Seven OC Bartender Archetypes

We live in a world of archetypes and the same applies to the realm of drink-slinging. Plato and his third realm hold true that there are things simply exist even if there is no sensible reason and are separate from the internal world of our own intellectual machinations. The fact of the matter is they […]

Grandma Lola’s Old Fashioned Recipe – Still The Best

It seems the Sazerac and Old Fashioned are the Gamera and Godzilla, respectively, of the cocktail Monster Island, locking horns in a duel for supremacy while Godzuki, the lowly Manhattan, looks on (although it’s on my go to list). There is lively debate about which came first and who reigns as the oldest and classic […]

Frank Panza – Last Of The Great SoCal Bartenders

Waxing sentimental is definitely my default setting and Santa Anita plays to it in spades. It’s not the chandeliers upstairs, the dusting of new snow on the backdrop on the San Gabriels opening day or even the fact I grew up nearby on a street named after Johnny Longden, the jockey who wrecked his horse […]

The Rise of Ryes

“Beer is for women, wine for men and rye is for heroes” – Bismarck Even the utterance of the word “prohibition” is enough to curl me up like a dead spider, dried and contorted with a blank stare and grimace on my face. This chapter in the history of our great country had to be […]