“Everyone who has survived their twenties has a good Jell-O shot story and a bad one,” says Casey Elsass, a recipe developer and the author of the forthcoming cookbook, What Can I Bring? “Now that I’m in my thirties, I want to enjoy my night without feeling like my shot could double as nail polish…
I’ve been on and off with alcohol for the past three years, mainly for health reasons, and partially because I’m not as young as I used to be. But I still say yes to most party invitations and love nothing more than shooting the shit at my neighborhood bar. That means I’ve tried a lot…
Where once bars felt distinctively one thing—a cluttered tiki bar, a low-lit dive, a commit-to-the-bit throwback—walk into any number of trendy new spots and it’ll feel more like a combination of choices united not by a theme, but a vibe. More and more, bar interiors feel personal, combining elements that have been slowly collected over…
What’s your cocktail bar red flag? We posed this question on Threads recently, and the answers quickly poured in. “When they clutch their jiggers with a death grip,” wrote one of our followers. “Unrefrigerated vermouth,” said another. Also commonly cited: building Old-Fashioneds in a mixing glass (as opposed to directly in the glass), store-bought…
At a recent Saturday night at Café Mars, a self-described “unusual Italian restaurant” in Brooklyn, I had a drink that’s stuck with me like an earworm: the Mad World. Devised by Jake Riley, the restaurant’s head bartender, it’s a nonalcoholic combination of Ghia aperitif, carrot juice, lime juice, soda water and a syrup infused with…
It’s impossible to say for certain what the precise elements are that make for a great cocktail. You never really know what mix of ingredients, name and backstory will resonate with people to elevate a drink from just another assemblage of ingredients to something enduringly memorable. Take the Bocce Ball, for instance. It’s just one…
