aromatic and lightly citrusy Lillet is a particular favorite around here; we either drink it chilled or deploy it in stiffer mixes like the Twentieth Century cocktail (see the link to Jason Wilson’s adaptation below). Lately, we’ve been using it in cobblers — something slightly boozy that we can drink in quantity without getting knock-kneed on a worknight.
Fruit cobblers, kin to slumps, grunts, and other baked desserts, are great stuff, but those are for another day. Rather, we’re getting into drinking cobblers here. David A. Embury (1948), writing in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, described them thus:
Like the Fixes and the Daisies, the Cobblers are served with straws in a goblet filled with finely crushed or shaved ice and are decorated with fruit and a sprig or two of mint. They differ from Fixes and Daisies (which are basically Sours) primarily in that the Cobblers contain either no citrus juice at all or, at the most, only one or two dashes. They consist of either a wine or a spirituous liquor combined with either sugar syrup or some sweet liqueur.
Not long ago, I spent part of a lazy afternoon at local bar Polite Provisions, where Jackie Patterson, a brand ambassador for William Grant & Sons, plunked down a bottle of the Sicilian blood orange liqueur, Solerno, for a few rounds of mixed drinks. We go through a lot of different orange liqueurs at the Whiskey Forge and have our favorites for certain drinks. In a cobbler, I particularly like the vaguely raspberry notes that Solerno brings to the game.
Blood Orange Cobbler
.75 oz. Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur
3 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 tsp blood orange marmalade*
Dry shake ingredients and then pour over crushed ice in a julep cup or rocks glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint and sliced fruit such as strawberries and orange wheel.
*If you don’t have blood orange marmalade, use regular Seville orange or even apricot marmalades.
Goes well with:
Writing in the Washington Post, Jason Wilson gives his adaptation of the 1937 classic cocktail, the Twentieth Century. Most nights, I prefer a stiff whiskey or gin cocktail, but when the mercury rises, this is a nice switch.
We also like blood orange marmalade in a sour and in a Satan's Whiskers variant we call Satan's Bloody Whiskers.
Getting a strong drink in San Diego has always been as straightforward as walking into the nearest bar. In a town where many equate strong with good, however, finding well-balanced cocktails still takes some footwork. Fortunately, the odds of tracking down a good mixed drink has shifted in the last eight years since bars such as Lion's Share, El Dorado, Craft & Commerce, Prohibition, and the Grant Grill at the US Grant Hotel have stepped up the game. What we don't do particularly well (except for individual bartenders at certain bars on particular nights) are tiki drinks.
Erick Castro hopes to raise our town's tiki profile a bit with a new tiki series at Polite Provisions, the Normal Heights bar he opened this year with the partners of Consortium Holdings. The second Tuesday of every month, Castro plans to host a Tiki Takedown. Or maybe it's a Tiki Tuesday. He seemed flexible on the name when I dropped by last week. The concept, though, is solid: on that second Tuesday, regular and guest bartenders will riff on classic polynesian-pop cocktails and serve contemporary drinks in the tropical style.
Helping to launch the series, Marcovaldo Dionysos is coming from San Francisco bar Smuggler's Cove next Tuesday, May 14th. Does that name ring a bell? I once asked Marco — to my mortification — for a Guatemalan Handshake. He was kind enough to give me what I wanted rather than what I requested.
Expect plenty of rums, fresh citrus, and lashings of spice. Named after a boat in George R. R. Martin's Games of Thrones series, Castro's Cinnamon Wind uses Jamaican rum and spike of Becherovka, a bitter Czech herbal liqueur with a cinnamon backbone that doesn't get the play it deserves.
Cinnamon Wind
2 oz Appleton Estate V/X
.75 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz Becherovka
.5 oz cinnamon gomme*
Shake with ice ice cubes and pour — ice and all — into tiki mug. Garnish with freshly spanked mint (don't just fluff it; spank it!), then grate a cinnamon stick with a microplane over the whole thing.
*If your week's plans don't cover making cinnamon gomme, try BG Reynold's cinnamon syrup (see below for a link).
Tiki nights at Polite Provisions (4696 30th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92116) run from 7pm-2am on the second Tuesday of every month. The kickoff is next Tuesday, May 14th. If I get out from under a cascade of deadlines, you may see me there. If not, raise one for me. Either way, break out your finest Hawaiian shirts and dresses.
Goes well with:
Tiki mugs. If no tiki mugs are handy, a heavy glass schooner is fine. No schooners, either? Sheesh. Get off the pot. Do as I did: get some from Tiki Farm (maybe the new Onigaw mug styled after a Japanese gargoyle) or Munktiki (I'm a fan of both the Stinkfish and hideously adorable Mermaid mugs).
