Food & Drink

When I search my memory for a favorite bar, I’m struck by thoughts about bars of legend that I can only fantasize about. My drinking life is a tale of three cities — Chicago, New York and Paris — but since I’ve spent most of my adulthood in New York, it’s hangouts in Manhattan, some long gone, that first come to mind. And establishments where writers and reporters liked to drink hold for me a privileged position. I wish that I could have bought a cocktail in the 1930s for the tragically brilliant novelist Dawn Powell at the now defunct Lafayette Hotel in Greenwich Village, or at the nearby Brevoort Hotel on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street.

One day, Cockburn is sitting on a stool in his favorite watering hole, knocking back effervescent, metal-flavored oat sodas from those iconic blue cans; the next, he’s swept along with rural beer distributors, Nick Adams and fellow "alpha males" in a “complete and total boycott of Anheuser-Busch to restore hot women and masculine horses to their rightful place on our domestic beer cans.” Easy enough, Cockburn tells himself. He’ll pass on the Bud Light in favor of a — gasp! Turns out the tentacles of the AB Corporation are long and sticky. Long before Bud Light deemed Dylan Mulvaney, a trans woman, as representative of its consumers, the parent company was beating the diversity, equity and inclusion drum back in 2021.

The late Christopher Hitchens once lamented that he left London for America because the “piss and vinegar” of the city had been swept away by an antiseptic tide of money. Manhattan, though, still has plenty of both, not only in the subway but also in the form of a series of old-school pubs that have somehow resisted the modern mania for restoring the life out of anything old and authentic. The granddaddy of them all is McSorley’s Old Ale House on East 7th, opened in 1854 and America’s oldest continuously operated bar. The front room of McSorley’s has no chairs or tables. There is sawdust on the floor. The place accepts only cash and has no till. It serves only two kinds of ale (light or dark) and house soda. A sleeve of crackers and a chunk of cheddar are the staple bar food.

There are a few words you need to know when visiting Georgia — gamarjoba for “hello,” madloba for “thank you” — but one word is absolutely crucial, and that is gaumarjos, for “cheers.” The Georgians are serious drinkers, as I recently discovered while visiting a friend in Tbilisi. And when they drink, they toast. And when they toast, they don’t stop toasting. In Georgia, raising a glass is an essential ritual of the supra, their ancient tradition of the feast. The recent discovery of a bronze tamada (“toastmaster”) figurine from 600 bc means it’s older than the development of their written language. As with any ancient ritual, toasting has its own set of rules.

If you dare to host a dinner party, said Brillat-Savarin, you must be prepared to be responsible for your guests’ entire happiness while they are under your roof. It’s not just the victuals you are serving. It’s an entire world. I got that sage bit of advice from the French doctor and food writer Édouard de Pomiane (1875-1964), one of the most engaging writers about the preparation and enjoyment of pain quotidien I know. At least two books by Pomiane have been translated into English, Cooking with Pomiane and French Cooking in Ten Minutes (yes, really). Neither replaces Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking or similar nitty-gritty manuals, but both are atmospheric charmers, books that can be read as well as consulted.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just released draft guidelines concerning the definition of “milk,” saying that producers of alternative milk beverages derived from plants and nuts (non-mammals) can keep calling their products “milk” because, basically, they’ve been doing it for a while and the public likes it that way. The draft guidance explains “that the public already refers to plant-based milk as milk while also acknowledging the plant source it comes from, such as ‘almond milk’ and ‘soy milk,’” according to Fox Business. “Consumers reportedly favor the term ‘milk’ over plant-based ‘drink,’ ‘beverage’ or ‘juice,’ according to internal and third-party focus groups the FDA cited.” Not everyone agrees with the FDA.

There are many different reasons to like a bar. Because it does the best cocktails. Because it is the cheapest around. Or the most expensive. Because it’s a great place to meet people for sex. Because all your mates go there. Because it is ubertrendy. The colorful, ornate, majolica-tiled, lushly colonnaded bar restaurant of La Roca, in Nogales, Mexico, isn’t really any of these things. And it certainly isn’t ultra-convenient: you must cross a border to get there from Nogales, Arizona. Why do this?

