For a limited time only.
Granddaddy of iPhone local apps, Cocktails+ (reviewed here) has a new update with a post to Facebook feature.
They also, through April 12, 2009 have lowered the price to $0.00!
Get this excellent app for free while you still can!

I don’t do a lot of food blogging here, this being a drinks blog and all, but I just saw a really cool product I thought I’d share. (H/T: Legal Insurrection)
My nephew has for about a decade espoused his First Theorem of Food:

Any food will be improved by the addition of bacon.

Yes, it’s now an internet meme, but he was ahead of his time.
I will say that challenges arose among us to his theorem, so he added The Corollary:

Any food that cannot be improved by bacon, will be improved by vanilla ice cream.

Poke a hole in that, I challenge you!
Anyway, here’s the product that is just made for First Theorem foodies:

Squeez Bacon is a Swedish product that is now available here. You can get it from Think Geek.
I haven’t received my bottle yet, but I plan on using it for my daughters’ BLT sandwiches in their lunch bags. This could be a God-send on hungover mornings.
Of course, I have to consider how this might be used in cocktails. If the viscosity if low enough, I’ll use it as a shortcut for cocktails using bacon-infused vodka, or maybe I’ll finally try out a bacon-infused Old Fashioned. If it won’t dissolve easily enough, which I suspect will be the case, I’ll just rim the glass with it and have an earl grey-infused Pegu, or perhaps a simple Manhattan.
EIther way, I’ll post the results when I get to it!

UPDATE: For once, I beat Glen Reynolds to the punch!

If you happen to hit this post as your first visit to the Pegu Blog, Meandering Through Mitchell’s is a series of posts exploring the cocktail offerings of the Cameron Mitchell restaurants in and around Columbus, Ohio. For more on my reasons for profiling the Mitchell’s chain in particular, read the intro to my review of his restaurant, M at Miranova.
The Ocean Club has been my favorite of Cameron’s restaurants for as long as it has been open. This is remarkable, since it has been tinkered with relentlessly, leaving it in many ways unrecognizable from its original form. We’ve been going here long before I shifted my drinking focus from wine to cocktails. When the Ocean Club first opened ten years ago, it was our place to go drink champagne with dinner.
At its nativity, The Ocean Club was a fish house that served good steaks as well, and was decorated in an avant garde style of blue hues, bubbly glass, and wavy lines. Today, Mitchell’s Ocean Club is a steakhouse, with better and more varied seafood than is the norm. (Better seafood, usually, than that which I’ve eaten at Mitchell’s vaunted Fish Market restaurants, a chain he recently sold off for 3.84 potloads of money.) The decor now is the wood paneled look that seems the norm for steakhouses, but with a lighter, friendlier, more open look than many. The most recent change here is the huge wrap-around balcony. This area provides hands down the nicest, most elegant, outdoor dining seating in Columbus. On nice evenings, it can be a long wait to get a seat out there for dinner. This is actually not so bad, as you can wait in the bar, which is among the nicest in town as well, and the subject of this post.
The bar itself is a huge, black granite-topped rectangle. One of the narrow ends is for service staff, but there is abundant seating on the other three sides. There is lots of overflow area around the bar with places to sit or lean when the bar is full. There is a huge grand piano near the entrance, and live music, mostly of the piano man style. They always manage the pretty difficult trick of having the music be loud enough to hear all through the restaurant and out on the balcony, while not being so loud as to be annoying or make conversation difficult in the bar. The bar is always generously staffed, making for very short waits for service, no matter how packed it sometimes gets.
There is not a cozy nor particularly romantic atmosphere in the bar. Instead it is a great place to wait for a table, or meet up with friends, or wait while a spouse is shopping in the surrounding Easton Shopping Center.
And a darned fine place to have a drink.
The wine list here is excellent. I won’t link to the cocktail menu since the online version is out of date as of this writing. The current set of offerings ranges from a classic like the Bombay Sapphire Martini to a blueberry and blackberry smash of some kind. They even garnish a drink or two with a chunk of dry ice. They used to do this more than now. Back in the chrome and wavy glass days, the dry ice was in everything. You’d look down the bar at a horde of different colored drinks, all pouring mist out the top, and it would look a bit like Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine. It was fun, and frankly I miss it a little.
As with all Mitchell’s restaurants, fresh citrus rules the roost. I got the whole we don’t have Rose’s here, just fresh lime and simple syrup lecture. While I don’t know if it is true or not, I get the impression that the bar’s spirits inventory is slightly broader at Mitchell’s Ocean Club than at M. But regardless, the selection still shies away from the seriously exotic. The staff knows the classics, and how to make them correctly (Our bartender Pat easily passed my Sidecar test, for instance). But I doubt a drink like a Corpse Reviver #2 has ever been placed on the granite here. The Angustora only comes out for Old Fashioneds and Champagne Cocktails, not even in Manhattans unless specified, and you won’t get vermouth in your vodka Martini unless you beg.
I decided to try a drink off of the cocktail menu called the Cucumber Gimlet. Essentially, it is nothing but a basic Gimlet with muddled cucumbers. Here’s how Cameron’s corporate bar master decrees the drink should be made:

