noplasticshowers

The Blue Room is great, as always, even with their new chef. Beyond “solid” and well worth a visit. Charcuterie? Excellent. Hand crafted drinks? Also excellent. Milk punch at Blue Room. Yep.

Also very good was our Saturday night meal at T.W. Food. A relatively new and already popular place, T.W. Food has some hits and some misses in general. Great ambiance and good service with some minor pacing issues. It’s a four out of five.

Now the tragic news. Drink is done. The number one bar in the world (in my book) has been overrun by “swingles.” We went by after dinner to have an 11:30 nightcap and there was a line (?!) of kids. Lines are something we don’t do. Bye bye drink.

I guess you can try a weekday night, but with so many pretend hipsters standing on the stairs, there seems to be little chance that mixology craftsmanship will prevail. Too bad, because it was once a great bar.

Now for the surprise. As of two days ago, the bar at Hotel Marlowe has real drinks. Patrick Pound mixed up a Corpse Reviver #2 tonight. We like this phenomenon. Go figure.

Real drinks at the Hotel Marlowe bar.

And now some unsolicited advice for the Kimpton expedition into mixology.
Get good ice. Ice that is 31 degrees from a quick ice machine melts too fast for shaking a drink and only waters things down.
Procure some Luxardo cherries.
Be cognizant of particular types of liquor in a drink, it makes a HUGE difference.
Get some interesting old glasses from the ’20s.
Always use fresh squeezed fruit. Do not store lemon juice for more than 2 minutes.

On to the drinks at the Hotel Marlowe
Sazerac: switch out the Bulliet Rye for Old Overholt. Do not muddle. Use two glasses when mixing. Try a thick slice of orange peel at the end. (I flame mine.)
Corpse Reviver #2: Switch out Tanqueray (!) for Hendricks. Use fresh lemon juice. Measure measure measure. Do not wing it. 3 drops means 3 drops. Equal parts means exactly equal.
Ditch the Aviation and add a Blue Moon instead
Negroni: Use Plymouth gin instead of Tanqueray (!)

I hope this experiment works like a charm and that the mixology trend spreads throughout the Kimpton hotels. Yay!