Diffords Guide to Cocktails #5.4: Liquor and City Drinking (Over 500 Cocktails Plus the Complete Guide to GIN) - Softcover
Synopsis
Published quarterly: This edition `#5.4' published October
2006
A hybrid guide book and magazine, this is the world's first truly
international periodical covering cocktail and bar culture. Each issue
includes 500 cocktail recipes, reviews of leading bars in various world
cities and in depth coverage of the London bar scene. Each issue also
features a specific spirit category (e.g. gin in this issue) with
background information and dispassionate reviews of all the leading brands,
allowing the reader to make an informed choice at the bar or supermarket.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
Editor's Letter
In my quest to track down the very best bars in the world, I visit more
than a thousand bars a year. And one worrying trend I've noticed on my
travels is that more and more bartenders seem to be trying to impress their
peer group, rather than to satisfy their customers.
As barkeeps strive to outdo each other with ever more adventurous
cocktails, so the menus in which these drinks feature are becoming ever
more bewildering. Increasingly perplexed punters are confronted with long
lists of unfamiliar names, supported by notes of ingredients that generally
give no idea of whether drinks are long, short or straight-up, let alone if
they are sweet, strong or fruity. The classics, the safe choices people are
most familiar with, are often omitted altogether - or replaced by a note
claiming something like, "Our skilled bartenders are able to make any drink
not listed on this menu".
Oh yeah? Sadly such menus all too often result in the easy option - an
order for a beer.
I came across a typical example of the genre at Sign in Edinburgh. The
wines were, sensibly enough, listed under headings such as `Smooth & Easy'
or `Ripe & Full', giving drinkers a reasonable indication of what to
expect.
Cocktails, however, appeared under such meaningless and naff headings as
`Alluring & Desirable', `Provocative & Intriguing' and even, god forbid,
`Effervescent & Vivacious'.
Even a drink I thought I recognised - a "Honeysuckle" - turned out on
closer inspection not to be the well-known, rum-based classic but a
concoction of vodka and mandarin juice "with a flamboyant dash of champagne
and a lift of lemon". Pleeease!
How did it taste, you ask? History does not record since they were out of
mandarin juice.
Sign was saved by the lovely Hailey, whose New Zealand charm and Agave
Old-Fashioned more than made up for the menu's shortcomings. Proof that
above all this is a people business and that great service and a friendly
smile count for more than any printed list.
In fact, in some bars such as New York's Milk & Honey the cocktail menu is
obsolete. You are asked your tastes and suitable libations suggested and
delivered with that all important smile - which, when it comes to pleasing
customers, speaks more than a thousand words.
Cheers
Simon Difford
simon@diffordsguide.com
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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Diffordsguide to Cocktails #5.4 Liquor & City Drinking
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Issue #5.4. Softcover. The discerning drinker's quarterly. Over 500 illustrated cocktail recipes R - Z plus the complete guide to GIN - 70 gins tried and tested. Over 80 international bar reviews. 288 pages. Clean. Sharp. Like new condition. Seller Inventory # 020836
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Diffords Guide to Cocktails #5.4: Liquor and City Drinking (Over 500 Cocktails Plus the Complete Guide to GIN)
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