Cameron’s corporate bar master is wrong. Made this way, you have a sweet mess that utterly destroys any character from the gin, and thus in the drink. You might as well make it with vodka.
Now, here is where you see the value of the well-trained staff at the Ocean Club. I never said a thing about what I thought of the drink. Indeed, I was deep in an interesting conversation, and not looking to fuss. But Pat was paying attention, despite being busy, and knew I was not digging it. He did not have to ask did I like it, he just asked if he could get me something else. I asked him for the recipe, and I blanched at the full ounce of simple in the drink. I asked him to make it again, but with just a quarter as much.
The result is a really damn good cocktail. If you visit the Ocean Club, I recommend the drink, just make sure they back the sugar way off.
Incidentally, they offer the same drink at M (I didn’t try it there), only they make it with Hendrick’s, which would seem to make more sense. I should have, in the interests of journalism, had a second Cucumber Gimlet, specifying the Hendrick’s. But I wanted a Pegu, which Pat absolutely nailed on his first try. At any rate, I’ll get a cucumber the next time I hit the store and try both myself.
As I said, the Ocean Club has been a work in progress for a decade. Apparently Cameron feels that he has finally gotten it right, as he has opened five more, under the slightly different name of Ocean Prime in Detroit, Phoenix, and Florida. The one in Tampa is supposedly especially gorgeous. All seem to be holding up very well, despite being premium restaurants, with premium pricing, in a slowish economy. I suggest you drop in, if you have the Ocean Club or an Ocean Prime near you, and find out why.

Here’s a complete list of the posts so far in my Meandering Through Mitchell’s series:

• The Blood Orange Margarita: A "Meandering Through Mitchell's" Find
• "Meandering Through Mitchell's": Mitchell's Ocean Club
• The Vanilla Bean Old Fashioned: A Meandering Through Mitchell's Find
• The Plasma Mary

I’ve written a number of reviews of cocktail apps on the iPhone, and I’ve got more to cover, but I was especially interested when Jimmy Patrick, one of my fellow elite, chair-borne, cocktail commandos (i.e. cocktail bloggers) gave me a heads up on his new entry to the race, 101 Cocktails.
Jimmy’s position is that too many cocktail compendiums (iPhone, online, and print) get obsessed with the number of recipes they offer, or to be charitable, they crave comprehensiveness. While there is a place for that, I have certainly noticed that my main problem with most apps out there is that a complete database is usually too large to be wieldy. Here’s Jimmy’s thoughts on numbers:

Working in a bar, as a professional bartender, you probably need 50 drink recipes on the fly. When you’re entertaining at home, you probably need to have about ten or twenty “go-to” favorites that you can whip up and impress your guests.

Somewhat arbitrarily (the best numbers are usually arbitrary), Jimmy decided to come up with a list of 101 cocktail recipes everyone needs, and with which anyone could survive on a well-stocked desert island. And he then put said recipes into a handy iPhone App for easy reference. My little desert island analogy falls down here, because while well-stocked desert islands are rare, desert islands with charging stations are damn near non-existent.
First, let’s examine Jimmy’s list…. French 75, Martini, Manhattan, Cosmopolitan, Sidecar…. Ah! Pegu! Yep. It’ll do.
Actually, it’s a fabulous list. There isn’t one essential I could think of that is missing. As I said, Jimmy is a pro and a connoisseur in one package. Armed with this app, you can get what you want from/torture any bartender you like in furtherance of quenching your thirst as you like. The recipes are accompanied by good photography, so 101 Cocktails is pretty to use too.
The conclusion here is that the content is top notch. It won’t help you with obscure stuff, but that is not its plan.
Next, let’s look at the interface. I hope Jimmy does well with this project, so he’ll have an incentive to do a version 2.0. The app is certainly usable, and Jimmy clearly learned from others who came before, so it avoids some of the very annoying problems other apps have. Its mild hiccups should not deter you from buying it. But I’ll list them here in the interests of fairness, and also so I can warn you of a few and tell you how to navigate around them. First off, the default view is by individual recipe. Beautiful, but not the most useful. To get to the list view, you have to click on the button that looks like the iPhone’s default email item button. When you click on it, you can either email the current drink, or go to the list page. It took me a while to figure this out.
In portrait orientation, you can flick from one cocktail to the next, like CoverFlow, or you can shake the phone and get a random drink.
This brings up two things. First, if you drop the phone in your pocket while you work, it’ll activate the random shake function. Grrrr. Second, I had the app for a few days before I noticed that it has a landscape view as well! In portrait, you must tap the i button to bring up the ingredients and instruction popup. In landscape, the info is there full time.
The app lets you rate each drink, and gives you a separate listing of the drinks according to your ratings. I like this better than the usual favorite list function on many apps.
Another thing I found only after searching was that there is a preference panel for the app. Useful stuff there, plus twitterific support, whatever the hell that is. Perhaps Jimmy will chime in in the comments to let us know….
All of these problems are essentially documentation issues. There are no instructions inside the app, and Jimmy’s support page needs much work. Again, no feature would escape discovery with a little fiddling around, but a central compendium to save the effort would be nice. After you crest the learning curve, the app is fast, attractive, and as I said before, has very useful content. I can’t stress that last bit enough.
101 Cocktails is a good app, and a darn good value, even at version 1.0. I suspect it will get even better.
UPDATE: As I read over this post, I’m concerned that I don’t sound as enthusiastic about this app as I meant to. It really is, documentation wartlets and all, one of the most attractive and really useful cocktail apps I’ve seen.