As a teenager, I ate the wrong thing at a black-tie dinner, went into anaphylactic shock, and nearly died. Probably would have, too, if it weren’t for a medical technician at a nearby table who leapt to action. Fortunate, too, was the setting — Kansas City’s River Club, a swank private club perched on bluffs overlooking the churning Missouri River. Over the years, this or that member has required an emergency dose of oxygen; tanks of the stuff were squirreled away behind the bar for just such times. Thank god for old men in failing health. That night, one of those canisters helped save my life. Although it’s no longer an event that springs to mind often, I’ve kept a relaxed view of my own mortality ever since.
Ein Gartenzwerg aus San Diego
But now and again, memories of that brush with death gurgle to the surface, especially when I pass The Alibi, a San Diego bar known for its cheap drinks and low-key clientele. The Alibi, in other words, is a dive. Along its western side, a long stretch of wall is painted like a chalkboard. Stenciled, column after column, is the phrase “Before I die, I want to ____________.” Chalk is there for anyone who wants to express their hopes, dreams, jokes, and rude comments about mothers. Passersby have noted that they want to learn to surf, own a monkey, move to France, travel to all seven continents, and vote for a candidate they can believe in. It's a reminder that we, too, need to take steps to make us happy. Especially that monkey thing.
The Before I Die project is not indigenous to San Diego. Rather, it is the creation of New Orleans artist Candy Chang who painted a chalkboard wall on an abandoned house in her neighborhood in early 2011. The wall struck a nerve. Similar walls have sprung up around the world — Denmark, Germany, the Philippines, South Africa, Korea, China, Ireland, and across the USA.
As I walked by The Alibi yesterday, an employee washed off the night’s comments. “Every day I wash off the old and make room for the new,” he told me. “On the weekends, sometimes twice a day.” Dougie was dressed as a garden gnome for the job, but his tone was respectful, even reverent. “People write funny stuff, or hopeful, or whatever. Sometimes, it’s heartbreaking. One time, this lady wrote 'Before I die, I want to see my daughter survive cancer.' She told me ‘I know she’s not going to make it, but it makes me feel better to write that.’ I nearly cried.”
Clearing away old dreams, making room new.
He nodded to the first column, now blank from his scrubbing. “Go on. You can be the first.” I declined.
That night in Kansas City when I was certain I was dying gave me clarity I’ve never relinquished. As consciousness faded, I regretted committing various stupid and cruel acts — and not pursuing things I wanted. After reviving, I made amends for my cruelty and started ticking off those missed opportunities. I learned not just how to drink whiskey, but how to make it; learned to shoot guns; published one good book and contributed to a bunch of others; got a fist full of degrees; traveled a lot more; backpacked through Europe (and still return as often as I can); taught myself several languages and software programs (none fluently, but each enough to do what I need); learned how to cure bacon and make sausages; and finally figured out how to fold a contour sheet.
I've achieved other goals both momentous and mundane and will knock out more before I'm gone, but even if I drop dead of a massive heart attack this afternoon, I will die knowing that my friends are genuinely good people, that my finances are in order, and that my family loves me. Everything else is gravy.
Goes well with:
More about Candy Chang’s Before I Die project, including photos and directions for starting a wall in your town.
A visit to The Alibi: 1403 University Avenue, San Diego, CA 92103
"We have salmon, lettuce, simple syrup, beer, key lime cheesecake, a tri-tip, and...erm...butter." Pause. Blink. "Or would you rather go out?" After the usual uncertainty of what to eat on a weekend morning, we headed to Fig Tree Cafe, a local joint with a typical Southern California menu: omelettes, Benedict variations, hash, French toast, burritos and tacos, fresh fruit and salads, plus the sort of sugar-and-spice-lacquered bacon one finds on brunch menus these days. At Fig Tree, it's called Man Candy. Sure. Why not? Bring on the man candy — but that's not why I was there.
Appetizer (n): what you eat before you eat so you'll be more hungry
After that, I'd like three pork chops, a pitcher of orange juice, a five-egg Denver omelette, a bowl of yogurt with honey and granola, a mango and arugula salad (check; make that two), two breakfast burritos, an English muffin with butter and marmalade, one of those crab cakes with avocado slices, some sausage, a chicken sandwich, six shrimp tacos, an order of breakfast sushi, and a slice of meatloaf. Oysters if they're good today. And biscuits. Do you have biscuits?
Oh, and don't forget the man candy. I'll take, like, a pound.
