Drink 43: The Man in the Bathtub

The Name: The Man in the Bathtub                                                                            

The Bar: Calico Jack's (800 2nd Ave., NYC)

The Story Behind The Name: I think one quality that is universal among small children is that of imagination. And, imaginary friends in particular are a staple of childhood. Whether one was the extroverted child who wanted to keep playing and interacting when no one's around, or whether one was the introverted child who preferred playing by themselves, chances are everyone had an imaginary friend growing up, or knew someone else who had an imaginary friend.

When I was a kid, I didn't have an imaginary friend. But I did have an imaginary acquaintance. His name was Sean Roger and he lived in the faucet of our bathtub.

Growing up in an apartment building, I had a lot of neighbors, and while I was aware of their existence and would recognize them from seeing them in the lobby or in the elevator, I didn't really KNOW them. And I remember being astounded when my parents mentioned that some of our neighbors lived on the other side of our walls. I think that it was from this revelation that I first invented Sean Roger. We never interacted, it was just that in my mind, he was a person who lived in our faucet the way someone else lived on the other side of our walls. He didn't have a personality as far as I can recall, or even an appearance, it was simply the name. The very specific name of Sean Roger that I applied to the imaginary person who I very much insisted lived in our bathtub faucet.

And...that's really all there is to this story. Sean Roger didn't do anything, he was just...there. I think at some point I invented a whole Roger family of Sean's, but I don't remember their names. I just remember Sean Roger.

As I grew up, I eventually realized that this person I invented did NOT exist, and Sean Roger faded from my consciousness. I didn't think about him for years until one day, while on summer break after my freshman year of college, my dad suddenly asked me "What ever happened to Sean Roger?" To which I morbidly replied, "He drowned." I mean, you know what they say, Location, Location, Location. Why the hell would anyone choose to live in a bathtub?

Ordering The Drink: Calico Jack's is a really fun bar, which is perhaps best known for its various happy hour special. Meaning they really put the "happy" in "happy hour," with a number of different specials throughout the week which keep the place's fun environment hopping. But their main happy hour special is that every Friday, they have a great deal where you can purchase a wristband for $5.00 at the door and, as long as you're wearing it, you get $5.00 drinks. It's a really great deal, especially in New York City. Even better, each week, they do a raffle where one person wins a free wristband party, where the winner can invite friends and, if you mention the winner's name at the door, you get your wristband for free. One of these free happy hours happened to be won by my co-worker Sabrina, who was also present when I ordered The Return of Dante, so a couple Fridays ago, we all got lots of cheap drinks. I have to say, I was impressed. The bartending staff seemed to really know what they were doing. This is a place that could just slide by having mediocre margaritas, but all the drinks I had there were solid. For this reason, I decided to play What's That Drink. My co-workers and I conferred with each other and together we selected the name of the drink, as well as which bartender we should request the drink from, settling on a guy named Dan who had proven particularly adept behind the bar. Dan seemed to like the idea of creating a custom drink immediately, although he did want to make sure I knew the drink might not qualify for the $5 deal. I told him I understood and he went about creating the drink.

The Drink:

 Blueberry vodka
Sprite
Shot of raspberry vodka
Ice

Assessment of Drink: I was already impressed just by looking at this drink. Dan had taken a shot glass filled with raspberry vodka, and put it upside down in the bottom of the drink, surrounding it with the mixture of blueberry vodka and sprite. The entire effect was striking, with the bright red shot clearly visible underneath the bright blue. Plus, the ice floating on top was fun (and made the drink look like a bubble bath). Whenever a cocktail has an extra visual element like this, it already makes the drink more memorable, which is of course the reason I make these bizarre drink requests in the first place. Plus, it was interactive. After I tried a sip of the blueberry vodka and sprite on its own, I was instructed to remove the shot glass, which allowed the raspberry vodka to mix into the rest of the drink.

Unfortunately, this definitely made the drink look less appetizing. Who knew blue and red together would make muddy grey?

It might be that I'm easily amused, or it might have been that I'd already had a strong frozen margarita, but I thought this was really fun, and did elevate the experience of having this cocktail.