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

• iPhone App From CocktailDB: Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Directories
• iPhone App: Pocket Cocktails
• Pocket Cocktails Update
• iPhone Software Review: Are You Smarter Than a Bartender?
• iPhone App From Cocktail Dreams: Cocktails App
• iPhone App: 101 Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Apps Contest!
• iPhone App: Flip 'N Drink
• iPhone App: Cocktails Made Easy
• iPhone Cocktail App: Cocktails+ is Free!
• The Corporate World Starts Getting In On iPhone Drink Apps
• iPhone App Review: Tiki+
• Alcohol and FaceBook Don't Mix, Without This Emulsifier...
• TabbedOut: A Marvelous App
• Update: Beachbum Berry's Tiki+

One of the posts I always look for and read each morning in my RSS reader is Jacob Grier’s Morning Links. For those of you who don’t know of Jacob, he’s a genuine, free-range Libertarian, as in former Washington Think Tank-type Libertarian. In additions to writing about cocktails and coffee, he has political thoughts available to puzzle, challenge and generally irritate and piss off both Republicans and Democrats alike. He recently moved from D.C. to the Pacific Northwest (further demonstrating his intelligence), but then exposed his Beltway background by changing his blog’s name (but not the number of the website thankfully) to Liquidity Preference. Jacob, why on Earth did you rename your blog to sound like a white paper from the Rand Corporation?
Anyway, among his other virtues, Jacob posts a selection of political, culinary, and downright odd links. They are always interesting and occasionally (as in this morning) thought-provoking. Check his daily post out; it’s like Fark without the unsolicited fingers or Instapundit without the blender-blogging.
Anyway, biography done. Let’s talk about what he linked today that got me thinking: An article in Scientific American about taste in space. The article is about how astronauts find flavors quite bland in microgravity, making them crave hot sauce and shrimp cocktail. Now, given who I am and where I read about this, my thoughts immediately turned to how this will affect the offerings to be served at early versions of Ten-Forward.
Of course for now there is (officially) no drinking booze in space. Which is too bad, as any reader of this blog can tell you, since there will clearly be no real progress toward living in space until we get the details of cocktail hour ironed out. At least the Russians (of course) are making the right noises. It is a sad comment on our political environment, IMHO, that for all the effort and money being spent studying how to get a number of astronauts from here to Mars and back in a confined space without killing each other, there has been virtually no discussion of the simple expedient of a nice Manhattan. Mark my words, when NASA hires Gary Regan and starts sponsoring symposia at Tales of the Cocktail, you’ll know that we are getting serious about successfully going to Mars or colonizing the Moon, and not until.

Mission Specialist Gary Regan (Astro-Mixologist)

Oh, and by the way Gary. Quit kvetching about the metric system. The Administration does not have time for another massively unpopular imposition of change on our chosen lifestyle right now. And NASA in particular needs no more worries on that front. You don’t want to be splattered all over the Martian landscape before you stir up your first Mons Olympus Martini, do you?
Alright, what will we need to do for space drinking?
First off, space missions will go with cocktails, not beer and wine. Yay! But why? Because beer and wine are inefficient uses of space and mass. They also do not last as long or store as well. We will have to sacrifice freshly squeezed juice of course, leaving men like Gabriel Szaszko ineligible for space travel, but is that such a bad thing, really?

Inefficient spaceship design.

