I've been frequenting Coles on 6th because their bartenders know a thing or two about drinks. They make a hell of an Uptown Manhattan, and have great Whiskey Sour glasses.
It's shortly after a recent Coles visit that while inside McKays eating my first of two large dinners late in the evening , I poured a Chimay not into its designed glass but a brandy snifter and was reminded of the time in 2003 I tended bar in a pub in England.
On rare occasions when pub-going British people, known world-wide for only consuming, as the phrase goes, two pints and a packet of crisps, actually ate a meal I served them fish and chips.
Mostly, I served drinks.
I mixed Snakebites sweet in special effervesence-inducing diamond-etched glasses for sour-attitude construction-work-skipping aussie alcoholics and poured lager foamy in hot-to-the-touch fresh-from-the-dishwasher flat-bottom Guinness glasses for mannerless flat-toned alcoholic assholes (this means you, Mush) and served Courvoisier warm in expensive snifters for senile closeted-homosexual pants-pissing alcoholic war vets and made sour-face-inducing Tequilla spicy in disposable plastic shot glasses for obnoxious over-gelled wannabe-tough-guy pratts and splashed intentionally-burnt coffee scalding in paper cups for penny-pinching Rugby enthusiasts who caught the first tube of the day at sunrise to watch World Cup matches live. Great job.
I went on a pub crawl (Julie calls it a Bar Crawl because, as she accurately defends, "they're not all pubs") where among wide-mouth-glass shots downed in expensive-looking trendy Santa Monica cocktail lounges and plastic-cup pints crushed beneath the pier and salt-rimmed margaritas tipped perched above the Promenade, a little bit of interesting trivia came up.
British pubs often stink, a pub-crawler noted as we dodged darts inside just such a place. Not, as I had suspected, because of stale beer staining the carpet, but from the Fish and Chips. It's the vinegar.
Perhaps if those sour drunks sprung for some food, I would've know that.
I lived in London for a bit. The reason the food is bad in general is that 1) they put giants globs of mayo on everything, 2) a sandwich consists of one slice of meat and one slice of cheese...this does not fly for a New Yorker, 3) Meat and pudding should NEVER be in the same sentence let alone combined.
ReplyDelete(Scout says she LOVES the idea of meat and pudding)