French toast to start. Pfft. Who am I, Diamond Jim Brady?
Grousing aside, breakfast was great.
Fig Tree Cafe
416 University Avenue
San Diego, California
(619) 298-2010 The menu
Goes well with:
While we're on the topic of bacon, sugar, and spices, but certain to make a batch of homemade bacon jam with apple cider. At its most simple use, just spread it on toast. But once you start folding it into macaroni and cheese, potato gratins, waffles, bread dough, and the like...well, then you're onto something quite good indeed. I might just use some in the next batch of bacon dumplings.
Tri tip is a cut we see a lot in California, but less so in other parts of the country. If you get your hands on some, do as I do: grill it.
Diamond Jim Who? James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady was a Gilded Age railroad supply salesmen known for expensive swag and an expansive gut, a contemporary of Mark Twain. David Kamp looks into the truth of his supposed and infamous gluttony for the New York Times.
Late notice, I know, but tonight Seven Grand Whiskey Society in San Diego is hosting a guided tasting of tax stamp bourbons, each bottled more than three decades ago, from the private collection of Chris Uhde. The tasting will be at Seven Grand cocktail bar in North Park. If you're nearby and have an affection for whiskey, you should get in on the action. As remaining stocks of these bourbons are depleted, opportunities like this don't come around much any more. Seven Grand manager Brett Winfield writes that a mere 12 spots remain open for tonight's event.
Winfield explains:
I really couldn't be more excited that I get to offer this tasting to you guys in the Seven Grand Whiskey Society. Chris Uhde of JVS Imports has started a Southern California Whiskey Club focusing on rare and vintage whiskey which I am a part of and can attest to the bad assness of his tastings and whiskey collection. Chris recently contacted me and graciously offered up some of the Whiskey in his private collection for us to taste through. These are not your average whiskeys, each one of these Bourbons, with the exception of a few modern labels for comparison purposes, is a Tax Stamp Bourbon. Tax stamps were employed by the federal government as a way of proving that the taxes had been paid on a whiskey from the 1960's to the early 1980's. So the answer is yes, we will have the pleasure of tasting Bourbons from 1970 to the early 80's. "Holly sh*t" you say, that was my reaction as well. These are bottles that, unless you are very very very lucky you will never get a chance to taste or see again. I have tasted through them and they are truly special Bourbons.
The lineup for tonight's Tax Stamp Bourbon Tasting is:
Ancient 6 yr 1977
Yellowstone 1976
Early Times Current release
Early Times 1980s
Old Crow 1970s
Old Crow Current release
Old Grand Dad 1977
Old Grand Dad Current Release
Old Taylor 1977
Old Taylor 1980s
Winfield continues (and in all caps lets you know just how serious he is):
DUE TO THE RARITY OF THESE WHISKEYS THIS WILL BE A PAY TO ATTEND EVENT. THE COST WILL BE $50 PER PERSON, YOU MAY SIGN UP A GUEST BUT THEY MUST PAY THE $50 FEE AS WELL. IT IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT IF YOU SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT YOU MUST ATTEND, NO CANLELLATIONS!!! IF YOU FAIL TO COME CHRIS WILL LOSE HIS OWN MONEY AS THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED EVENT.
Details:
Monday, March 25th 2013, 8pm
Seven Grand
3054 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92104
Georgia O'Keeffe lemons show up with surprising frequency
In a major grocery store, whether it's Safeway, Ralph's, Tesco, or Albert Heijn, you're apt to find beautiful fruit on offer. Oranges so immaculate and perfectly spherical they could be ornaments. Eureka and Lisbon lemons so hefty, so perfect, that they each could stand as the very definition of "lemon." Down the line: perfect fruits and vegetables. Well, perfect to the eye, anyway. Relatively high prices reflect culling of the oddballs, the defects, the grotesque, the undersized, and the unevenly ripened. Limes for 69¢ each, individual lemons for 89¢.
In a pinch, sure, I'll buy just enough at those prices to eek through whatever citrus shortage drove me to that particular store. But at the rate we burn through fruit — especially citrus for cocktails — I'd be a damn fool paying retail prices for perfectly formed specimens.
Enter the second-tier grocer. You may not know about them in your community, but even many small towns (and I've lived in a few) have markets that serve immigrant communities. I'm not talking about high-end specialty stores that cater to well-heeled world travelers (though those are nice, too). Rather I mean the small stores with ingredients imported from "back home"or made locally in a familiar style that less affluent shoppers nonetheless crave; curry blends, certain cheeses, particular breads, teas, syrups, sugars, sweets, pickles, etc. In Philadelphia, there's the 9th Street Italian market. In San Diego, my go-to place for such things is North Park Produce. The store clearly buys a lot of seconds — those fruit and vegetables that aren't quite up to snuff for display at the major chains, the ones that were culled. These are the fruits I tend to buy for cocktail and cooking.