I’d hope that we won’t just go with those plastic foil baggies like I showed above. Let’s mix the drinks on board. Space cocktails will be solely for therapeutic purposes after all, and part of the simple, refreshing pleasure of a good cocktail is mixing it, or watching it being crafted for you. Also, one good bartender could replace a whole staff of astro-shrinks. More mass savings!
However, microgravity does present some obvious difficulties with standard drink serving. Getting the drink out of the shaker would be hard, and getting it to stay in a cocktail glass even harder. I think we can all agree that having astronauts floating around the cabin while snorking up globules of Sidecar might produce dangerous levels of silly. And I think we can all imagine the mayhem that would result should you help yourself to some of Buzz Aldrin’s G&T as it floated by….
Fortunately, NASA appears to have some people on staff who have their minds in the right place. Witness the shape of the new spacesuit water container:

But to return to the generally serious nature of this post, astronaut and obvious master mixologist Don Pettit really has invented an open drinking vessel that actually works in microgravity. The following video is seriously worth a look.

Just add a stem or some kind of lanyard to keep your hand from warming the drink, and we have the drinking vessel that will carry man and broad into space. (Note to NASA, dudes and chicks do not good astronauts make.)
And finally what will be the recipe for the Martian Martini? What will we put in our Moonhattans? And what will be the secret ingredient in the someday to be famous Tiki drink, the Tycho Bowl? Well, the article that Jacob linked to start all this wretched silliness suggests that our taste buds are dulled the longer we stay in space. We can expect therefore that more potent, bitter and sour, even spicy flavored cocktails will be the norm. Cross Cosmopolitans, Nutty Irishmen, and Vodka Gimlets off the list.
When the new space craze hits, expect ads with chicks in skintight spacesuits for Angostura Bitters to be as common as Grey Goose ads today.

Astronauts will also be wanting drinks with enhanced sour components. So expect drinks that use lemons and limes to outstrip those with OJ or pineapple juice or sodas. And we should see scientific advances is storing and preserving fresh citrus. But the once exotic Screwdriver will fade further from the public consciousness.
And I’d expect that more flavorful spirits will also surge again to the fore. Sorry, vodka folks. Look to whiskeys and rums, and especially gin to be the choice of the extraterrestrial generation.
So what will be the really popular cocktails in space? Lets see….
(I swear on my father’s grave that I was not going here when I started this post!)
A gin cocktail, with potent sour elements like lime, and front stage featuring of Angustora Bitters…
You know it, baby!

This month’s Mixology Monday, hosted by the fabulous broads at LUPEC Boston, asks a question that is of genuine importance: Given someone who has never had a cocktail before (tragic, I know), what would you offer them as their first? You never get a second chance at a first impression, after all.

Let me guess.
You suggest a Pegu!

No. No I don’t, Ms. Smarty-Pants. And for all you who know me and were waiting for me to suggest the One True Cocktail, don’t be silly. For the gin-virgin cocktail drinker, I absolutely suggest the Pegu as a perfect gateway, but that’s another question.
What’s at stake here? You don’t want to offer something so bland or sweet as to leave them with the impression that cocktails are just another form of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, one you have to mix yourself. You want to give them an idea of the depth and sophistication there is to be had in the cocktail world, thus we’ll discard such offerings as White Russians or Strawberry Daiquiris.
On the other hand, let’s be honest. A lot of the favorite drinks we love around here in the cocktailosphere are a bit… sophisticated for a first time drinker. Just as you wouldn’t take someone to King Lear for their first play, you aren’t going to want to spring a Corpse Reviver #2, a Negroni, an Aviation, or even a Pegu on a neophyte.
Let’s answer three basic questions about what our entry level drug should be like.
I’ll start with the base spirit. I’d stay away from gin or whatever variety of whisk(e)y. These may be the kings of booze, providing the most depth and interest, but they have strong flavors what are all, to one extent or another, acquired tastes. Likewise, I’d avoid any specialty liquors, such as tequila, pisco, cachaça, ouzo, etc. That leaves us with vodka and rum. In fact, the case could be made that the best of all possible introductory cocktails would be either a well-made Cuba Libré, or a similarly executed Screwdriver. But either of those would would be too easy for for a MxMo post, and besides, I’d want someone’s first cocktail to be served in a cocktail glass, not a highball. I’m going to go with vodka because it has the fewest negative connotations (to the non-connoisseur), and because it is the blankest of slates.
The next thing is the personality of the drink. Attitude is the core of cocktails and the cocktail mindset, folks. A first cocktail should be evocative for the drinker. It should be publicly cool, and secretly a little silly. Most of all, the neophyte needs a decent chance of having always wanted one of those. So my advice is to go with a well-known, iconic drink. This eliminates otherwise excellent possibilities like the Moscow Mule.
Lastly, is our hypothetical drinker a man or a woman? This last is obviously not about the drink, but the drinker. And yes, it lets me cheat LUPEC’s question by offering two answers. Sue me. It also gives me a chance to get on my old, familiar hobby horse about Broads versus Chicks. The differences are myriad, but for this post, I’ll focus on broads as women who are more robust in their tastes. A chick given a binary choice will always hew to the option perceived as more feminine. A broad will choose based on her personal taste. There is a similar dichotomy with men, but for once it’s more complex than for women. It’s also less likely to come into play here so I’ll save you the time right now.

