Food & Drink

I write a few days after the Big Event in Washington, DC on January 20, 2025. For us deplorables, it was a celebratory occasion. I am told that non-deplorables entertained different feelings that day. Since they had been used to having the run of our capital city, I can understand their sentiments. But, perhaps by some process of selfselection, very few non-deplorables were in evidence at the haunts I visited during my stay. Every hotel, restaurant and event space I stopped off at was full of red caps — yes, those red caps — and the mood was almost giddy with anticipation and glee. It brought to mind a passage from one of my favorite Psalms, number 23: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Only a fool tries to guess exactly what awaits at a French karaoke bar. But on a Saturday night in Avignon, I wasn’t expecting to find a crowd of twentysomething hipsters drinking American-style IPA and singing “Mr. Brightside” and “Friday I’m in Love.” France, in all its stereotypical glory, has always been a wine country. Edward Lear wrote no limericks about a “young man from Saint-Étienne, who liked drinking Old Speckled Hen” but things are changing. France has the most breweries in Europe and beer is now the most bought alcohol in supermarkets, though if you ask a middle-aged Frenchman why young people are embracing beer instead of burgundy, you are met with the most Gallic of shrugs and a “bof... je ne sais pas.” So, why are they doing it?

It was January in Chicago and the forecast was for heavy snow followed by bitter cold — high time, I thought, for a shot of malört, the most undrinkable beverage on earth. Or so I’d always heard — and therein lies a tale I didn’t expect to tell. Chances are you’ve never heard of malört, formally known as Jeppson’s Malört, Carl Jeppson being the Swedish immigrant who invented the liqueur a century ago. However, it’s legendary in Chicago, where it’s commonly described as a rite of passage. That tells you a lot right there. Lest there be any doubt, readers are invited to search for #malortface on X, formerly known as Twitter, or Instagram or Flickr.

Where will conservatives and Donald Trump's disciples spend their non-working hours in DC for the president-elect’s term? The Washingtonian provided a list by Jessica Sidman last week, but by Cockburn’s estimation, it’s not totally over the target. Contenders on Sidman’s list include the Big Board, Cafe Milano, Capital Grille, Dirty Water, RPM Italian, Royal Sands Social Club, Shelly’s Back Room and the Waldorf Astoria — which used to be the Trump Hotel DC but was sold back in 2021. Shelly’s is Cockburn-approved, especially for the cigar smokers. Rudy Giuliani has been spotted in there before. But Cafe Milano, Capital Grille and Dirty Water are not necessarily “hangouts” for conservatives or the MAGA crowd in particular.

Not to live up to Irish stereotypes, but for me, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without booze; and so, for this seasonal column, it’s only fitting that I recommend some perfect yuletide drinks to get you slammed under the Christmas tree. There are two broad bases you can work with for Christmas drinks — creamy ones and those with seasonal spices. You can do both, but these are the two broad playing fields, and just because you don’t like one kind doesn’t mean you won’t like the other. There aren’t a lot of cocktails using cream (the classic or the alcoholic Irish one); the trick is to use a good Irish cream and add it to existing non-alcoholic drinks. Want a nice boozy milkshake? Want a hot chocolate that gets you blitzed? A creamier espresso martini?

It’s 1951 and the Hotel Monteleone burns bright, a gilded island of light and liquor adrift in the New Orleans dark. Inside, the air is thick with the sweet tang of cigar smoke and the murmurs of polished conversation. Over in the Swan Room, the trumpets blare, their brassy notes cutting through the gentle chatter, their absence filled with the lively, gravelly voice of Louis Prima. The crowd sways in rhythm, caught between the pulse of jazz and the flicker of chandelier light. Outside, the French Quarter is still alive.

A new DC bar dedicated to crossing partisan lines, “Political Pattie’s,” has taken the “political” out of its name... though Cockburn will note the removal is “temporary.” Owners Drew Benbow and Sydney Bradford dropped an Instagram post on Tuesday about their name and logo change, as the “representation of the red elephant was hurtful to the community.”  “Political Pattie’s aims to be a fun, inclusive space that pokes fun at politics, not the pain politics often causes,” the post read. The disclaimer and apology (or more accurately, apologia) came after “mean-spirited online backlash.” But here’s the tea: Benbow and Bradford bought out “the Dirty Goose,” an LGBTQ bar.

I once read the back cover of a book with a brilliant premise: a Silicon Valley wage-slave with a dull, lizard-person sort of existence suddenly has the care and feeding of a legacy sourdough starter thrust upon her. The thing promptly takes over her life and she emerges from the grayscale of soulless app-designed routine into the wild drama of an existence ruled by the whims of a yeast-ridden bacterial culture. Some are born to fermentation cultures, others acquire fermentation cultures, and yet others have fermentation cultures thrust upon them. I am among the latter school, a mostly grateful victim of fermentation-culture imposition. (Is this what they mean by Stockholm syndrome?

It was nine on a Monday morning, and whereas my fellow commuters were heading to the office, or their classrooms or a lecture hall, I was on my way to Parcafé in the Dorchester Hotel, right next to London’s bougie shopping district, Mayfair. It’s a place to buy Ferraris and Bugattis and shop at the Row and Goyard and be passed by an endless convoy of black Rolls-Royce SUVs. Waiting for me at the hotel would be a man with a little golden cup, containing a freshly brewed portion of mankind’s favorite black nectar. And his is the best, uncut stuff on the market. The man is Amir Gehl, founder and CEO of Difference Coffee, which sources some of the best, rarest coffee beans in the world.