The cocktail itself was fine. It was exactly what you'd expect from having raspberry vodka, blueberry vodka, and sprite. That is to say that it was on the sweet side. I personally am not a fan of overly sweet drinks, so this isn't a drink that I would typically order, but that didn't mean it was bad. For the type of drink it was, it was well-made and the flavors were well-balanced. If you like sweeter drinks, or anything flavored like blue raspberry, you would have loved The Man in the Bathtub, and as far as sweet drinks go, it was ultimately more refreshing than cloying.

Does It Live Up To The Name: Yes!!! As soon as I saw the drink I knew this was perfect. The raspberry vodka shot clearly represented the man, and the surrounding blueberry vodka and sprite represented the bathtub (with the ice on top completing the illusion). I often consider the "living up to the name" portion of this blog very metaphorically, but here I was given a literal interpretation. It's rare that a drink physically embodies the assigned name so perfectly. It was absolutely one of the most creative and spot-on approaches to a drink name I've seen.

This is almost identical to the first picture I took of the drink, but shows off the floating ice on top, which I thought was a really nice detail to the whole "bathtub" effect.

In fact, I could imagine a whole line of Men in Bathtub drinks, where you can choose which shot you want to have. Although I think the raspberry shot was a great choice because of the bright contrast in colors. Really the only improvement I could think of would be using gin instead of vodka. After all, then you get the extra connotation of bathtub gin. But that idea aside, The Man in the Bathtub is a great example of why I do this blog. Because sometimes I'll get a bartender who really embraces the creativity and spirit of fun that this blog is really about. This was such a cool interactive idea, and certainly made my happy hour at Calico Jack's both happy and memorable.

Drink 42: Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire

The Name: Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire                                                                             

The Bar: Joe's (480 Amsterdam Ave., NYC)

The Story Behind The Name: Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last post. Sorry to the fans of this blog--I'll try to order more weird drinks with more consistency! Although, in reality, the problem isn't that I haven't been ordering weird drinks, it's that I haven't been writing about them. In fact, a month ago, I played What's That Drink and just haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

One of this blog's most avid fans (and one of those waiting most patiently during this two month hiatus) is my friend Christine. Christine has been following What's That Drink since the beginning, and was present when I ordered The Murdered Moose. Christine recently visited New York City and said she was determined to once again appear on this blog. So one night, I met up with Christine, her girlfriend (and my friend) Cheyenne, and her friend (and my new friend) Katie. We decided to do a mini barhop on the Upper West Side, so a What's That Drink cocktail was bound to happen. We just had to figure out what drink to get.

Me and Christine at The Dead Poet

Our answer came while we were in The Dead Poet, where I'd ordered The Lord of Sealand. Among The Dead Poet's many charms is a jukebox with a great song selection. Luckily for us, no one played Tom Jones' "What's New, Pussycat?" But even more luckily, someone did play "Hungry Like the Wolf." The reason this was so lucky was that, on top of just being a great song, Katie had a particular anecdote about it. One night when Katie was particularly drunk, she happened to hear the song and was struck by how good it was. And it was so good that she wanted everyone to know. So long after the song was over she began wandering over to people to inform them that "Hungry Like The Wolf is Fire."

She had a variety of responses to this, with many people agreeing that, yes, that song is "fire," but others simply looking confused and replying, "...okay?" Still, Katie was undeterred by this skepticism. She was so determined to let the world know that "Hungry Like the Wolf is Fire" that she tweeted it at 1:00 in the morning.

  There's something about the wording of the phrase that just makes it particularly funny. For example, using the word "fire" as an adjective for cool. I must admit that I'd never heard this particular turn of phrase before. I've certainly heard the term "on fire," but never simply "fire." Since getting this drink, I've asked people whether they've ever heard someone use "fire" in this context before. Like "That's so fire!!!!" But no one had. Until, completely out of context, I was at work and I heard someone say it. So it appears to be a select term that is very popular with anyone who's four years younger than me. Yet, hearing the phrase, even if you haven't heard it before, you still know what Katie was trying to say. And, I think, that pretty much everyone would agree that she's correct. Hungry Like the Wolf IS fire.