Thank you, Dr. Doug.
Where’d you get your degree again?

Shut up. The point is to offer two choices, both vodka-based, both well-known to Americans (at least) of all drinking types, one appealing to the bright and lively, the other to the darkly cool. When made properly, both are darn fine drinks. Neither is terribly complex, but both give a hint of the magic mixology can produce. And both will provide a lesson in the importance of skill and quality ingredients in making cocktails; said lesson will be learned later, the first time your new cocktailian orders one of these at an airport bar….

OK, get on with it.
I’m thirsty.

Oh, very well. The offerings shall be: The Vodka Martini and the Cosmopolitan.
Appeal to the guys, and the brassier of broads, with the old-school James Bond cocktail.

Appeal to the chicks, and your most beta of males, with Carrie’s concoction.

Whichever you make for your neophyte, make the same for yourself. Then, for the second round, make them the same, but make yourself a more advanced product like a Pegu, a Manhattan or even a Pisco Sour. Watch their face as they eye your drink and start to get an idea of the vastly greater variety hereabouts than in the world of Bud versus Guinness….

Well, now!
Our local newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, did an article this weekend on the advance of modern cocktail culture into our fair city. It’s a good read. It even has a nice video piece to accompany it online.
Oh yeah, they quote some cocktail geek named Doug Winship a couple of times in the middle of the article….

Last night, Maggi and I went for the first time to Details Minibar & Lounge in Columbus’s Short North. Details, which just opened in December, is the sister establishment to its next door neighbor Rosendale’s, which I wrote about earlier. So as not to bury the lede, Details is the first real, new-era cocktail lounge to appear in Columbus. With a drink menu consisting of properly made classics, as well as a few interesting originals, and a bottle inventory that warms the heart of folks like me, Details finally provides Columbus, Ohio with a bar where even the most obnoxious, persnickety, nerdish, cocktail snobs on the planet would feel happy to have a drink. And Details, while not a full restaurant, offers eats on a similarly high level.
I’m dancing a little cocktail-geek dance right now. You can’t see it, but it is true.
Hopefully this will be interesting both to readers from Central Ohio, and those in the greater Cocktail Nation. For locals, if you like fine cocktails, your ship has come in and you need to go meet it. For those outside the Greater Central-Buckeye Co-Prosperity Sphere, understand that Columbus is America’s Test Market. We often get trends here later than in the avant-gard, coastal markets, but when those things do take hold here, you can expect to them spreading into mainstream America in short order. New York may be the place where “if you can make there, you can make it anywhere,” but with Columbus, if you can make it there, you can make it everywhere. Craft bartenders, cross your fingers. If Details works here, it likely indicates that there will be an explosion of need for your skills in lots of new markets where housing costs a lot less than San Francisco or Seattle….
I am quite serious when I say that Details is designed and executed to be a top shelf cocktail lounge, in the class of Pegu Club, Velvet Tango Room, or Vessel. Foremost, the cocktail menu (pdf) includes an array of serious cocktailian favorites, such as the Moscow Mule, Pimm’s Cup, Old-Fashioned, Daiquiri and Margarita (this post does not apply at Details), and mama mia, the Aviation. They also have a number of cocktails that the Beverage Manager, Chris Dillman has created that seem well worth the drinking. The wall of bottles offers a breadth of ingredients not found elsewhere in our fair city, with the Aviation-required Creme de Violette, St. Germaine, Maraschino Liqueur, Lillet (Blanc and Rouge) and a host of high-end bourbons and cognacs.
I started out with an Aviation (pictured above, with my stylish hat). When I started writing about cocktails, I quickly realized that knowledge of the Aviation is like the secret handshake of cocktail geeks. The Aviation I had here had a nice firm grip and looked you straight in the eye. I never before bothered with the careful layer of Creme de Violette on the bottom of the glass like an expensive garnish, but it looks just so darn nice, I will from now on. Maggi started with her standard bartender test, the Sidecar (not on the menu). The bartender (Matt, I believe), took the time to find out what exactly she wanted under that name and delivered an excellent result.
For a second drink, I had a Singapore Sling. I had just spent time crafting one of these myself the night before, and unfortunately there was a distinct quality difference. This one was better than mine! I hate it when that happens.
Maggi rounded out her drinks with one of Detail’s original concoctions, a Mojito 183. This is a Mojito modified with the addition of Licor 43 and Green Chartreuse, and a lessening of the mint. The result is a much more complex, more herbaceous drink than its progenitor. I doubt it is for everyone, but if your tastes run that way, it is definitely worth the try.
I’l round out the discussion of the menu, and its appeal to the cocktail snob with a quote from the first item on the menu:

