I can hardly believe it—I missed posting an Open Thread last week, and I am sorry! So many things are happening, and I have been doing so much work, and I am so very, very tired.
There’s a sadness upon this household tonight because we learned that Gem Spa in NYC is closing.
Mine is a cup of chai in a Glasgow weekend market, served to us by a woman with a gigantic kettle that she'd slam against the counter in her stall before serving up its contents. It was our first time at the market--our first glimpse of its existence!--& we were delighted to learn that it would be there every second Saturday, planned to make a ritual of a cooked breakfast & then this impossibly good chai.
Two weeks later the market appeared, but the woman didn't. We've called her the Chai Fairy ever since, & long & long & try to make our own at home & it's never right & now the original has passed into the realm of dreams & is the memory of a feeling instead of flavours.
A Peach Bellini at an Olive Garden in the Bay Area. Still healing from what I'd had to do to get there, still traumatized and still painfully aware of being someone from an island you could walk across in a day being in a country that crossed time zones. It tasted, honestly, like joy. Like the cool refreshing joy of a difficult job achieved, of being able to rest for the first time.
My friend Dave of savedave fame in the time before crowdfunding used to throw a field party on the last Saturday of the month. It was pretty elaborate, with a full freestanding bar, and since alcohol was included with your party donation, most people drank quite heavily. This was after I stopped drinking alcohol, and everyone at the party wasn't from my friend circle, so I developed a house drink with my friend Andrew the bartender that was just a juice mix of whatever he had on hand with a cocktail stirrer. I'd drink my juice on humid summer nights with the bonfire roaring, maybe go play in the creek if it was warm enough, good music in the field, all these great friends around me at a party that almost never went sour, eat whatever was on the grill, go sit in the dark end of the field and watch the fireflies. We don't have the parties anymore and no blended juice is ever going to taste quite like that again, like the feeling of deep peace and contentment and continuity that place and time represented.
A cocktail in a London bar called Nightjar (where, unrelatedly, Julien & I went on our first date, before we knew it was a date). It was called the Forager's Shrub, and it was served with fresh rosemary, thyme, and assorted raw vegetables, and a single giant, perfectly smooth ice cube. It came with a little scent diffuser of oil, but for the life of me I can't remember what the scent was.
Anyway, the bar's seen better days, and it's not on the menu any more. So it goes.
I think for me it's a glass of sparkling wine. I got to my host-father's house in 2005, 19 years old, for study abroad in Luxembourg, nice and jet-lagged, and more than a little confused and unsure about how this whole experience would go. He picked us up and drove us to his house, where in the backyard, overlooking some wide open fields, he had set up a plate of snacks and a bottle of Luxembourgish Cremant for us. It was just about the perfect welcome to the country, and to his home. I've had many glasses of bubbly from their many wineries since, but none of them match that first one.
As you might know, I’m a bit of cocktail fan. I while ago a friend was planning a party and I mentioned I’d really like to try a Weimar era cocktail. He found a recipe for an Amarosa. The Kirschwässer and Gin wasn’t difficult to locate, but the third ingredient, Amara Cora, isn’t made any more. Somehow he found some and got it sent from Italy.
The cocktail was gorgeous, and we’ve enjoyed several over the years, but I think the Amara Cora is running low now.
9-year-old Rosebank whisky. Rosebank always used fresh sherry casks, so the longer the whisky aged the more powerful the sherry flavoring would become. The 9yo was well known to be the best, a lovely delicately flavoured whisky.
The distillery is long closed and the last time I looked for a bottle of the 9yo it was over £300. My friend gave me a 17yo bottle for my 40th birthday and while it was a decent drink, it wasn't the same.
Mine was a glass of absinthe by a distiller called DuVallon at Nightjar (speakeasy style bar) in London when I lived there in 2014. A Molly Weasley-esque woman had just saved my life and, not knowing what to do next I went and had a drink. I sat at the corner of the bar unable to process anything beyond the comfort of a near-perfect glass of alcohol in front of me.
I no longer live there and DuVallon doesn't distill anymore, but I'll always remember how that night went from bad to bizarrely perfect with that one drink.
My son and I were in a boat watching the Shiva ceremony on the ghat at Varanasi. The chai wallah walked from boat to boat (There may have been 100, filled with worshippers and tourists.), pouring chai into unglazed clay cups. The clay for the cups was from the Ganges. When we finished the chai, the cups were dropped overboard to dissolve back into river mud.
The other, more prosaic, one was a cold beer at Agia Roumeli. After hiking the length of the Samaria Gorge in the summer heat, and stumbling, finally, through the Gates and onto the beach on the Libyan Sea, that cold crisp brew was, I think, absorbed through every cell it touched. A happy confluence of heat, dehydration and physical exhaustion
A Sazerac at Bayou on Penn. I was lucky to find a restaurant in DC that served a killer shrimp po'boy along with all the sides: mac and cheese, collard greens, cornbread. I was even luckier that they made a mean Sazerac. Spicy, sweet, bitter, and strong. It always put a smile on my face. Now I frown when I walk by and it's no longer there.