Limes with a bit of wind blemish, oranges with a blush of green on one side, and lemons that can be, frankly, bizarre are what I'm after. Most of them are actually fine, just undersized. And the prices? Well, they fluctuate, but a single dollar will typically get me 4-5 pounds of oranges (pounds, mind you, not single oranges), 7-10 lemons, or anywhere from 8 to 20 limes. At those prices, we're almost never without the ingredients to crank out any one of hundreds of cocktails.
Of course, if drinkers or eaters will see the fruit as part of serving or prearing it, more seemly specimens may be in order. A big bowl of defects and seconds on the bar is not going to get you top dollar for your cocktails. But a hybrid approach is fine. Serving fresh lemonade from a huge see-though dispenser? Juice the cheap ones, but buy a bag of big perfect beauties to cut in half, ream, and float in the mix.
Customers, after all, do pay a premium for pretty food.
Goes well with:
Bitter oranges. The season is drawing to a close, but I scored a bunch at North Park Produce (3551 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, CA) for $1.39/lb and used most of the batch for making vin d'orange. The rest is going into a cake later today.
You want a whiskey dinner? Here's a whiskey dinner: Drink some Pappy Van Winkle, tuck into a dry-aged ribeye, and then, if you feel like it (and who wouldn't?), freshen up that Pappy with a finger or two more. Go to bed.
But that's just me.
I was interviewed recently for an article in the San Diego Union Tribune and asked what I thought about the trend of whiskey dinners. Oy vey, it's a trend now. What I didn't know what time of the interview was that two such dinners were in the works, either of which I would happily attend.
But I didn't have delicate words about the trend of pairing spirits with meals.
“Pairing spirits and wine with food is bogus,” Rowley claims. “It seems contrived (and) so subjective to personal tastes. Do you honestly believe you have the same palate of the chef or sommelier?”
This comes off as a touch more arrogant than I intended. In fact, I didn't mean to sound arrogant at all; I was shooting for a commonsense approach to drinking with meals, one that eschewed rigid pairings of wine, beer, or spirits with specific foods and only those foods. The quote above should more properly read:
Do you honestly believe you have the same palate as the chef, the sommelier, or the guy next to you?
This goes back to something I said before: listen to what the experts say — after all, presumably they have become experts through a great deal of experience — but follow your own gut. If your absolute favorite thing in the world to drink is Southern Comfort, then what do you care if it's appeal isn't universal? So what if experts advise champagne or vodka with caviar when what you want is an IPA? You run the risk of looking like a rube and you really should try the champagne or vodka, but if beer makes you happy with little salted fish eggs, so be it.
A more thoughtful approach to the Pappy Van Winkle dinner I proposed above, one that would give you greater bang for the buck, is to invite four or five friends over for dinner with instructions that everyone bring one unopened bottle of whiskey. What? You thought that because you're hosting, you don't have to bring a bottle? Nice try. Preferably, all the whiskeys are of the same general type, so you've got a clutch of bourbons, or ryes, single malts, or even white whiskeys so you can compare. No need to drink it all. Everyone takes home one bottle at the end of the night. Maybe each bottle goes home with the diner who brought it, maybe with someone else. This way, you and your friends taste a variety of spirits, learn about personal preferences, and maybe settle on some heretofore unknown favorites. Set a price limit ($20, $30, $100, whatever your budget allows) so nobody feels slighted or outgunned.
And, a nod to those who do insist on certain pairings: Something really interesting happens with cured meats and Japanese whiskeys sampled sequentially. We'll save that for later.
Home cooks and caterers know any number of tricks to sidestepping grocery crowds on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. They may, for instance, make sure all the staples are stocked well before the week of gluttony. They might get their goods delivered. Or they'll shop early in the morning while shelves are freshly stocked. But my favorite, no-fail method to get in and out of a market in the shortest time possible around Thanksgiving is less obvious.
Shop where people don't celebrate Thanksgiving.
What the French toast? Who doesn't celebrate Turkey Day? That's downright anti-American...
Well, no. Not hardly.
In my rounds of San Diego food shopping, I hit several markets regularly that serve immigrant communities: Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, North African, Polish, German, Korean, Middle Eastern, and more. Turns out, around here, anyway, that recent immigrants simply haven't quite gotten the hang of Thanksgiving yet. Especially if the regular clientele's native language isn't English, German, or some other European tongue, the fourth Thursday of November is these markets is just...Thursday.