Martini
We are unabashed purists.
Your choice of Gin and a healthy pour of dry vermouth.
On the rocks if you must. Optional Olive or Twist.
Not available in Vodka.
(emphasis mine)

The architecture is very clean and modern, with an open design, metal bar top, and bar stools that are surprisingly comfortable, if perhaps two inches too high. The bar itself isn’t very big, with perhaps twelve seats. There are a couple of tables downstairs by the bar, with more to be found up the prominent, glass-railed stairs, along with some couches in a secluded area in back. The whole look is slightly more sterile than meets my taste, but it is a very attractive, cohesive design that makes this small space seem as big as possible.
If the top-notch cocktails aren’t enough of a draw for you, then let’s discuss the food. Chef Drew Garms came up under some impressive tutors, especially Richard Rosendale, who presides over the mothership restaurant next door. The menu at Details is fairly small, featuring seriously foodie versions of traditional pub food, but no major entrées. We saw Tuna Tar Tar Tacos and Angus Beef Sliders being utterly destroyed by the folks just down the bar from us, and they certainly looked to be worth destroying. We went with a couple of items from the Bar Bites section of the menu: The Smoked Paprika Potato Chips and the Red Hot Pork Rinds.

Pork Rinds?!?
Seriously? Pork Rinds?
Isn’t that kinda redneck, if the joint is as swanky as you say?

Yes, porkrinds are kind of a redneck delicacy. I was raised among rednecks, I know. But as I said, foodie versions of pub food. If you live in Columbus, drive, drive now, as swiftly as you can reasonably get away with, to Details. Order the pork rinds. Enjoy. I’ll wait. By the way, they serve them in little metal baskets that look like deep fryer baskets. They are very cool and a much better choice than the presentation in the picture to the right that I stole from their website.

OK, yeah.
Those are good.

Told you. The chips were great too, but not as yummy as the pork rinds.
And yes, I can’t believe I’m rapturing on about pork rinds either.

One last wonderful feature of Details, one that we couldn’t enjoy this trip but will soon, is the Detailed Experience. On the second floor, there is a second, smaller bar with only six seats, that is used only for the Detailed Experience. There are two available seatings each evening, at 6:00 and 9:00, for two to six people, with reservations twenty-four hours in advance being virtually mandatory. For two hours, you and your party sit at the Minibar and are served a series of ten small plates, none or almost none from the menu. The offerings change constantly, but the price is a constant fifty five dollars. Your chef prepares each dish at the bar while you watch, explaining the methods and taking your questions. As with the cocktails, the theme is attention to detail (Get it? Details?) and the offerings seem to be pretty elaborate. I absolutely love to watch any sort of craftsman show off, and when I get to enjoy the results, so much the better. When I get a chance to try the Detailed Experience, I’ll post a follow up. UPDATE—You can read my review of the Detailed Experience here.
Simply put, Details is a gem. If you live in Columbus, or visit here, drop in and enjoy. And if you are a cocktailian who lives elsewhere, be excited that a place like this is showing up in a city like Columbus.

Cocktails App (as opposed to Cocktails) is an interesting iPhone reference app from the website Cocktail Dreams, a german online cocktail database. Version 2.0 is a recent release that allows anglophones to give it a try.
This app is free, and is actually a local front end to the online database. As such it is a hybrid of the two types of reference apps I’ve played with before, with the strengths and weaknesses of both.
The library is stored remotely and accessed vie the Internet. This means it is updated live, instead of just when the developer chooses to process it through Apple’s App Store. Therefore Cocktails App outstrips the available libraries of both Cocktails and especially pCocktails. It also has a button to show the ten most recently added cocktails in the database.
Since it is a local App, Cocktails App has cool and useful features such as a favorites list that put it ahead of other web app options. Some elements also work faster than a pure web app would.
The search functions are OK, allowing search by ingredient or browse by name, but they are not a live feature, as can be found in pCocktails. In addition to favorites, there is also a link to automatically email a recipe to a friend. There is a place for pictures, though most of the entries do not include one. One cool feature I have not seen before is an ability to browse the database by emotion. You can bring up a list of supposedly appropriate drinks for times such as Anxiety, Lovesickness, Eagerly, and Fired!
This last feature leads to the list of downsides of Cocktails App. First off, it is an originally German app, running a natively German database. The actual entries are apparently translated on the fly, automatically by computer. If you have ever played around with Babelfish or Google Translate, you know what is going to occur from time to time! Second, it is a large, remotely hosted database. All that breadth of resource is balanced by a full dose of all the problems with web app cocktail references. It is slow, and there is a lot of dross. And one of the potentially nice features of this app is that it includes a link to the entry’s webpage (locally displayed, not in Safari proper) and its comments. Unfortunately, most of us don’t speak German, so it more of a tease than a value to have this feature in the US release. And finally, it won’t work (of course) where you don’t have signal.

