Cocktail Tour — LA
Times change and places change. But good drinks and good friends don’t.
My friend Dan was visiting LA for his birthday; I hadn’t seen him since my final weeks in New York. On one hand, that was only nine months ago. On the other hand, it feels like a lifetime ago. It was before my cross-country roadtrip, my move to the west coast, and my starting business school.
That last time we hung out, we spent the evening touring each of his favorite cocktail spots, for which we’d created a “bartinerary” to keep us on track. Now with him in LA for a couple days, I returned the favor.
“This will be the resumption of the bartinerary aka hoptinerary,” he texted me.
We met in his hotel lounge in Santa Monica and started things right where we left off: with whiskey. He ordered the Bold Fashion, I the Manhattan.
Bartender: “We don’t have the Whistle Pig for your Manhattan but we do have Old Overholt”
Dan: “Oh that’s what Don Draper drinks on Mad Men!”
Me: “Ok sure, that works”
I explained to Dan, “I would have gotten the Bold Fashion if you didn’t. It uses Maker’s 46 and I went to their distillery this summer, seeing how they make it. Basically they take these wooden sticks (called ‘staves’) that have different flavors and put them into a finished Maker’s barrel. Some people can do custom orders that feature unique flavors based on the different stave combos.”
Dan’s friend Pablo — with whom he makes music — arrived not long after that, sipped his beer, and we headed to Accomplice in Mar Vista, which we’d chosen in part because of their food menu. Dan hadn’t eaten all day thanks to the paltry options on his long flight, and I was pretty hungry myself.
We walked in to two kissing cats. I got the Fungi Town, Dan got the Pulp Friction and Pablo got the Gin Rummy. The latter, being served in one of the cats, sadly broke up their canoodling. We all took a taste of each others’ drinks; mine tasted of mushroom, Dan’s was hot & fruity, and Pablo’s tasted of licorice.
We wasted little time filling the table with Beef Rolls, Orange Chicken, Vegan Fatty Noodles, a dome of white rice, and the Chinese BBQ Pork Shank.
At around that same time came drinks round two: the Pink Rabbit for me and the Urban Chamo for Dan. He eschews vodka mixed drinks, so he subbed that for Old Overholt. My rabbit tasted strongly of its shishito pepper garnish.
As you might guess from the above picture, the pork shank made us all very full. So instead of hop to another bar, we closed out the night back at Dan’s room at the Oceana, drinking beer and joking about whether anyone actually reads books from the decorative display in his room. After a close search, we did find The Hunger Games and one about Kanye lyrics. They talked a lot about music — Jon Bellion and songwriting credit for instance — and I interjected when I could.
That was on a Tuesday. On Thursday, Dan and I reprised, starting in the lobby of his next hotel in DTLA. He really likes hotels. I got the Will You Stay in LA — a classic tequila drink. He got the Pineapple Bliss — which was indeed pretty blissful.
For our next stop on the bartinerary, we considered many spots, but ultimately settled on the Wellesbourne in West LA, in part because of its food. Their popcorn chicken, bacon wrapped dates, and veggie spring rolls did not disappoint.
For drinks we began with the Cocoa Smoke Fashion and the Besos de Bayas. Unfortunately their smoke machine was broken, but an old fashioned’s an old fashioned, though I was surprised to learn this one literally featured cocoa puffs. The drink tasted nice with its chocolate overtones, though it was not without notes of cereal.
For round two Dan got the Gran Fiesta and I got the Sazerac, our server lighting my glass on fire. I could see the smoke rising from my glass after it was poured. As I took a sip, my glass was still warm but the drink itself was surprisingly cold, smelling of fire & licorice.
For our final round I got Maker’s on the rocks, chosen in deference to my hand-dipped bottle. Dan too kept it simple with an Old Fashioned.
Tonight we talked about girls, mostly. Oh my, how that’s changed over the last nine months.
Our check came in a hollow book. We left as they turned the lights on and capped off the night with beers in my apartment before he returned to his hotel and I went to bed to rest up for a weekend in the Santa Ynez Valley wine country.
Yes times change and people change, but some relationships don’t. And I’m thankful for that. Since we ran into each other in the elevator of One World Trade Center, having not seen each other since high school, we picked up right where we left off. And the many miles from New York to LA doesn’t change that.