And what better time than a weekday to slip into a store, grab a few things you need, and get on your way quickly? Parking is no problem and crowds are practically non-existent. Produce and spices in particular can be very cheap. Who knows? You might be inspired to make something you hadn't considered before.
I've already got everything we need for tomorrow. There will be punch, pie, and a huge pot of short rib chili. Not traditional, but, then, I've never been a stickler for tradition.
Caveat: don't rely on this scheme at Christmastime. Even non-Christians come out in force to shop and eat for that one.
As a freelancer, it's important for me to wrest as much value from the things around me as possible. In that vein, I keep a number of "yard work" shirts. They have frayed collars, bleach stains, little rips and tears — flaws that make them unsuitable for wearing to client meetings, but just right while raking leaves, trimming hedges, painting, etc. Old jeans serve the same purpose. The truth is, though, that I haven't had a yard in fifteen years.
That's not thrifty; that's hoarding.
But not this week. This week, I'm culling possessions ruthlessly.
We're in the midst of closing on a nearly 100-year old Craftsman home just off Balboa Park in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. I've already weeded the clothes. Today, I start pulling books I no longer use and boxing the library in earnest. Before the week is out, I'll turn that gimlet eye on the offsite storage unit.
But during the entire time, we're shifting how we use the liquor library. When we drink at home, we usually decide what we feel like, then simply gather bottles and start mixing. With several hundred open bottles at home, nearly any cocktail is possible, except for the most outlandish concoctions of modern molecular cocktology (or whatever it's called). The kind of drinking has to go on hold for now. Until we're settled in this place, the simple new rule for any bottle of spirits is:
Kill the open bottles.
We'll start with those holding just a few ounces of booze and then move on to more full bottles. I know we won't be able to drink it all, even with the help of friends, but I'm not moving frayed, torn old shirts — and I'll be damned if I'm moving heavy glass bottles with next to nothing in them.
Goes well with:
My Culinary Library: What Good Does It Do? Once you find yourself with a few thousand books about food and drink, you've got to ask yourself: What's the point? Here's what I came up with.
This weekend, I stopped by Pigment, a neighborhood store specializing in...well, green hipness, perhaps. I drop in about once a month to paw through birthday cards, books, and design-heavy preciousness. Sometimes I buy things, sometimes not.
There are art tomes aplenty, a selection of cookbooks for urban homesteader and DIY kitchen crowds (though, oddly, not even one DIY distilling book), whiskey rocks, thick felt drink coasters, letter press greeting cards, cool kids' toys, garden seedlings, ceramics, heirloom produce and flower seeds from Baker Creek, odd hand towels, and loads of eco-globes and wall-mounted terrariums.
Lots of knickknackery I may want, but nothing I truly need. In other words, it's fantastic place to find gifts for someone else.
This Sunday, a set of ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped liked stylized bones caught my eye. With two salt cellars and a workhorse of an old pepper mill at home, I have no use for something like this, but the set of shakers (made by California designer Chris Stiles) called to the mischievous meat eater in me. I may just have to reconsider the salt cellars and slide back over there before the week is out.
Hang on, though. Now that I...yeah, now that I think about it, I may just need a cinnamon shaker for those tiki punches we make around here... Pigment 3827 30th St
San Diego, CA 92104
(619) 501-6318
Mon-Sat 11-7, Sun 11-5
Stiles in Clay salt and pepper shakers: $32 for the set.
Goes well with:
Should you find yourself with a batch of actual bones, I suggest you roast them and feast on them.
And if you're in San Diego, check out The Cookbook Store's going out of business sale. Word is, it'll all be gone before Christmas.
When I was a kid, one of the best things about having been born in August was that I never had to go to school on my birthday. These days, I have something else entirely that captures my attention at the tail end of the summer: Tiki Oasis.
Every August, as they have since 2006, tikiphiles gather in San Diego for a four-day extravaganza of Polynesian Pop madness. Rum, obviously, plays into the long weekend, but I will say this about a tiki crowd: no other group of drinkers is as open, friendly, and welcoming.
According to the official history,
Originally conceived as a fundraiser to support the rehabilitation of the Palm Springs Caliente tropics Motel, Tiki Oasis outgrew its original 88 room location and Southern California-centric following and in 2006 moved to its current location in San Diego where the event sells out a 400 room hotel and draws over 2500 attendees from all over the world.
