Food & Drink

On the edge of Glasgow’s West End, the posh bar scene melts away for just a moment at Elderslie Street, where Orwells has sat since the 1980s — though the location has hosted a pub since 1877. To give you an idea of the bars I usually frequent: until moving to Scotland last year, I did not. Bars were not a place I passed time. Bars are expensive. The company is unpredictable, the menus too often full of candy-colored cocktails with “funny” names like “Screaming Orgasm” that taste like anything but. Yes, I know I sound like a killjoy. My drink of choice: a $15 handle of Burnett’s lovingly tipped into a slow-sipped White Claw in the comfort of a friend’s home. You will not find trendy concoctions at Orwells. On my first visit, Eighties hair metal blared from the jukebox.

In the old days (2019), mimosas and Bloody Marys were really the only the socially acceptable forms of alcohol that could cross your lips before 12 p.m. To drink earlier would be a worrying indicator that you’re an alcoholic, or worse, a professional writer.  That benighted era is safely in our rearview.  Of all of the widespread cultural habits that have emerged post-Covid — obsessive hand-washing, a prickling fear of close-talkers, a desire to squeeze every morsel of conviviality possible out of even the dullest social exchanges — by far the best is the wholesale rejection of A.M.-drinks policing. And the biggest winner is the breakfast wine.

On December 5, 1933, exactly ninety years ago, the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, formally lifting the ban on alcoholic beverages that defined the Roaring Twenties. Of course, that wasn’t the first time someone tried to outlaw the world’s most popular drug, but it’s probably the best-known case study where the contrast between intended results and reality reached absurd extremes. And yet, the best part of a century later, the same mistakes haunt us.  Saloons had a reputation as pretty rowdy places, filled with whores, card playing and drunken cowboys. The Anti-Saloon League formed to shutter these dens of sin. The League’s leader, Wayne Wheeler, who spearheaded the movement towards Prohibition, told different parties what they wanted to hear.

Everyone talks about how your twenties are a period of change physically, emotionally and financially; of self-discovery and exploration and excitement. But no one talks about the hangover. Not the metaphorical kind; the head pounding, nauseating kind that greets you in your late twenties. I long for the days when I was twenty-one, when I could easily make fresh bread, go on a hike and write a book the day after clubbing two nights in a row. OK, maybe I didn’t do those things, but I very well could have. Waking up fresh-faced (ish — my skincare regime was non-existent back then) and refreshed after a shower and a coffee, the idea of a hangover was an urban myth and something I’d blissfully had no experience of.

While Republicans make a symbolic point of permitting smoking in the Capitol complex whenever they’re in power, no one’s lungs really seem to have been in it since John Boehner held the speakership. Back rooms in Washington aren’t what they used to be. So it’s nice that the oddly named Morton’s The Steakhouse — which as a Chicago-based chain is now really Morton’s The 65 Domestic and International Steakhouses — is one place where Washington’s journalists and politicians can still enjoy the complex aromas of cigars, steak and corruption. One person whom it’s almost unavoidable to see at Morton’s is the recently deposed chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, SenatorBob Menendez.

The sun is ebbing, casting a wash of orange and gold on a city inching towards autumn. There’s that tinge in the air — the crisp, promising whiff of cooler days. Inside, the curtains dance with the gentle wind as the melodious clash of helmets and cheers from the first weekends of football beckon. This isn’t any evening; it’s a bridge between seasons. It deserves an ample companion; a drink that blends seasons, cultures, flavors with the same seamlessness as summer memories fade into autumn anticipation. Tonight, it’s the Oaxaca old fashioned.  Ah, the old fashioned. The name says it all, doesn't it? It harks back to a time of simplicity, of elegance. Of not making a song and dance about, well, a drink.

I had never given Brooklyn much thought beyond the odd walk over the bridge and down into Dumbo, outmaneuvering the hordes of Instagrammers trying to get that perfect shot of themselves on the cobblestone streets with Manhattan Bridge in the background, perfectly framing the Empire State Building between its nervous legs. What with the tourists and the hipsters it never quite felt like my sort of place, so I happily stayed on the wrong side of the bridge, ignorant of the treasures that were hiding from me.  That all changed on a chilly November evening a couple of years ago when my friend Zack invited me to meet up for drinks at his local, The Long Island Bar, nestled neatly between Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.