Probably the London Fog at 1369 Coffee House in Cambridge. I've had London Fogs since, but they were just never that *perfect* antidote to a cold Boston afternoon!
There used to be a tea room in Salt Lake City called the Beehive Tea Room. They served an iced chai that I will forever be chasing. (They closed years ago.) Creamier than milk, over ice, in an extra tall glass, and the chai leaned far more spiced than sweet. Little flecks of cinnamon were stirred up if you moved your straw. It was my first non-Starbucks chai and I remember thinking, Starbucks tastes like a Target candle compared to this.
Mine is a Syrian mint lemonade called bolo that I drank at a hotel in Damascus in 2007, when I was there for my sister-in-law's wedding. The hotel was converted from a gorgeous old house in the former Jewish quarter, and they served the most amazing breakfasts, but it's the bolo that I still dream about. Swear they put a pound of mint in every glass.
A wonderful raspberry drink. I went to an event for Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars in D.C. last summer, and the bookstore held a reception afterwards. They partnered the the bar next door and offered this incredible array of cocktails and mocktails inspired by the the book. None of them had names, but my drink of choice was inspired by the quote, "Then something changed. Like, overnight, she was practically a different person." It had raspberries and ginger and mint and other things I can't quite remember now. I've never come closer to recreating it.
Ahahah, I had to think about this for a while, and it’s all just ... tea. Gyokuro and Japanese tea sweets at the Maruyku Koyamaen tea shop in Kyoto on Christmas morning 2016, sitting by their lovely little garden. An innumerable, timeless blur of tea times at our now-gone, lost, neighborhood teahouse. Many occasions which pull into one singularity of memory and emotion.
A cup of Irish Breakfast Tea in the City of Dublin after a long flight from Boston waiting for our hotel room to be ready so we could drop our bags off and explore the city. It was hot and the milk was perfect and it was the start of an adventure.
Wine from the wine fountain in Navarra on the Camino de Santiago (drunk from a water bottle, because what else are we carrying on the Camino).
So many memories like this are less about the specific drink than the place and time in my life. Coming on an unexpected (free) wine fountain in the middle of a long day's hike... I might be there again, and as far as I know the fountain still there, but it won't be the same drink.
Mine is a cup of chai in a Glasgow weekend market, served to us by a woman with a gigantic kettle that she'd slam against the counter in her stall before serving up its contents. It was our first time at the market--our first glimpse of its existence!--& we were delighted to learn that it would be there every second Saturday, planned to make a ritual of a cooked breakfast & then this impossibly good chai.
Two weeks later the market appeared, but the woman didn't. We've called her the Chai Fairy ever since, & long & long & try to make our own at home & it's never right & now the original has passed into the realm of dreams & is the memory of a feeling instead of flavours.
A Peach Bellini at an Olive Garden in the Bay Area. Still healing from what I'd had to do to get there, still traumatized and still painfully aware of being someone from an island you could walk across in a day being in a country that crossed time zones. It tasted, honestly, like joy. Like the cool refreshing joy of a difficult job achieved, of being able to rest for the first time.
And yes I did fill up on bread also:)
My friend Dave of savedave fame in the time before crowdfunding used to throw a field party on the last Saturday of the month. It was pretty elaborate, with a full freestanding bar, and since alcohol was included with your party donation, most people drank quite heavily. This was after I stopped drinking alcohol, and everyone at the party wasn't from my friend circle, so I developed a house drink with my friend Andrew the bartender that was just a juice mix of whatever he had on hand with a cocktail stirrer. I'd drink my juice on humid summer nights with the bonfire roaring, maybe go play in the creek if it was warm enough, good music in the field, all these great friends around me at a party that almost never went sour, eat whatever was on the grill, go sit in the dark end of the field and watch the fireflies. We don't have the parties anymore and no blended juice is ever going to taste quite like that again, like the feeling of deep peace and contentment and continuity that place and time represented.
A cocktail in a London bar called Nightjar (where, unrelatedly, Julien & I went on our first date, before we knew it was a date). It was called the Forager's Shrub, and it was served with fresh rosemary, thyme, and assorted raw vegetables, and a single giant, perfectly smooth ice cube. It came with a little scent diffuser of oil, but for the life of me I can't remember what the scent was.
Anyway, the bar's seen better days, and it's not on the menu any more. So it goes.
I think for me it's a glass of sparkling wine. I got to my host-father's house in 2005, 19 years old, for study abroad in Luxembourg, nice and jet-lagged, and more than a little confused and unsure about how this whole experience would go. He picked us up and drove us to his house, where in the backyard, overlooking some wide open fields, he had set up a plate of snacks and a bottle of Luxembourgish Cremant for us. It was just about the perfect welcome to the country, and to his home. I've had many glasses of bubbly from their many wineries since, but none of them match that first one.
