SoMa StrEatfood Park may be really hard to type, but it’s a fun place for lunch or dinner or even late-night snacks and beers, and for one night only, as part of SF Cocktail Week, it will become a serious cocktail hotspot:
We guarantee that you will be served drinks in a way that you’ve never been served drinks before. Unique, fun and interesting – come out to enjoy the great food truck culture of San Francisco when it is paired with the amazing cocktail talent of our city. Guests will experience bottled cocktails provided by Rye on the Road, carbonated cocktails provided by Elixir out of soda siphons, kegged cocktails provided by Jasper’s Tap and Kitchen, and canned cocktails by 15 Romolo that will be canned onsite with The Can Van. Guests will be given a food voucher for dinner from a food truck of their choice, while mingling and stargazing during an Indian summer night in San Francisco.
To win a pair of tickets (a $90 value) tell us your best fancy cocktail-related anecdote in the comments section below. Contest ends at noon on Monday. Winner will be picked based on merit.
Buy tickets here.
My oldest sister works for Diageo, a spirits company up in NY. So when I went to visit her a few years ago we did a fancy bar crawl with one of their company’s mixologists. I will forever remember the cocktails that I experienced that night. It was a night of firsts from experiencing the bitterness of kumquats paired with the sweetness of simple syrup and sweet fruits to the refreshing qualities that muddled cucumber possesses when mixed with ice cold vodka, simple syrup and the largest, most perfect ice cubes I’ve ever witnessed. That muddled cucumber cocktail is one that sticks with me always, I always look for it on cocktail menus, if it’s not there…then I’ll have a dirty martini or bulleit rye on the rocks.
I used to drink Baccardi 151 and Jolt Cola, worst hangover ever. The End
how a 15 year old makes a screw driver:
1 part Taang (pfr)
and 5-10 parts popov vodka
the taang also works well as a chaser….ugh, upchuck..ugh
as my dad says we learned a lesson from the professor that night, professor popov that is.
I still break out in hives at the thought of orange anything and vodka mixed…
Some asshole I used to hang out with would often ask his bartender to make us “something tall, strong, that screams out fag”. Surprisingly, everyone always accepted the challenge and we got shockingly good original concoctions… or vodka Red Bulls.
Another friend came up with the “Drew Barrymore”. It’s a Shirley Temple with vodka.
The best has got to be getting a few Lava Bowl’s for 2 at the Tonga Room. Getting the massive straws to toss down a couple Lava Bowl’s and then stumbling outside at 6pm into the sunlight and taking a cab home since they drinks had knocked us out for the night. Meanwhile thunderstorms happening every hour within the Tonga Room to confuse us even more so!
The first time I went to the Castro I ordered a ‘wet pussy’ shot at the Toad Hall Bar. The bartender walked away and a few minutes later returned and said ‘I just talked to all my co workers and no one has ever heard of a wet pussy shot and how dare you come into a gay bar expecting a wet pussy!’ I was not expecting that answer and gotta say I never returned to that bar again. For the record, a wet pussy shot is 1 oz raspberry liqueur, 2 oz Irish cream, and 6 oz milk.
A friend of mine ordered some fancy drink at Rickhouse and the bartender lit it on fire…which subsequently set his jacket sleeve a blaze. The guy next to us poured some other drink on it to put it out and it re-lit! We had to wrap his arm in a dirty bar rag to stifle it.
Does this mean I have to wait in line for 40 minutes and then wait 40 minutes for my cocktail all the while thinking that the food truck phenomenon makes Pet Rocks by comparison practically saintly? Just checking.
When I was attending college in New York City in the eary 00s, Bicardi Limon and sprite meant fancy in comparison to a shared jug of Carlo Rossi with friends. I was an easy-to-please beginner drinker, ready to get from point A sober to point B drunk. Eventually I classed it up by sticking with vodka and cranberry, which remained my go-to for a couple years until one fateful night when I was 22. A very pleasant and much older man took me on a real date (god he had to be 27 at least! Ancient!) This is right when faux speakeasies were coming into style (I think this one was called Milk and Honey) and I was first exposed to “mixology”. I remember requesting something with vodka and the bartender visibly sucked his breath in and gave me a distrusting look. “I”m not working with vodka tonight,” he said haughtily, as if he and vodka had personality differences and it was best they were not put on the same shift together. “Oh, and why’s that?” I asked, not caring for his shitty attitude when I knew everything ordered in that place was going to be at least 20 bucks a pop. “It brings nothing to the table in terms of substance,” he replied. I think I was already a little drunk before we arrived, so my mood could go either aggressive or relaxed, and I opted for the latter. “Fine,” I said. “Just make me something you’d recommend, but no whiskey please, it makes me yak.” “Nothing I create will illicit that reaction” He spent about 15 minutes making something and I really don’t know what was in it, but it was fucking delicious. It was a texture somewhere between liquid and air and while I could tell it was strong, it glided comfortably and deliciously in my mouth. I don’t think I quite savored it, each one of those cocktails took about as long as a Cosco sample to finish, and I had several. Luckily I didn’t pick up the tab. At the end of the night I got a cab, wasn’t overly stumbly like a usual night of drinking, and had the most minor hangover the next day. While I wasn’t about to turn high-end only with my drinking venues after that, I certainly learned a lesson about quality, and that alcohol’s point isn’t just to be drunk (nice perk though). I began sipping things and venturing out of my post-adolescent go-tos into bourbon and dirty martinis and ordering things “neat”. Vodka and I didn’t hang out much after that, and if we did, it was always vodka that at least came from a glass bottle instead of plastic.