The theme this year is South of the Border. From 18-21 August, revelers will lounge around the pool, attend educational sessions, buy and sell tropical-themed merchandise, and enjoy a musical lineup that explores the Latin roots of exotica music, a cornerstone of tiki culture. I'll be busy with birthday shenanigans during Tiki Oasis, but some of them may just have to shift over to the hotel. After all, it's about three miles from my house — how could I pass up the chance to spend time with such a fun crowd?
Goes well with:
The Tiki Oasis website has all the official details, schedules, musical lineups, and more. Check it out here.
Finally, be sure to check out my piece on Salon.com about last year's anniversary punch made by San Francisco barman Martin Cate. Recipe — and enormous fireball — included.
It's been so goddamned hot this week. Friends in other parts of the country regularly beset with summer scorchers have no sympathy.
"How hot?" they ask. "Seventy-seven degrees? Eighty? Poor you, living in paradise all year. You can't take a little heat."
Yeah, they're cloudy. Know what else they are? Cold.
To an extent, they're right. San Diego just doesn't get more than, say, nicely warm most of the year. But when the mercury spikes, we're not used to it. Even locals like me who've come from sultry — even swampy — places and know the soul-sucking power of truly hot days and nights have grown accustomed to the temperate year-round pleasantness of it all.
I only remind friends who expect unbearable heat in the summer and whose houses are built to deal with it: most San Diego homes seem not to have air conditioners. Us? We have a window unit that sits in storage 10 months out the year. The two months it's installed, we turn it on maybe a dozen times.
We're due to set a record this year. That contraption is on every night now. When I'm not sleeping directly under its cool airplane engine gusts, I'm keeping the heat at bay with uncharacteristic shorts, a nearly unheard-of and ungentlemanly bare chest, and ice. Big chunks of ice.
Rather than fuss with fancy silicone ice cube trays that still wouldn't yield enough ice, I simply filled two large bread loaf pans with filtered water and froze them. When I need a cube or three, I break the thick ice logs into rough blocks about 3" to a side with a stainless steel surgical hammer. In they go, into a sawed-off spring water bottle I now use as an iced tea glass. Top off with cold tea from the fridge and — for a while, anyway — stave off the worst of the San Diego sweats.
It's good practice for New Orleans.
Meanwhile, I leave you with a short, short clip based on H. P. Lovecraft's 1926 story Cool Air. I'd even take on Dr. Muñoz's ailment if it meant I could have continuous, blessed cool air.
San Diegans are fortunate that so many good breweries call this place home. We have Stone Brewing, Lost Abbey, AleSmith, Ballast Point, and more. Jay Porter, the godfather of 30th Street, wants to add one more.
30th Street is a stretch of road in North Park, a neighborhood that borders Balboa Park and is home to many Craftsman homes from the 1920's and 30's — it is, incidentally, my neighborhood. In the five years I've lived in San Diego, the street has gone through a renaissance that's seen coffee shops, restaurants, and pubs open. The place has become a real draw and Jay Porter is part of the reason.
Porter is the moving force behind the San Diego restaurant the Linkery which he founded in 2005 as well as the year-old El Take It Easy. As local beer aficionados know, the Linkery has been serving great beers almost from the get-go as well as special beer dinners with West Coast brewers.
As our changing economy makes so many of us rethink business models, Porter writes that he's mulling over the idea of turning over the Linkery's space to a brewery:
The passion that brought me into the business in the first place was urban development — I wanted to help transform our old streetcar neighborhoods along 30th Street back into the lively, pedestrian-based places they were conceived as. Now, I think we in North Park are a bit heavy on the restaurant/entertainment side (which makes me really happy compared to 2004, definitely) and light on offices, workplaces, retail stores, and, most importantly, places that make things. I’d really like to help our neighborhood put our culture of craftsmanship front and center. And a great place for us to start is, naturally, beer.
Specifically, I’ve recently become semi-obsessed with the idea of the Linkery transforming into a brewpub. “Brewpub” isn’t really the word, I should say either a brewery with an excellent restaurant or an excellent restaurant that brews its own beer. I picture the space on the corner of 30th Street and North Park Way, with the open-air vibe and the beautiful city landscape, as a brewery/restaurant and it makes me think the neighborhood would be even more awesome than it already is.
I love this idea. Doesn't San Diego have enough breweries? No. Nor do we have enough distilleries. The building, unfortunately, is not set up to run a still — but making gallons upon gallons of great local beer? Hell yes. I encourage anyone serious about the idea of opening a brewery in San Diego to track down Porter at the Linkery.
The Linkery
3794 30th St
(at North Park Way in North Park)
San Diego CA USA
619 255 8778
Photo above from Assemble Magazine. Original here.
