Recently Nick and I were in the gritty West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, after a long, pork-ridden meal at The Publican , where we fed on cracklins, rillettes, belly, shoulder, and all manner of sausages. We slipped out of the restaurant happy and stuffed into the long fluorescent shadows, in search of a good bar to aid all the oncoming digesting to be done.
We ended up at Matchbox ...
Over the past year or so, Nick and I have developed a kind of unhealthy obsession with cocktails -- some could argue literally. We've quietly stocked our cabinets with liquers, liquors, bitters; our fridge doors are weighed down with vermouths (yes, they should be refrigerated ) and simple syrups; a regular supply of rye whiskey, bourbon and gin comes and goes, mixed with a recurring stoc...
It's a tale of the old and the new. Of the high and the low. It's Wild Turkey and Maker's Mark , two bourbons I love, but couldn't be more different from each other. The Turkey is a high rye bourbon made to grip your taste buds and warm your insides, while smooth and seductive Maker's Mark is the gentleman's choice, somewhat conservative and much more expensive. Feeling guilty th...
I took a little break from food this past weekend, turning my back on all the pieces of meat curing in my stairwell (I’ll get to those later in the week), and set off for the rolling hills of Kentucky to sip the best bourbon I could. I’d been blabbering on and on to my brother-in-law about the stuff for well over six months now and it was about time to actually see where it all came from...
My drink of the summer so far has been the margarita, a fact that may leave most of you thinking, “so what?” And normally that's fine--nothing is that impressive about a cut-rate tequila mixed with a big bottle of margarita mix that’s dumped in a salt crusted glass the size of a punch bowl. But I’ve been messing with the holy trinity of lime, tequila and triple sec, thanks to one l...
Feeling a little bit under the weather and a bit perturbed with my job, I returned home last night needing some kind of a cure. Like hot chocolate made by your mother, I needed a home remedy with exactly zero medicinal value, which would warm me up and send me straight to bed. I didn't have any chocolate, but I did have a great big bottle of Bourbon and one idea.
I wanted a hot toddy, eve...