Like, cocktail drink, or alcohol and mixer drink? I've never done the latter, but I've certainly asked a bartender what cocktail they'd recommend.
1: The place has specific, uh, signature cocktails, like a Dark 'n' Stormy that's popular. But usually the inquiry I'm on about in the OP is phrased as a version of "help me order?"
I knew the job market for lawyers was tough these days, but this is ridiculous.
Seriously, though, I'm not sure why this is weird. People who are newly of age aren't sure what to order at bars? Shocking!
If there's a big choice, and they want to try new things, but don't want to waste money on something they don't like, it seems sort of sensible to me. (Who wants to go out drinking sensibly though?)
I guess I just assumed people talked to their friends about these things. And it can be kind of annoying if we're busy, but it's fun to make up drinks when it's slow. I don't know, maybe it's not so weird.
Asking their friends would mean confessing their ignorance. You're a stranger, so it's ok.
You should tell everybody they want a Last Word.
I found this article about how (fancy cocktail) bars actually manage "bartender's choice" orders pretty illuminating.
I figure if people don't know what they want, they should get the well-drink bourbon.
Also, their friends are likely to be as ignorant as they are. You're a real live bartender with knowledge.
On the other hand, their friends are very unlikely to be tempted to base a recommendation on whatever is easier to make or overstocked. Not that Stanley would do that, but some bartenders might.
7 doesn't ring true to me at all, because drinking is so profoundly social. Pretty much everyone's first drink is something procured by a more experienced peer, and ISTM that that remains true as drinkers progress - your elder sibling slips you a cheap beer, your first roommate has a stash of vodka, your classmate gets you into a bar with mixer drinks, your TA brings a bottle of wine to a semester-end dinner*, you celebrate your first real job with grownup cocktails, etc.
What would ring familiar to me would be, "Do you have X? No? What do you have that's like X?" But the OP describes something else, and I'm inclined to think it's to do with the whole modern cocktail revival. The Class of 2016 has never had a drink that wasn't prepared by a mixologist using housemade bitters and artisanal spirits. A whisky sour is a pretty easy drink to like/remember/order, but even classic cocktails are opaque, and asking help of the professional before you makes sense.
*these are all college scenarios in part due to the OP
10: When my bartender brother (looking for a job in LA if any of you know bars hiring, I suppose) got to choose the drink of the week where he worked, he chose Bourbon. And people would always ask what was in it and he'd say "bourbon." He was very proud of himself.
I had five years of relatively regular drinking before I drank in a bar. Maybe that's why I never got into cocktails. They're hard to do when the only place you have to store drinks is the trunk of a car.
And the first bars I drank in were in England. They didn't seem to have many mixers at all and spirits were dispensed only by the whole measure.
17: They probably all have a gender.
No gentleman would ever drink a drink with more than one alcoholic component.
I am glad that the cocktail revolution happened, I guess, because it encouraged production of better spirits and now you can get a decent martini, manhattan, or old fashioned in many more places, but I am so fucking ready for it to be over. No every restaurant ever you do not need your own shitty over-fussy gin drink, and nothing you do will ever be as good as a glass of good whiskey, neat.
A gin and tonic is nice on a hot day.
20: I guess you should stay away from the Rusty Nail Appreciation Society.
Drambuie is suspect anyway because of its Jacobite links, and putting it in perfectly good Scotch and then adding ice is like a perfect storm of ungentlemanliness.
If it helps, I always use the cheapest Scotch.
If they're not drinking single malt, they should be drinking Manhattans. The sooner you tell them this the better.
I used to drink those, but started to find them too sweet.
24 spotted pounding away boilermakers?
7 doesn't ring true to me at all, because drinking is so profoundly social. Pretty much everyone's first drink is something procured by a more experienced peer
Probably not true in topless enlightened Europe.
More bitters. Or go to single malt.
drinking is so profoundly social.
Mixed drinks can be social-- but with either business travel or if I don't want to trust/encumber the server with an order of many syllables, simple is much better. GT or a greyhound, much less chance of messing that up.
Moreover, the style of social I like is being with people I like talking to or hanging out with-- I have never said "ooh, what an intriguing cosmotini choice." Possibly I'll talk about which beer a little, but the whole idea of drink as fashion choice doesn't resonate for me.
Pretty much everyone's first drink is something procured by a more experienced peer
Or, at the very least, a landed knight.
