Drink 3: The Brave Potato

The Name:  The Brave Potato

The Bar: The Dublin House (79^th between Broadway and Amsterdam, NYC)

The Story Behind The Name: This one isn’t really a funny story or inside joke, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a drink with this name.  The significance is that Brave Potato is the name of a theater group I helped found in college. The name comes from a Spanish dish called Patatas Bravas, which translates to, you guessed it, “brave potatoes.”

I won’t go into it too much, but this group means a lot to me. There wasn’t a lot of student theater on campus when I first arrived at college, and I thought this was a real shame. Kenyon has a fantastic theater program (recently named the 12^th best in the country by some poll or another) and a large community of students interested in participating in theater, but there were a limited number of productions in a given year. With so many creative minds, there was no reason that students couldn’t be making their own theater.

Brave Potato eventually attracted a rather steady group of committed members, and by my senior year, was drawing consistent crowds and producing innovative theater on a shoestring budget, including the show that spawned the second drink on this blog—the Evil Rapping Clown. The group became more successful than I could have imagined, and inspired numerous other student groups to appear on campus, so that there is now a vibrant independent theater community on campus. The group and its legacy is one of the things of which I’m most proud. And, my senior year, the group even won the college’s award for Student Organization of the Year!

We got a plaque and everything.

Feel free to check out recordings of some of Brave Potato’s shows on their youtube channel.

Ordering The Drink: The Dublin House is a traditional Irish pub on the Upper West Side which has been around since 1921, and has been owned by the same family for all this time. It’s a nice neighborhood spot with great happy hour deals. For my recent birthday, I met up with some friends there, knowing it was a quiet and relatively spacious bar that actually has room where one can sit for a while on weekday nights. The bar is definitely known for its beer—cheaply priced and well-served Guinness and Smithwicks and the like, but has reliable mixed drinks

The bartender was exactly who you would expect him to be—a rather gruff old man with the type of character you want behind the bar at an Irish Pub in New York. But, it occurred to me that he wasn’t the absolute best candidate for this type of thing. He wasn’t unpleasant by any means, but he seemed less likely to embrace this idea than the younger bartenders I’ve had for the past few drinks. On most days, I would have just happily ordered a Guinness…but it was my birthday, and I wanted to get a special drink. And given how proud I am of this group, I felt that a Brave Potato would be most applicable.

I went up to the bartender and explained that I had an unusual request—that I wanted a drink called a Brave Potato that didn’t exist, but he could put anything in it as long as he thought it would fit the name “Brave Potato.” Now, this bartender at no point rejected the idea or seemed like he didn’t want to do it. But he wasn’t excited about it either. Instead, he just seemed really confused. Below is an imperfect and edited transcription of our discussion.

Miles: So, you can put anything in it that you want. As long as you think the drink would be called the Brave Potato.

Bartender: Okay. A Brave Potato. What’s in it?

Miles: Whatever you want to put in it.

Bartender: Okay. But what’s in the drink?

Miles: That’s up to you. You can put anything you want to put in it.

Bartender: I don’t know that drink though.

Miles: The drink doesn’t exist. It’s just an inside joke that we have [referencing friends, watching curiously from the sidelines] and so we want a drink with that name. But it doesn’t exist, so you can put anything you want in it. It’s up to you.

Bartender: What’s it called?

Miles: A Brave Potato.

Bartender: What’s in it?

Miles: Well…we were all thinking that maybe it would have vodka in it? Because vodka’s made of potatoes, so…

Bartender: So, vodka.

Miles: Yeah, a vodka-based drink.

Bartender: So you just want vodka?

Miles: Well…it would have whatever you want in it. But preferably it wouldn’t just be solid vodka.

Bartender: Would you want soda in it?

Miles: Sure, that would work. But, it’s really up to you.

Bartender: We have, like, orange vodka.

Miles: Yeah, that would probably be a good addition.

Bartender: So, some orange vodka?

Miles: Well, hopefully with other things.

This continued for a while, until the bartender abruptly decided to go make this drink. I flashed my friends a quick thumbs up.

Just some of the many flavored vodkas available at The Dublin House.

It seemed as if our surly bartender was actually getting into it. He was going from one end of the bar to the other, and seemed to be putting a bunch of things into the drink. My apprehension vanished. This guy has been a bartender for years! He knows what he’s doing. This is going to be delicious.

He returned to where I was sitting at the bar with a bright red drink. It was a strong shade of red. Bold. Bold like the theater. Very promising. 

He put the drink down and began to walk away.

“May I ask what’s in it?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said. Referring to the drink he had just made. Upon further pushing, he clarified that he had put different flavors of vodka.

“Vanilla, strawberry, cherry, I dunno.”

And with these words of confidence, I took a sip.

Look at me! I'm taking a sip!

The Drink:

Orange vodka?

Vanilla vodka?

Strawberry vodka?

Cherry vodka?

Maybe more vodka?

Assessment of Drink: I’ve been lucky enough to have found success with the first two drinks for this blog. But I knew that not all the drinks that I would try would be delicious. Look at the picture above. Look at how excited I am for my Brave Potato.

Now, here is a picture of me after I’ve tried it.

The curious and unknown concoction of vodkas was disgustingly sweet, unsurprising considering the ingredients. One of my friends commented that it reminded her of Kool-Aid. This is definitely a good comparison, but I’m going to take it one step further. It wasn’t just Kool-Aid, it was off-brand Kool-Aid. It was like one those fruit punch juice brands that tried to recreate the subpar flavoring of Kool-Aid yet never quite succeeded. If this were sold in stores, it would be under the name Qewl-Ayd.

Also, whenever there’s a kind of disgusting edible liquid, people say that it tastes like cough syrup. Well, this one did not taste like cough syrup. But it tasted like it should have tasted like cough syrup. As in, cough syrup would have complimented it nicely.

After all this, you might be surprised to learn that I was not a fan of the drink.

Does It Live Up To The Name: No. Absolutely not. The honorable Brave Potato deserved better than this. I would never drink this and think it should have been called a Brave Potato. Now, it did have vodka in it. A lot of vodka in it. And that more than accounts for the “potato” part of the name. But the bravery was missing. There was nothing bold in this drink—the flavor was certainly overpowering, but not in a good way. I wanted something assertive, something spicy. Or, if you want to go by name alone, maybe put in some Jagermeister or some Barenjager—something with “jager” in it. We know jager means hunter, so that would be pretty brave. There just were so many possibilities for this drink.

Although, to be fair, it was pretty brave of me to drink it. Maybe that was this bartender’s plan all along.

I should say that, despite the failure of this particular drink, I had a wonderful evening out with some great company. And the other, more standard drinks were all more than adequate. The bartender at The Dublin House is hardly going to be named mixologist of the year, but it’s not like that was his goal. I just think I’ll stick to Guinness the next time I’m there.

And, despite this drink trying to sully the good name of Brave Potato, the group still goes strong.

They have a banner now and everything.