Guys, don't let anybody ever tell you meeting people off the internet is a bad idea. Do people still say that nowadays? Like, how literally does anybody meet a person otherwise? Anyways, I've been meeting people off the internet since 1996 in a lot of different formats, and I'm IRL friends (that stands for internet relationship likely just kidding it stands for In Real Life) with so many of them now.
Last weekend I went to New York City with several internet friends who are now just friends (one I met through DCist; one I met through Tumblr; one I met through Google reader) and we had a grand time. Here are the things we did:
-Ate at a Mario Batali restaurant, where FRAN DRESCHER WAS ALSO EATING (she uploaded a youtube video of it, it was her birthday, she's 59 and let me tell you she looks good) and proceeded to get the theme song to "The Nanny" stuck in our head for hours
-Ate every smoked fish imaginable at Russ & Daughters where I also drank two 'breakfast' martinis by 11am
-Ate soup dumplings at Shanghai Cafe Deluxe in Chinatown
-Went to the Met and drank $15 glasses of wine on the roof (me in the museum: "Art, art, old artifacts, boring... OH MY GOD THEY HAVE A ROOFTOP BAR?! SEE YA")
And finally, we had a group fried chicken dinner (it was truly incredibly delicious) at Momofuku Nishi where I casually ordered a cocktail called the Penicillin which is now my favorite drink ever.
Turns out it's also everybody's favorite drink ever and it's not hard to find out how to recreate it via the internet, though a lot of the recipes vary. Here's what I did.
-2 oz of a blended scotch (I know so little of scotch I had to ask another internet friend what this is; she said I could use Johnnie Walker basically so I did)
-3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
-3/4 oz a magical concoction, ginger-honey syrup. To make this syrup, take half a cup of water, half a cup of honey, and whisk them in a pot til blended over medium heat. Then take a big knob of ginger, peel and slice it, and dump it into the honey water. Bring it all to a boil, then turn down heat and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Let it cool, then strain the syrup into a jar, leaving out the ginger pieces.
Then do the cocktail-y thing which is shake it all up in a mixer with ice and strain it into a glass. Preferably one of those super huge ice cubes. Listen, I don't know anything about cocktails, but this is the first one that's made me want to buy a super huge ice cube tray and make huge ice with like, imported Arctic stream water, it's that good.
Other recipes said to serve it with an Islay scotch floated on top. I don't know what that sentence means or what Islay scotch is, but I did read a trick which is you can take the half ounce or whatever of the Islay and "float" it on top by pouring it onto the drink over the back of a spoon. I guess that does something cool?
It's nowhere near as good as the original but I think it makes a very fine autumnal cocktail and you should make it and I will toast you virtually, or IRL.
Ooh you hit up some good places! Shanghai Cafe Deluxe is one of my faves. Islay Scotch is the really peaty, smoky stuff from a specific island. I felt the need to share because I'm obsessed with it and we went there.
Posted by: Missy | October 10, 2016 at 03:58 PM