Ordering The Drink: We left The Dead Poet so we could get the drink elsewhere. Partly because I've already ordered a custom drink at The Dead Poet, and partly because there's no shortage of great bars along Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. This is the neighborhood I grew up in, and I can vouch that Amsterdam used to have nothing of note, but has really taken off in the past few years. And there are a ton of great bars lining the avenue starting in the high 70's. One of the better ones is Joe's, which has both good food and good drinks. We had also been there earlier in the evening, and knew that one bartender in particular--a good-natured and jovial guy with a big bushy beard--would probably get really excited by the What's That Drink challenge. As we walked back into Joe's, he saw us and waved.

We didn't sit at the bar, though, we got a table, so after a little while, a waitress came over to take our drink order. As I explained the idea behind ordering a drink based on the name, I included my typical caveat that, if the bartender didn't want to do this, I'd completely understand. "Oh no," our waitress replied, "he'll DEFINITELY want to do this." After I said the name of the drink, she smiled. "I already know what I'd do for this," she said, "but we'll see what he comes up with."

After a little bit, she came back with the drinks, grinning. "He had the same exact idea as I did," she said.

The Drink:

Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire
Angostura Bitters
Sugar
Water

Assessment of Drink: Anyone familiar with cocktails will immediately look at these ingredients and go "Why, that's an Old Fashioned!" And you're right--it IS an Old Fashioned. But it's an Old Fashioned made with cinnamon whiskey. And, frankly, I'm amazed that I've never had a cinnamon whiskey old fashioned before because that's an absolutely brilliant idea. The Old Fashioned has always been one of the most subtle cocktails, and one that really highlights the whiskey, using slight additions like bitters, sugar, and water, to transform the whiskey into a separate mixed drink. And while whiskey purists will always prefer the regular plain Old Fashioned thank you very much, there are now some really good flavored whiskeys in the world that are worth trying, and logically, the way an Old Fashioned works with regular whiskey, it works just as well with flavored whiskeys. It's, at the very least, an intriguing idea.

The one downside to this is that flavored whiskeys--and cinnamon whiskey in particular--does tend to put the flavoring front and center. Jack Daniel's Tennessee Fire is VERY cinnamon, and while I really enjoyed the drink, having the whiskey's flavor intensified by the bitters and sugar means that you taste the flavor even more. I mean, you could smell the cinnamon as soon as the drink was placed before us, and I do think that--although it would have violated the simplicity of an Old Fashioned--the drink as a whole might have benefited from having something else to cut down on the cinnamon flavor. I know that Katie in particular, the one for whom the drink was named, found the cinnamon REALLY overpowering. So, while I definitely liked the drink and would recommend it, my recommendation comes with the caveat to make sure you REALLY like cinnamon whiskey if you want to try and make/order this drink for yourself. Personally, I think that if you want to get a flavored Old Fashioned, a subtler flavor like Jack Daniel's Honey might be the more popular choice.

Does It Live Up To The Name: The thing is that, whether the cinnamon flavor was overpowering or not, this drink matched the name PERFECTLY. The word "Fire" was in the drink, so I would have been disappointed if cinnamon was not front and center. Our friendly bartender at Joe's absolutely nailed it in terms of matching the drink to the name. When I come up with these cocktail names, and try to guess what my bartender will come up with, I typically break the drink name into words. So I was thinking, "What will the bartender do to evoke a Wolf in this drink?" But, stupidly, I didn't think of the obvious route to actually acknowledge the song. At this point, Hungry Like the Wolf is a classic--it's a familiar song that pretty much anyone knows and which has a lot of popular appeal. So taking a well-known cocktail, especially an Old Fashioned, as your starting point is a great way to evoke the spirit and feeling of the song. And then, adding cinnamon whiskey (especially one with the word "Fire" in the name) is a perfect twist to add to acknowledge the addition of fire into the drink name. It was a simple approach to the drink name, but I honestly can't think of any approach that would have been better--this really is the perfect drink to match the name. Duran Duran themselves would have been proud.

Basically what I'm trying to say was that the Hungry Like The Wolf Is Fire is fire. And even a drink I'd consider ordering again. Although perhaps with a bit more sugar or bitters to cut through the fiery cinnamon flavor.