The Atlantic’s Derek Brown offers his “slow drink manifesto.” This points up one of those difficult commercial impasses, as I see it, in the food/hospitality world. Bars are used to making money on volume, and their customers are used to getting served fast. I have no brief for waiting 20 minutes for a $15 cocktail, but there is a sensible middle ground, I think, between paying more-than-happy-hour prices for a well-made drink, and having to wait the time it takes to make that drink. Brown makes reference to chilled glasses, for example–what iced cocktail isn’t better served up in an iced glass? What do you call a Martini that’s not properly mixed and not served in a chilled vessel? A glass of warm gin. And while that may have its charms, for some, they sure aren’t those of a good Martini. And let’s not even get started on the unhappy phenomenon of 6, 8, even 10 ounce cocktails. I hope a broader cultural shift is starting to take place where more people realize that good drinking, like good eating, has everything to do with good ingredients, intelligent preparation, and appropriate portion size.