It is not often these days that I get to return to the Beaumont, an old inn in the Kentucky Bluegrass first visited half a century ago. The cliché that time and distance make the heart grow fonder has truth in it, as I have relearned this season. The Beaumont has been in the food and lodging business since 1917. It is owned and operated by branches of the Dedman family whose roots reach back to the early days of trans-Appalachian settlement. The original building dates from the 1840s and was once a girls’ finishing school. The young ladies in crinolines are long gone, but not a certain air of gentility. The Beaumont has a worthy watering hole — the Owl’s Nest — refashioned from an old carriage shelter in 2003 when liquor-by-the-drink finally came to Harrodsburg.

During a recent chat with my twin brother, I told him about a wholesome community event I was preparing to attend. Being the evil twin, he joked, “You should bring a flask.” This idea got us talking about just how, when, and where one is supposed to use a flask. Is one supposed to use a flask? My experience has often been that flasks are shady things, carried by alcoholics or sipped from covertly at events that would be intolerable without a numbing agent. Yet I wonder sometimes if any public behavior these days is really off-limits. America’s major cities all reek of weed, a cohort of busy moms recommends micro-dosing psychedelics, it’s socially acceptable to self-identify as a cloud, and people actually vape in public.

Shaker Heights, Ohio This year, Cockburn’s annual call for Christmas party invitations took him all over the country: DC, New York, even to one to “the longest-running libertarian-hosted Christmas party in Ohio.” What type of libertarians were these? he wondered, as visions of a drug-laced hors d'oeuvre platter and laissez-faire lovemaking danced in his head. “The party has spawned one marriage and three children,” Cockburn’s invitation said, confirming his suspicion (and hope) that all libertarians are also libertines. The Ohio party was advertised as “multi-generational,” and Cockburn’s would-be hosts helpfully added, “We managed to kill no one attending during Covid years.

Since I became a Republican, it seems my friends only want to drink at private clubs overlooking Central Park, where men are required to wear jackets and something called “slacks,” and the fur-clad old ladies have hairdos best described as architectural. I’ve never felt comfortable in these places and prefer the company of another old lady, the dowager of downtown and empress of the East Village: Ludwika “Lucy” Mickevicius. When I first started going to Lucy’s, she’d still let you smoke inside, if she liked you, and today the drop ceiling remains stained a hearty beef-stew brown, reminding you of freer, more reckless times.

The last of Mrs. Cockburn’s turkey was scraped into the trash can late on Monday night. As she trudged up the stoop of her Dupont Circle manse, she caught a glimpse of her bedraggled husband through the window. Dimly lit by the glow of their hearth, Cockburn was slumped in his armchair, eyes twitching with discomfort. Both sleeves of his Charles Tyrwhitt shirt were rolled up; an IV drip was affixed to each forearm. The crumpled correspondent shifted in his corduroys as the clear fluids trickled in. Mrs. Cockburn shook her head as she entered the house and headed straight upstairs. “The Ritual” had begun early this year. Cockburn usually wouldn’t kick off his fierce pre-party season hydration regimen until Advent at least.

Nothing has done more damage to the watering hole than Bar Rescue. In each episode, the show’s protagonist swoops into some troubled landmark Toledo bar, guts its history in the name of “open concept,” installs some LED lighting to cut costs, adds some overpriced microbrew, and yells at the backwoods staff — his anger a thin disguise for his McKinsey consultant personality. As a finishing touch, he’ll add a crabcake to the menu. Rescue complete. This reverse-Road House consultant is why every bar in America looks the same: bland, bloodless, stocked with minimalist Ikea furniture, cut off from the past. Don’t let the “unique” seasonal IPA or over-sized Jenga fool you. You are staring at conformity.