Why not a knight who can stay on his horse?
the whole idea of drink as fashion choice doesn't resonate for me.
the whole idea of clothing as fashion choice doesn't resonate for me either.
Bartending on Main is a great path to music stardom.
35. Basically agreed, but for instance pinky rings or a shirt that's an expensive duplicate of a pro sports uniform. Either of those are pretty expressive, even more so than Andie Mcdowell's choice of sweet vermouth on the rocks in Groundhog day.
She walked by my window the other day. I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if, in real life, she drinks single malt. Or a hoppy beer on a hot day.
I've often hallucinated her standing outside my window also.
She lives near here part of the time. People see her in the stores, at a yoga class, that sort of thing. I'm not much of a fan of her work -- although she does wear the hell out of that make up on those commercials -- but her presence is notable.
I have to be over in Bzn a couple times over the summer: will report on any Biel sightings.
The first time I went to Little Branch I thought the bartender's choice thing was the most wonderful and sophisticated thing. I went a few more times and ended up with essentially a daiquiri more than once and found it maybe less dazzling, but the drinks there really were always good.
I still do that. I barely know what any of the hard alcohols are, often not even sweet or sour. So I ask the professional.
The paraprofessional is drinking from a Sterno can.
16-7: Basically an even split, gender-wise.
Either of those are pretty expressive, even more so than Andie Mcdowell's choice of sweet vermouth on the rocks in Groundhog day.
Yes, that was certainly emphasized, but I don't get it. What did that choice of drink express?
I am famous in certain quarters for always ordering the drink with "lady" in the name.
Also I still harbor affection for Andie MacDowell despite the fact that she is a terrible actress because somehow (good directing?) she's really pretty interesting in Sex, Lies & Videotape. The funny thinking about liking her is it sometimes makes people angry.
I am famous in certain quarters for always ordering the drink with "lady" in the name.
Ah, so you're the one who always orders a Crazy Cat Lady.
Reporting from the outer Bolshevik fringe of the cocktail revolution, I'd say that the piece linked in 9 makes a lot of sense, and people who ask for bartender's choice should probably appreciate the system. Sometimes that's the way I ask for a drink, but I never would ask a waiter what food they liked on the menu, because when I was waiting tables, my answer would usually be based on what we needed to get rid of in the kitchen.
46.2 is exactly right.
What did that choice of drink express?
Indeterminate between "I don't drink but will order anyway." and "I like flat soda."
46. She has a nice smile and can convey intimacy to the camera. In those two ways, she reminds me of Mary-Louise Parker. Maybe Hugh Grant is a male equivalent-- limited range, and to the extent that the actor is appealing, that appeal seems personal.
This just proves the the kids these days have no initiative and are sheeplike passive consumers, unlike the go-get-'em budding alcoholics of my day.
Mixed drinks, in general, outside of places that advertise specifically as cocktail bars, isn't a British thing. Beer, wine, or single type of spirit with one mixer. I probably didn't drink an honest to goodness mixed cocktail until I was 25. And I started drinking [occasionally] at 12, and was going to bars regularly at 15.
Cocktails are fun, as a once in a blue moon thing, but the sheer amount of alcohol in inimical to a long drinking session.
I love shitty over fussy gin drinks!
51.2 presents the rarest and most beautiful of things: the chance to call a Scotsman a lightweight. I have had many wonderful and long nights of drinking with only (various) cocktails.
I kind of have that reaction to cocktails -- I'm a thirsty drinker, and so if I'm drinking a sweetly innocent tasting glass of pure liquor, I'll end up sucking it down in twenty seconds and ordering another. Beer, I drink at a more reasonable pace because of volume, straight whiskey is harsh enough tasting that I'll sip it, but something with a nice balance of sweetness and sour, I'll hurt myself on.
54 is right. I can really get into trouble with something like a 9% ABV beer.
Dinner parties with good hosts, too. If my glass of wine is being assiduously refilled through a long evening, you're lucky if I don't vomit on your shoes. (Well, not vomit, I don't. But the drunkest I've been in the last decade was at a lovely dinner at Blanding's place with Jackmormon, Smearcase, and Bave. I managed to put away enough wine that suddenly topping it with a couple of shots of bourbon seemed like a good plan. This culminated in my giving deeply inappropriate and largely incomprehensible relationship advice (I believe, from what I've been able to reconstruct, couched in terms drawn from one of the less successful Wodehouse novels), being unable to remember the end of the evening, and falling asleep in the cab home.
