A carefully crafted rye cocktail from Stoddard's Fine Food and Ale. Notice the breathtakingly beautiful, hand-carved lump of ice in the center. That is some pretty ice.
Since I’ve been on a month- long hiatus from the blog, I figured I should let you know what I’ve been up while I’ve been gone! Â First, I’d like to share some images from last weekend’s Boston 19th Century Pub Crawl.
We began the night at Eastern Standard Kitchen & Drinks. I sipped on a Root of All Evil cocktail, a blend of coconut and an amazingly subtle and complex root beer liquor. Â It was delicious-one of my favorite cocktails of the night!
The crowd mixes and mingles at Eastern Standard.
Stoddard’s Fine Food and Ale had us enter via the “speakeasy” entrance. The building was built in the 1860s and the entire block is historic. The result was a twisting, turning, increasing shady back alley that suddenly opened up into Stoddard’s. Completely awesome and fun.
A snapshot of the bar at Stoddard’s. The have an amazing list of historic cocktails available every day. To add another degree of authenticity, the bartenders carve off chunks of this giant ice block to make the cocktails. In addition to the rye drink pictured at the top of the post, I had a slammin drink called the Temple Smash: rye, ginger ale, mint, and seltzer. Fav.
Rich poses as our logo.
Waiting to get into the final stop of the evening, Drink.
Cocktail Virgin Slut joined us on the crawl; here, he takes notes on an adorable little cocktail at Drink.
The night ends with a bang: the skilled bartenders at Drink mixed me a Blue Blazer. I had never in my wildest dreams imagined there was a bar with two silver tankards ready to go at a moments notice. To be honest, to have one made for me made me feel like a god. Drink also mixed up an amazing classic punch, in a giantic bowl.  The night ended well.
Looks exciting and spectacular; if I knew more 19th century words I’d insert them here.
How does a pre-prohibition old fashioned differ from a post-prohibition one?
There are generally two types of Old Fashioneds: Old Fashioned Old Fashioneds and New (Fashioned) Old Fashioneds. The old is booze, sugar, bitters, ice, and perhaps a citrus twist. The new can have muddled fruit in it (often a cherry and orange slice), can leave out the bitters, often doesn’t have a citrus twist (for aromatics of citrus oil sitting on top of the drink), can be topped with soda water or syrupy sodas, and the like. The Old Fashioned was created to be a reaction to the new drinks that were coming out in the late 1800s so if you were a curmudgeon or old school back then, you would ask the bartender for none of this fancy stuff by asking for an OF. Not sure when the NFOD entered the picture, but it is more of a Smash (muddled fruit) than an Old Fashioned. If you’re at a less than craft bar, you can ask for your Old Fashioneds with “hold the garbage” or “hold the salad” to spare you the chunks of neon red cherry bits that inevitably clog your sipping straw.
Yeah, what a reply! Thanks for taking the time to fill me in.
Now, I come from the world of Wisconsin old fashioneds, so I prefer mine a brandy old fashioned, sweet, with all that salad and garbage muddled in:) It just goes so well paired with a Friday fish fry. Sour’s okay by me too. I don’t go for the pickled garnish though – maybe I should start.
I like that there’s a new fashioned old fashioned. Out with the old, in with the new, already.
What he said! (and a great question, BTW)
fun blog love visiting old places and recipes