As you might know, I’m a bit of cocktail fan. I while ago a friend was planning a party and I mentioned I’d really like to try a Weimar era cocktail. He found a recipe for an Amarosa. The Kirschwässer and Gin wasn’t difficult to locate, but the third ingredient, Amara Cora, isn’t made any more. Somehow he found some and got it sent from Italy.
The cocktail was gorgeous, and we’ve enjoyed several over the years, but I think the Amara Cora is running low now.
https://forgottencocktails.com/?p=588
9-year-old Rosebank whisky. Rosebank always used fresh sherry casks, so the longer the whisky aged the more powerful the sherry flavoring would become. The 9yo was well known to be the best, a lovely delicately flavoured whisky.
The distillery is long closed and the last time I looked for a bottle of the 9yo it was over £300. My friend gave me a 17yo bottle for my 40th birthday and while it was a decent drink, it wasn't the same.
Mine was a glass of absinthe by a distiller called DuVallon at Nightjar (speakeasy style bar) in London when I lived there in 2014. A Molly Weasley-esque woman had just saved my life and, not knowing what to do next I went and had a drink. I sat at the corner of the bar unable to process anything beyond the comfort of a near-perfect glass of alcohol in front of me.
I no longer live there and DuVallon doesn't distill anymore, but I'll always remember how that night went from bad to bizarrely perfect with that one drink.
My son and I were in a boat watching the Shiva ceremony on the ghat at Varanasi. The chai wallah walked from boat to boat (There may have been 100, filled with worshippers and tourists.), pouring chai into unglazed clay cups. The clay for the cups was from the Ganges. When we finished the chai, the cups were dropped overboard to dissolve back into river mud.
The other, more prosaic, one was a cold beer at Agia Roumeli. After hiking the length of the Samaria Gorge in the summer heat, and stumbling, finally, through the Gates and onto the beach on the Libyan Sea, that cold crisp brew was, I think, absorbed through every cell it touched. A happy confluence of heat, dehydration and physical exhaustion
A Sazerac at Bayou on Penn. I was lucky to find a restaurant in DC that served a killer shrimp po'boy along with all the sides: mac and cheese, collard greens, cornbread. I was even luckier that they made a mean Sazerac. Spicy, sweet, bitter, and strong. It always put a smile on my face. Now I frown when I walk by and it's no longer there.
Probably the London Fog at 1369 Coffee House in Cambridge. I've had London Fogs since, but they were just never that *perfect* antidote to a cold Boston afternoon!
There used to be a tea room in Salt Lake City called the Beehive Tea Room. They served an iced chai that I will forever be chasing. (They closed years ago.) Creamier than milk, over ice, in an extra tall glass, and the chai leaned far more spiced than sweet. Little flecks of cinnamon were stirred up if you moved your straw. It was my first non-Starbucks chai and I remember thinking, Starbucks tastes like a Target candle compared to this.
Mine is a Syrian mint lemonade called bolo that I drank at a hotel in Damascus in 2007, when I was there for my sister-in-law's wedding. The hotel was converted from a gorgeous old house in the former Jewish quarter, and they served the most amazing breakfasts, but it's the bolo that I still dream about. Swear they put a pound of mint in every glass.
A wonderful raspberry drink. I went to an event for Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars in D.C. last summer, and the bookstore held a reception afterwards. They partnered the the bar next door and offered this incredible array of cocktails and mocktails inspired by the the book. None of them had names, but my drink of choice was inspired by the quote, "Then something changed. Like, overnight, she was practically a different person." It had raspberries and ginger and mint and other things I can't quite remember now. I've never come closer to recreating it.
A Gem Spa egg cream. Which I haven't had in years and years, because dairy allergy, but I can still taste it exactly in my memory. RIP.
Ahahah, I had to think about this for a while, and it’s all just ... tea. Gyokuro and Japanese tea sweets at the Maruyku Koyamaen tea shop in Kyoto on Christmas morning 2016, sitting by their lovely little garden. An innumerable, timeless blur of tea times at our now-gone, lost, neighborhood teahouse. Many occasions which pull into one singularity of memory and emotion.
A cup of Irish Breakfast Tea in the City of Dublin after a long flight from Boston waiting for our hotel room to be ready so we could drop our bags off and explore the city. It was hot and the milk was perfect and it was the start of an adventure.
Wine from the wine fountain in Navarra on the Camino de Santiago (drunk from a water bottle, because what else are we carrying on the Camino).
So many memories like this are less about the specific drink than the place and time in my life. Coming on an unexpected (free) wine fountain in the middle of a long day's hike... I might be there again, and as far as I know the fountain still there, but it won't be the same drink.