Over all, it is the best free choice I’ve seen so far. The database is large, and reasonably complete, although it seems tilted a lot to German or European tastes. It does have a Pegu recipe. (not the best one, but it’s there) There are the nice features of a local app as well. It’s worth downloading and checking out, though many people will want something else.

Here’s a list of the other posts here about Apple iPhone software:

• iPhone App From CocktailDB: Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Directories
• iPhone App: Pocket Cocktails
• Pocket Cocktails Update
• iPhone Software Review: Are You Smarter Than a Bartender?
• iPhone App From Cocktail Dreams: Cocktails App
• iPhone App: 101 Cocktails
• iPhone Cocktail Apps Contest!
• iPhone App: Flip 'N Drink
• iPhone App: Cocktails Made Easy
• iPhone Cocktail App: Cocktails+ is Free!
• The Corporate World Starts Getting In On iPhone Drink Apps
• iPhone App Review: Tiki+
• Alcohol and FaceBook Don't Mix, Without This Emulsifier...
• TabbedOut: A Marvelous App
• Update: Beachbum Berry's Tiki+

I read a thought provoking article U.S. News and World Report a few days ago, entitled Will Beer Be the Next Casualty of the Crisis? The author’s essential thrust is that Beer, in particular Craft Beer, is likely to take a severe hit from our economic doldrums. She speculates that a loss in disposable income, government hunger for revenue, a coming ease with nanny state policies, a possible return to Prohibition(?!), and anything else she can come up with are going to doom the Beer (and by Beer, she means the Premium Craft Beer) industry. Probably around Thursday. The reporter’s single source for this interview disguised as a story is Amy Mittelman, author of Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer. I feel a bit sorry for the U.S. News reporter, as a reasonably careful read of the piece finds that Mittleman shoots down most of the points she wants to make. The article is an example of a reporter looking for a story, not finding it, and writing it anyway.
I’m being a bit harsh, of course. But if a reporter wants to write a story to advance a specific theory, she needs to find multiple sources so she can get quotes that better support her thesis. (Back when we had journalism in this country, such work was called a Column, not Reporting, but that’s a rant for another day) To be fair, the writer is prolific, and there are lots of stories of how Soccer Moms will deal with the Coming Depression to be written.
Now that I’ve got my marginally unfair snark off my chest, I think the concerns she brings up in the piece are something we need to consider in the cocktail world as well. To be sure, I am no expert, I just act like one on the Internet. But I do have more than a passing familiarity with business, marketing, politics, and cocktails, and I’d really like to see some discussion about this subject from those among us who have backgrounds that exceed mine, especially in the cocktail business itself. So I’ll dive in first.
I think that there are two areas to consider: Are we likely to see as severe an impact in the high-end spirits arena from the downturn as we have and will in industries like Autos, Consumer Electronics, or (God forbid) Banking? And if there is such a hit, how will it affect those of us who are not in the business, especially those of us who do most of our cocktailing in the comfort of our own Basement Bar?
The first item for discussion applies equally to craft cocktails as to premium beer: What has caused the recent rise in popularity? Mittleman’s answer applies equally as well to both and centers on two important words, Commoditization and Authenticity. Alcohol is an important element in people’s lives, for well or for weal. Giving us a mechanism by which we can feel more personally connected or invested in that element of our lives has genuine economic value to us. If anything, for the home mixologist, this dynamic is even more important.
The next thing to consider is the effect of economic hard times on the affected consumer. On the one hand, times of stress and dread lead us to seek at least some comfort in drink. In other words, will these times actually drive an increase in demand? On the other hand, a really smart dude who gets not nearly enough respect these days (to our peril) notes rather perceptively that when price goes up, demand must be depressed. (In this case, price is a function of share of disposable income.) How inelastic is our demand for alcohol? And could that elasticity first show itself in a return by people to the more commoditized version of their desired product?
I tend to think that these factors will largely balance each other out. Many of us will want to drink a bit more, while many others will have to curtail their consumption, due to thinner wallets and more restricted expense accounts. Many will return to the safe commodity zone of Budweiser and Jack and Coke, while others will seek out the Craft option as a way to connect more fully with their comfort, thus improving its value. The end result of this dynamic balancing act, I suggest, will be just that—a balance. Sales will settle in place at present levels, perhaps a bit lower, and the growth in the craft market will largely stall, but market share will not decline significantly. Barring a complete collapse of Western Civilization, the Spirit World (har!) will be hit by the economic times, as will everyone else, but will suffer far less damage than most.
The last element we ought to consider is the non-economic political forces out there which might impact our industry/hobby. There are first off the direct enemies of Alcohol. These would include for the most part the neo-Prohibitionists, such as MADD as it exists today (As opposed to the MADD of the twentieth century). Frankly, like Mittleman, I am unworried about too much traction here in the near term, though if you scream, It’s for the children! enough, you can kill anything with a thousand cuts.
Of greater concern should be the forces that want to feed on the alcoholic beverage world. The last election has greatly strengthened the hands of these forces. Plaintiffs lawyers see booze as a giant cash cow. They intend to feed upon it in giant chunks, a la the tobacco industry, and in smaller, but still ruinous bits, through personal injury and similar suits against an ever-widening spectrum of people who have anything whatsoever to do with the industry. We don’t outlaw things in this country anymore (sorry, Neo-Prohibitionists), we just make it so hostile an environment that no one will dare provide. When’s the last time you or your kids jumped off a high diving board? The other feeders, the ones that could really quickly throw off the economic balance I described above are the taxers. Government hungers for your money. All politicians want your money, but the ones who are more comfortable taking it are in firm control now. Sin taxes are usually the first place taxers go. Our little corner of the economy may enjoy less elastic demand than most, but as I mentioned above, no demand is truly inelastic.
Let us assume however, that the new masters will be as incompetent as the old ones (our system is designed to ensure this, btw), and they will be unable to muster the strength to truly torpedo things during this crisis. After all, most of the things I see as serious concerns will likely manifest themselves over a much longer term. Worry about your children’s ability to order a Pegu at all, but for the next few years, let’s go with the scenario I outlined above in which your main concern will be only about affording said glass of perfection.
If that happens, it does not mean that there won’t be disruptions. Here is where I think my knowledge is lacking, and I’d love to see some more speculation. Nevertheless, I’ll stick my neck out for some predictions, and you can chop it off where you think appropriate.