It is a lie that nothing tastes as good as thin feels, but consider this: I blew the ass out of my jeans this week.
When we moved to San Diego in 2006, I had a tan line and weighed 86 kilos. Five years later, the tan is gone and I tip the scales at 104 kilos. For those more accustomed to pounds and ounces, that rounds out to around two and a half new ounces each week for the last 5 years.
Cringed when I saw this printed in the local paper
The result? 230 pounds of Rowley.
Whether you think in grams or pounds, there’s no denying: I’ve grown obese.
As an adult, I’ve never been particularly concerned about my actual weight. For better or worse, I’ve always been able to define my own space in a crowd. Standing 6’ tall with size 12 shoes and broad shoulders, I can pull off 210 muscled pounds and feel confident enough to peel off a shirt while working in the yard. But let that muscle atrophy and the fat balloon? It’s no wonder my pants couldn’t take the strain.
Since childhood, I’ve wavered between husky, thick, muscled, and, occasionally, flat-out fat. My father, on seeing me for the first time in a year, recently remarked, “Looks like you’re not missing any meals.” It’s true. I’d tapered off going to the gym in 2009 and, sometime in the last year, just stopped altogether. I did not, however, stop eating like someone who worked out regularly.
In addition, work has kept me increasingly tethered to computers — and chairs. With the onset of a sedentary life, the tan faded. My waistline inched up. That San Diego is extremely casual and few meetings call for suits or ties let me easily overlook the fact that several of my suit jackets no longer close and my old shirts won’t button at the neck.
Drinking hasn’t helped. Unless it’s for work, I don’t drink alcohol during workdays. But the fact is, I write about and for distilleries and their products. Sampling spirits and cocktails at distilleries and bars is what I do. Even on an off night at home, my preference for tiki drinks — pumped with fruit juices and syrups of passion fruit, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, almonds, pomegranates, and more exotic tastes — means that I consume an enormous quantity of calories in cocktails alone. Lately, I've reverted to my old habit of after-dinner whiskey. Just whiskey.
I am tired of being fat; of snoring at night because the flesh of my neck now interferes with normal breathing; of getting winded after running up stairs; of rotating through the same four pants because only they fit; of catching despondent looks from my family who clearly worry about my health and whether I’m going to be around in five years, much less 20 or 30.
So. Spring cleaning, physical and mental.
With a deep and resigned sigh, I cleared the fridge of most of the syrups, poured them down the drain, and dropped the bottles into the recycling bin. No more homemade raspberry, black pepper, marshmallow, or chocolate syrups. Threw out my beautiful golden schmaltz and the blessed bacon fat. Tossed the homemade ice creams and 86’d the frozen coffee cake.
Because the intense California sun can cause irreparable skin damage, I got a skin cancer screening this morning (all clear) and renewed my membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Tuned up my bike. Shaved off my beard (although skinny guys can have — and look great in — beards, it’s far too common for us fat bastards to hide our spreading jowls behind fur).
There are very few things that give me such unbridled pleasure as good food in good company and I dread — absolutely dread — the cooking I’ll be doing in 2011. But I do want to be around to see the end of the year. And of 2012. And of every year after for as long as I can.
Say hello if you see me at the gym. But please don’t laugh if I blow the ass out of my shorts; I’m working on it.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has launched a new weekly feature in which local food and drinks types — some professional, some avocational — opine about the area's food scene. When I moved here years ago from Philadelphia, I would have found the concept laughable. Philly, after all, was such a food town that heated arguments regularly arose in which locals championed the best cheese steak, pork sandwich, cheese shop, butcher, kielbasa, brewery, etc, while disparaging their opponents' clearly delusional choices. Threats of violence were used and people's absent mothers brought into it.
Mr. Rowley and the Foster Bros would like a word with you.
Compared to that vibrant, pervasive food scene, I thought San Diego has almost none. It turns out that there is a deep appreciation for food and drink here: San Diegans, on the whole, are just not as argumentative as Philadelphians.
We have fantastic Mexican cookery. Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai are all here in a respectable showing. I found my first local moonshine still within two days of moving in. Some of the local produce stands up to the very best I've had on any continent. You want feta? I know a place that sells a dozen varieties. Same place also sells dry tea leaves out of a metal trash can for under $5 a pound. I grew up in Kansas City and am a bit of a beef snob, but a place in La Jolla taught me that San Diegans can source, age, and cook very good steaks indeed.
Yes, San Diego has a completely respectable food scene; it just takes a little more work to suss out very good eats in this town than it does in, say, New York, Montreal, New Orleans, or Philadelphia. So when Keli Dailey of the U-T asked me to be one of their Superdiners, I said sure.
