Umami Mart

My alcohol tolerance is not what it used to be, sadly. The morning after a night of drinking just gets tougher and tougher. Hideko says, “You are no longer young.” WHAT?!?!? To curb this issue, I often order low-alcohol cocktails these days, like Vermouth or Sherry variations. They’re all the rage — the book Art […]

In the universe of consumer products, the spirits category is perhaps the most beset with mysticism, misinformation, and consumer ignorance. And there is no spirit more shrowded in mystery and mysticism than absinthe. Much of the modern misinformation involving spirits is perpetuated by the PR folks pushing their clients’ wares, and often helps boost sales–“ultra-premium” […]

“… just as there is no such thing as a 1/2-good girl there is no such animal as a 1/2-good drink.  A mixed drink is either made correctly out of correct stuff: good; or it’s La Bebida Piojosa (lousy drink). Even a homely gal can, with cunningly-employed paint, powder, patches, rouge-pots, whale-bone and falsies, fool […]

“Slash sat me down at his house and said, You’ve got to clean up your act. You know you’ve gone too far when Slash is saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to get into rehab.” – Charlie Sheen What do you do when you have trouble coming up with a name for a cocktail you’ve created? Well, […]

So the Saints finally won a Super Bowl, and while many of you surely pounded Hurricanes to celebrate, here in the Eastern Seaboard, the weather conditions don’t quite call out for something so tropical.  In other words, there’s a blizzard happening right outside my door.  Of course when it comes to celebrating the storied American […]

Photos by Mike Brandeberry and Kayoko Akabori. ‘Tis true: there lives a kickass distillery named St. George Spirits, just east of San Francisco, right across the Bay Bridge, in a little town that bleeds into Oakland, called Alameda, in California. A group of us went a few weeks ago and experienced it in all its […]

At some point very soon you’ll feel like you’ve filled your noggin with too much nog from all the holiday parties throughout the month. Before you reach the point where the three letter word ‘egg’ begins to conjure four letter word thoughts, I’d like to share with you a few recipes for delicious egg-based relatives […]