Category Archives: Drinks

The Last Word

“This cocktail was introduced around here about thirty years ago by Frank Fogarty, who was very well known in vaudeville. He was called the ‘Dublin Minstrel,’ and was a very fine monologue artist.” So wrote Ted Saucier in 1951 when introducing this drink in Bottoms Up. Saucier credits the drink to the Detroit Athletic Club,… Continue Reading

Taking My Chances

…and that was another exhausting two weeks. Sorry for the online absence, but the day job occasionally gets in the way. But after the deadlines are met and all the projects are wrapped up, I’m ready for a nice, quiet evening exploring the bottom of a cocktail glass. Problem is, I’ve been so preoccupied that… Continue Reading

Sixties and Sunny

Not quite Antigua, but for late March in Seattle, it could have been much worse. On days like these–when I can leave the Gore-Tex at home and stroll down the street in a short-sleeve shirt, looking out at the torn-paper edge of the snowcapped Olympic Range beneath a cloudless sky–summer feels so close that I’m… Continue Reading

A Change in Fortune

Fifty-five years after it earned half of its own chapter in Jack Townsend’s The Bartender’s Book, the Clover Club has been forgotten by all but the most dedicated of students of the mixological arts. Along with its close relative (and topic of the other half of Townsend’s chapter), the Pink Lady, the Clover Club was… Continue Reading

Ixnay on the Een-gray Inks-dray

Every March, around the middle of the month, I feel the need to apologize to Ireland. On the day reserved for honoring the land’s patron saint, it’s become an American tradition to pay an outlandish cover charge to stand in an overcrowded bar, holding plastic cups of green-tinted lager and being jostled all night until… Continue Reading