I don't for a moment think of myself as a "super" diner — that's the U-T name, not mine — but I'm happy to jump in, provide some historical context, and talk about where I've been chowing down. Keep an eye out Thursdays.
Goes well with:
An introduction to the others in our group, including Noble Experiment bartender Anthony Schmidt (who makes one of the very best classic mai tais in town); Ricardo Heredia, executive chef at Alchemy Restaurant; and Charles Kaufman, whose bakery Bread & Cie is my first choice for great breads — well, when I'm not baking myself, that is.
Meet the Superdiners, Dailey's introductory piece in which we're asked about our choices for great local, but very small, restaurants. I chose Mama Testa, a taco joint near my old house. See what the others say here.
Thanks to Nelvin Cepeda of the Union Tribune for the photo above. I'm as squinty-eyed as ever, but he did a good job of capturing that 1970's b-list samurai look I was going for.
Last week, Rocky Yeh — bartender at Seattle's shuttered Vessel and no slouch in the consumable vice department — emailed asking if I'd like to barback on screen. He and coworker Jim Romdall are traveling down the West Coast to throw down the barback gauntlet wherever they alight to local liquor types. The resulting videos will be posted on the Small Screen Network.
Now, I'll put my mug on camera here and there: for news crews, documentaries, and various broadcast and academic hoo-haws. In fact, if you look closely at the movie In Her Shoes, you'll see me in an uncredited role as a cheesemonger. That shoot was a lot of standing around, bullshitting with Toni Collette and Brooke Smith in between takes, and not doing anything particularly taxing.
Jim & Rocky dispatch a pig
Rocky would have me compete with actual bartenders to see how long I could keep up. That'd be like shooting fish out of a barrel — with me as the fish. So, while I politely declined, I did like the idea of catching up with the boys while they're in town. Next Sunday, February 20th, they'll be at El Dorado in San Diego. Look closely and you may just see me as in an uncredited role as the whiskey drinker.
Dan Aykroyd is holding my skull in his hands. A genuine smile of surprise seems to play across the actor’s face. I admit that he’s not the first to cradle that heavy orb. His touch, though, is more gentle than that of the craftsman who had taken a saw to it a few days earlier. Right through the forehead he had cut it, a freehand slice that took the top clean off.
Finished mug
Of course, it’s not my own actual head the Ghostbusters star is holding: it’s his. Or, rather, it’s one of his brand. He was in town this weekend signing skull-shaped bottles of Crystal Head, his 80-proof Canadian vodka. The bottles are shaped like human skulls and are so solid you could bludgeon opponents with one in a bar fight. Unlike those who were snapping up bottles from the store's stock, I’d brought my own, slightly altered by a local company that does such things.
I was expecting a crowd. I was not expecting a crowd of hundreds queued up outside a San Diego grocery store, waiting for a chance to plunk down $45 (it was on sale) for a bottle. The line stretches further past a Crystal Head RV than I can make out. When I ask him about its popularity, Aykroyd says that Crystal Head had recently produced its millionth bottle. That’s a lot of glass skulls knocking around the planet.
A matronly woman buys eight. Aykroyd signs them all and poses for pictures. A younger man asks him to sign one for his brother’s upcoming 21st birthday. Done. The former Saturday Night Live comedian is all smiles and charm, working his way patiently through the line while support staff break sweats to open cases, maintain displays, and keep order. I don’t think to ask how many bottles are on hand. Hundreds, surely. A thousand? Possibly.
On the table at BottleHood
But I don’t see any others like mine. Earlier that week, I’d taken an empty Crystal Head bottle to Steve Cherry, co-founder of the San Diego company BottleHood. Cherry’s firm cuts glass bottles and fashions them into drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, candy dishes, candleholders, and even jewelry. He’s a regular at my neighborhood farmers’ market. I’d given him empty bottles before and wanted to see what he could do with one of Aykroyd’s.
His crew turned it into one of my favorite new tiki mugs.
Of the hundreds of brands of cut BottleHood sells — the jelly jars made from Dublin Dr. Pepper bottles, the Patron candy dishes, the drinking glasses of Mountain Valley water — Crystal Head is one Cherry can’t keep in stock. You want an 18-oz Crystal Head drinking vessel? You have to bring him the bottle.
Unless Aykroyd pulls up in that RV with a skid of empties.
Goes well with:
BottleHood shows up every week at San Diego markets, so we locals are fortunate enough to browse the rotating offerings. but if you're nowhere near, check out their website. They ship.