• The phrase Ultra Premium is going to soon disappear. No one is going to want it associated with their product. Consumers will see it as a synonym for overpriced. Many of us already did, of course, but in times of plenty, overpriced can be a feature not a bug.
• Many Ultra Premium brands will also disappear. Particularly in Vodka. Premium Vodkas have several things going against them that makes me think the worst fallout will be here. First, it is the most crowded arena. Second, going back to Mittleman’s comments in the the U.S. News article, when shelf space wars take over, there will be lots of casualties among small producers. And third, I think the move away from Vodka to more complex spirits that many cocktail snobs have been predicting forever, seems to genuinely be taking hold at last.
• Growth in new brands will crater. Caution by distributors, and unavailability of financing will make it hard for new brands. But perhaps more dangerous than those is the expense of experimentation. I may still be willing to spend $35 for a bottle of Luxardo, but will I be willing to pop $35 to try a new competitor? Or $35 for a bottle of a new, similar beast based on say, Huckleberries? Some still will, but a small drop in the number of experimenters, and a small drop in the number of experiments that the remaining experimenters are willing to conduct will probably doom any number of startups to either an infant death, or never even getting out of the pitch meeting.
• This last one may be wishful thinking, but I’ll make the case anyway. Successful new bars, and restaurants, will be much less glitzy than the crop of the last ten years. Spending seven figures on furniture and fixtures will simply be untenable for the foreseeable future. Proprietors will have to concentrate on quality of product over sensory seduction. It requires more sustained effort to mix a better drink, or cook a better steak, than it does to hire a really good designer to make your joint look scrumptious at the opening. But it costs a lot less initially, and is more sustainable. Also, consumers will be looking for perceived value. A smart impresario will use that to convince them that all the revenue is going into the glass in front of them, rather than into the drapes and lighting over their heads. I’m not saying that The Velvet Tango Room is the universal business model of the future, I’m just saying places like that, new or established, will likely be a lot more comfortable in the next few years than say, here.

Jeeze, this is a long post. I’ll drop it here, before I lose the last of you. Am I insane? And if I’m not, what should we, as bartenders, bar owners, cocktail writers, and most importantly cocktail drinkers do about all this?