I'm told that my niece hosted a bring-a-bottle Eurovision party last weekend at which as each song was performed, they had to mix a cocktail using drinks of the colors of that country's national flag. I hate to think of the combinations they might have come up with. Curacao and advocaat? Creme de menthe, grenadine, and white rum?
enough wine that suddenly topping it with a couple of shots of bourbon
I've heard of an Irish Car Bomb. And whatever you call Fireball dropped in cider. But bourbon into wine is new by me.
58: I'm pretty sure that my Ireland entry of Douglas Fir Eau de Vie, milk and Aperol would have prevented anyone from making it to the finals.
I wouldn't have put it past me, but no, I just meant drinking the one after the other.
AIPMHASPINP, I once mixed Jack Daniels with a bargain-priced brand of domestic sparkling white wine. I tried, earnestly and from the heart, to convince everybody else to try it because I thought it was great.
One of my alum brothers told me that Holy Cross Champagne was a 50–50 mix of Bud Light and White Zinfandel.
With a splash of grain alcohol, it wouldn't be under strength.
Someone was telling me a joke last night about how Anheuser-Busch makes their beers. The premise was they start with Budweiser, add water: that's Bud Light. More water: that's Busch. And then more water and various terrible things, like say rat vomit: Natty Light. I think the worst beer of all in this not-terribly-funny joke was Natty Ice.
My wife, not newly of age, occasionally asks for drink recommendations. (It's been a while since she actually had a cocktail, but back when she was drinking, that is.) It's partly a social thing at a bar we like because it's a way to make conversation with the bartender, and partly because she's finicky. She rarely likes any drinks that aren't vodka-based and fruity, but doesn't want to get a cosmo every single time she goes to a bar, and will try a non-vodka-based drink occasionally. So being able to ask the bartender for something new to her is nice.
46: quirky but nonthreatening.
66.1: she should try a Last Word.
62: there are some delicious cocktails with bourbon and champagne. Maybe what you had wasn't that, but it wasn't, like, insane.
I don't know. Just talking about it got me drunk enough that I thought I read that Rick Santorum is running for president again.
54 - yep, cocktails are dangerously tasty. Last time I was out drinking cocktails (Raoul's!), knowing they were over 7 quid a go was the main thing keeping me sipping slowly.
65 - I can't see Natty Light without immediately thinking of the natural light of reason, which always makes me want to buy it. So far my reason has prevented me from doing this, though. I hope the aging Descartes scholar at the UMN philosophy department doesn't through a retirement party for everyone, though, because I don't know how I'd resist leaving some in his fridge.
Oh man, we had a night out in London last month that was essentially 2/3rds a bottle of wine each followed by....5? 6? amazing cocktails. The pain the next day......oy.* And we recently had a friend over who is into cocktails, which resulted in my husband making 7 or 10 of them...too bad I had to work the next day!
*Though, I don't think it actually beat the night at a neighbour's of my in-laws, who are the excellent sort of hosts that never let your wine glass go more than 1/2 full......I threw up that night, thankfully not at their's as that would have been terribly embarrassing.
Less than, less than!! I may have already had a Vieux Carre or two.
Sigh, we used to have a fantastic cocktail bar in town, but it closed over a dispute with the landlord so now we don't have any cocktail bars with bartenders who you'd want to ask for dealer's choice from.
So I went to Ikea to get AAA batteries as a pretext for having meatball lunch, and they had these little cordial glasses 6 for $5 and when you're at Ikea things like that seem like a good idea instead of a stupid one, so now I'm scanning the liquor cabinet realizing I don't have a guess about what things are more dense or less dense but damned if I'm not going to make some vile pousse cafe type of thing just to level up with the foofy drinks. "Lady" is no longer enough.
My hero!
This culminated in my giving deeply inappropriate and largely incomprehensible relationship advice (I believe, from what I've been able to reconstruct, couched in terms drawn from one of the less successful Wodehouse novels)
All the good stuff happens at the meetups I can't make.
re: 53
I expect you are probably a slow drinker, then. Like LB, if I was drinking cocktails at the pace I'd like to drink, I'd get through 25-30 units of alcohol in a very short amount of time. That's a bottle of whisky. Unless you've a super-high tolerance, I expect you'd be on the floor, too.
82: this has happened to me, which is why I don't drink cocktails any more. Or indeed spirits, really. They're not session drinks. One whisky, or G&T or something, is fine, but I wouldn't spend an evening in a pub drinking spirits.