The downtown streets of Georgetown, Texas, are a grid of pastel storefronts and Victorian architecture, centering around the domed and columned Williamson County Courthouse (named after the judge known as “Three-Legged Willie”). America’s fastest-growing city looks like a time capsule from the old Southwest. But thirty miles south, Austin — or “Silicon Hills” — is undergoing a tech boom. Microsoft, Musk’s gigafactory and a host of tech startups have unleashed a flood of yuppie commuters into Austin’s surroundings, rapidly transforming not just Georgetown, but what we think of as quintessentially Texan. Rodeos, the Alamo, cowboys and outlaws — will we one day think instead of smartwatches and Bill Gates? I doubt it.

The biggest purveyor of misinformation at the moment isn’t a podcast host or a foreign adversary. It’s a brewery.  Since announcing the release of its flagship Pumpkinhead Ale on August 1, Shipyard Brewing has commenced a cheeky ad campaign declaring that the dog days of summer are actually the perfect time to enjoy a fall beer. As Americans battle oppressive heat and humidity, the Portland, Maine, brewery has flooded its Instagram with photos of people sipping pumpkin ale on boats, and posts boldly declaring “Pumpkinhead Season is HERE!”  It shouldn’t be. Dropping pumpkin beers in the summer is a big mistake, and not because fall beers are inherently bad — quite the contrary.

What’s the best suit? To an American, it’s something from Brooks Brothers. Classical, democratic and made with high quality. To a Brit, it might be something from Henry Herbert or Gieves & Hawkes, a tailor-made garment from Saville Row, cut from perfect navy. But a suit can be just as good when rendered in draped, colorful cloth by the late Edward Sexton, or a hot corset-blazer blend by H&M and Mugler. There is no universal best suit. There’s just the best suit for the man or woman who wears it. And so, I come around to the refined blazer of beverages: the martini. In the pages of our July magazine, Chilton Williamson, Jr. wrote about his effort to “search of the perfect martini.

I was born in Wisconsin and I’ve learned a curious thing traversing it. There appears to be a state law requiring at least one bar at every intersection of its rural roads. I’ve noticed this most often driving at night: there’ll be a neon sign advertising Old Style or Leinenkugel’s hung in the front window of what looks like a farmhouse living room, and several cars nestled up against the house like sucking pigs. There is something homey about a rural bar. The knotty pine, the “first dollar” framed above the cash register, neighbors ironing out local prejudices and asserting the superiority of the Packers despite any evidence — if anyone’s brave enough to produce some.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in.  An old bank, complete with deep underground vaults, is an objectively cool place to build a hotel. I remember the buzz around the Ned’s ambitious opening in London in 2017, hiding a clandestine cocktail bar within the original Midland Bank strongroom.

Cocktails, for all their pleasures, rarely become memes. And yet, a variant of the Negroni did that last year, during the press tour for the Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon. When Olivia Cooke asked her co-star, Emma D’Arcy, what their favorite summer drink is, they replied: “Negroni sbagliato,” before flirtatiously adding, “with Prosecco in it.” Cooke’s response — “Ooh, stunning!” — turned the charming interaction into a viral moment. Bars were subsequently inundated with orders for them. For those unfamiliar, the Negroni is a classic Italian summer cocktail consisting of equal parts of gin (I recommend Bombay Sapphire), Campari and sweet vermouth (preferably Martini & Rossi). A dash of orange aromatic bitters is also a nice touch.

In the historic downtown of York, Pennsylvania, near the courthouse where the Articles of Confederation were drafted and a farmers’ market built in the days of horse-drawn carts, you’ll find a curious building called the National House. Constructed in 1828 as a hotel, its porches and airy galleries recall antebellum New Orleans. In its days as a hotel, it hosted guests like Mark Twain and Martin van Buren. Now it’s the home of my favorite bar. The Hound opened in 2012, in the early days of the craft beer boom. Its thirty rotating taps offer seasonal brews from local favorites like Tröegs and Victory, mixed in with ten-ounce pours of funky sour wheat goses or boozy imperial stouts.