“… just as there is no such thing as a 1/2-good girl there is no such animal as a 1/2-good drink.  A mixed drink is either made correctly out of correct stuff: good; or it’s La Bebida Piojosa (lousy drink). Even a homely
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“Slash sat me down at his house and said, You’ve got to clean up your act. You know you’ve gone too far when Slash is saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to get into rehab.” - Charlie Sheen

What do you do when you have trouble coming up with a name for a
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Thanksgiving has long been the source of mixed emotions for me. On one hand it’s a day when I can unleash my monster appetite without abandon. I love to eat, and I love to eat well. Yet on the other hand I consider myself a person of
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I recently read an article by Gary Regan about a couple of modern cocktails he predicts will eventually become classics, and it made me think about exactly what makes a cocktail a classic. The answer may seem fairly obvious in that it just needs
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Last night I visited Vandaag (Dutch for “today”), a new Dutch themed restaurant in the East Village which I had been hearing lots of good things about, including a 2 star review by Sam Sifton of the NY Times. Though I knew the
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Sometimes I hear or read about something while going about my every day business and it inspires me to hit my liquor cabinet and create something. Sometimes it’s the other way around, where I’m playing around with different spirits and ingredients and I come across a combination I really enjoy. In the case
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Our Editor has named “death” as the theme for the remainder of October here on Umamimart, and it’s quite fitting because for most readers death is an apt description of the state of the Happy Hour column. As some of you know I haven’t
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As far as Summers go, this was one of the best in recent memory. My first trip to Tales of the Cocktail, a new puppy, and all around nice, scorching hot weather made this season a tough act for Fall to follow. But alas, we have arrived
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Here at Happy Hour the subject all day every day is cocktails. I provide the recipes, and hopefully you enjoy them, and learn a little something new in the process.  But a recent question from a friend prompted the realization that in all the posts
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“Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.” -Some historic hotard

It’s a rare thing for me to have down time these days, but after a very frenzied summer, I’ve stumbled upon a bit of unstructured time which quite frankly scares me. Naturally, I found a
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