Yeah, I've had crippling hangovers from drinking that way. A few cocktails in a whole evening, with a couple of beers interspersed is fine, or maybe a couple of long drinks that don't have too many units of spirits in them.
81: It's probably reproduceable -- next time you're in NY, wait till I've had one too many drinks, and then ask for advice on your love life.
86: Which facts? You going to NYC, or LB having too much to drink? There's plenty of evidence of the second, and the first is largely up to you.
No, on there actually being a love life to ask for advice on.
OT: The Unicameral did override the veto and Nebraska has outlawed the death penalty unless the people who want it back get 10% of registered voters to sign a petition for a referendum. If they do get the signatures, I think the popular vote might put it back.
It doesn't take the signatures of 10% of registered voted just to get something on the ballot. That's the bar you need to clear to vote on overturning the law and preventing it from ever taking effect. To restore the death penalty would be far easier (I think maybe 5%), but then the 10 people currently on death row would not be eligible for execution unless they went ahead and murdered somebody else.
89-90: And now the state lege has done driver's licenses for young undocumented immigrants with a veto-proof majority. I'm starting to suspect the legislators are trolling the governor.
They were the last state to do that. I think the governor was trolling the country.
But the legislators really do face a different environment than the governor when they run for reelection. The governor runs in a partisan election like anywhere else. The legislator is non-partisan so the top two candidates in the primary move ahead. Plus, you can win a seat with as few as 5,000 votes. Personality and the like can cover a lot of that distance.
Speaking of which, the guy who represented me when I was growing up is now saying that he ran Operation Babylift. Which I don't recall anybody mentioning ever before. I mention this because he's also claiming ritual Satanic abuse is a real thing to which he has evidence and because, for reasons I didn't bother to read through in detail, he tried to insert himself into the Sandusky thing.
And he represents the Militia of Montana.
I may do some googling and flag some stuff on his Wikipedia page.
Speaking of which, the guy who represented me when I was growing up
Has somebody got a link for this story, not to make Moby tell it again?
It looks like Nebraska State Sen. Beau McCoy* has already started a FB group to organize a state-wide vote. I'm confused on the difference between an initiative and a referendum.
*No, really, he's really named Beau McCoy
See here. I don't think I've told it before.
98: The difference between proposing a new law and overturning an existing one.
88: That seems like the circumstance under which intrusively inappropriate advice is most necessary. Or at least most intrusively inappropriate, which is just as good.
88: You don't need to have a love life to ask for advice on it.
But seriously, wouldn't "I started Operation Babylift" be the sort of thing you would mention while you were running for office if it were true? Maybe this should go in the other thread?
I know people who were involved in starting Operation Dumbo Drop.
Operation Babydrop wasn't as popular.
ajay, just adopt an attitude of openness and good cheer to everyone around you and then love will find you without your having to do anything special other than just being yourself.
105: Did some movie executives come to their senses and realize that a live-action Dumbo movie might not be a good idea?
Not that I ever tried, but there's no way that could possibly work.
107: there is no way that "adopt an attitude of openness and good cheer to everyone around you" and " just being yourself" can possibly belong in the same sentence.
At least not at levels of alcohol consumption that are compatible with continued employment.
Lurking sullenly in corners and lashing out viciously at anyone who approaches has always worked for me. Not well, mind you, but it's the only thing that's ever worked at all.
Come to think, it's also the only strategy I ever tried.
The strategy has been described by loved ones as the Wounded Bobcat.
115: Most effective in attracting veterinarians.
Mostly either the very reckless, or thick-skinned.
My Bonnie lies o'er in the corner.
My Bonnie lies away from me.
My Bonnie lies o'er in the corner.
Oh, don't let my Bonnie jump out at me.
118: You could combine both approaches to maximize your chances.
Commenter tinder bios, as team-written by other commenters.
107 was an attempt at humor, I hope I don't need to explain.
Here's my big issue: much of adult professional life involves finding the disadvantages of other people's ideas-- advantages too, but there are many more superficially atrractive propositions that don't hold up than buried nuggets. It's a small and usually productive next step to quickly identify flaws of the people proposing the ideas/doing the work. Basically, any I have qualms about joining any club that will have me as a member, so to speak.
Mostly either the very reckless, or thick-skinned.
So, Dumbo?
It's a small and usually productive next step to quickly identify flaws of the people proposing the ideas/doing the work.
So, sexy IRB member?
Operation Babydrop wasn't as popular.
"As God is my witness, I thought babies could fly."