Teotwawki, not only do you have to wait in line for 40 minutes and then wait 40 minutes for cocktail, you get the privilege of paying between $35-$100 right off the top JUST TO GET IN THE DOOR!I like a tasty beverage as much as the next person, but this just screams out “trendy rip-off” all over the place. They’re just drinks, kids.
I grew up in rural Arkansas where drinks are stiff and beer is cheap. There weren’t too many bars around offering “cocktails” outside of the way of bombs (Irish Car Bomb, Tequila Bomb, etc.) Anyways I used to frequent a dive bar called Brewskis who had a lone bartender that my friends and I referred to as “Beer Man” – he was one gruff motherfucker. I walked in one day and told him I had made up a new bomb – “Stalingrad.” It involved dropping a double-shot of Jaeger into a pint of a Russian Stout (Old Rasputin in this case), thereby representing Russians consuming the Nazis in the bloodiest battle of WWII. A cracked smile etched itself across his bearded face. Turning around he quickly set up a Stalingrad for my friend, himself and me. “Cheers,” he said half mockingly to us and we all three began gulping down this monster. As the thick black Russian Stout coated our throats I knew this was going to be rough. Halfway through I felt the sharp medicinal burn of the Jaeger. “Oh God here come the Germans!” I thought. As soon as my friend hit the Jaeger he set his glass down gasping, beer dripping from his mustache. I locked eyes with Beer Man and saw the determination in his furled brow. Powering on I finally heard the loose clank of the shot glass in my pint. Closing my eyes I finished the final dregs and slammed it down on the wood bar. Beer man let out a cacophonous belch and I flexed my jar, stomach still lurching. Beer man was so impressed with Stalingrad it became a permanent drink at Brewskis.
Being from a part of the midwest where cheap beer is practically a family member and the term mixology has never been uttered, I once created a classy drink called the Trailer Trash Martini — 1 part hard liquor (any kind) and 1 part Kool-Aid (any flavor). Until moving to San Francisco and tasting a real cocktail, it was the single reason I refused to touch hard liquor.
As the sun faded off the East River, I sat alone in the East Village’s premier artisan cocktail joint Booker and Dax, expecting to be impressed. Although showing up later than I had planned, the manager amiably led me to a choice barstool where I could see firsthand what all the hype was about.
I was only a few months on the job, writing reviews of the best restaurants and bars Manhattan had to offer when Booker and Dax came across the radar. I strolled in hesitantly as new places typically get over-hyped, but was quickly sold when I saw the wizardly going on behind the bar. Manager David Arnold took me aside and explained how making the best cocktails possible was his passion; building his own rotary evaporation unit comprised of whirling glass beakers, carbon hoses laced throughout the bar to bring drinks to life on the spot, blazing hot pokers to heat things up. He just wasn’t satisfied with the status quo.
Mr. Arnold reminded me that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it with passion and reverence and you don’t let anyone stop you from turning it into an art form. From what I’ve had so far out here, I can expect that same devotion to show its face next week.
I once sauntered into the legendary Odeon Bar (where the Knockout is now) and asked Flash the bartender to make me the fanciest fancy cocktail he knew.
He poured me a shot of Fernet, then he hopped up on the bar, dropped his pants, put a lit bottle rocket between his cheeks and fired it clear across the room.
Sean
I think we have a winner
After having a basil-lime gimlet at a bar in nob hill a few weeks ago, I decided to make my own. Basil, lime, simple syrup and gin, not hard at all and it turned out great.
Of course, brilliant me thought it’d be a good idea to pour my gimlet into my mate, for some, basil-lime-gimlet-mate. It tasted GREAT! Really great in fact. So great that I got belligerent and blacked out. Suffice to say, adding great cocktails to yerba mate may taste great, but might not be the right choice for a responsible evening.
On a related note, I’m very sorry bouncer at El Rio… I didn’t know I had it in me to try and fight you.
Who won?
(I didn’t…)