Shut Up and Drink

One of my primary goals with this blog is to NOT represent myself as an expert in mixology or alcohol. I'd love to be comfortable with the title "gifted amateur," but even that remains a goal, not a reality. I take advantage of a great friends' network, frequent travel and the inability to flinch at ten-spot cocktail prices to build on what bits of information I've collected over the years. I have a better-than-average home bar, and a much better-than-average wife who simply rolls her eyes when the 24th different bottle of rum sheepishly wanders into the house.

All this sets the stage for today's story, set in the lovely city of Boston, Massachusetts. Our company team is there for a convention, and we're staying downtown at the Omni Parker House, one of my favorite recurring hotels on our annual travel circuit. Home of two culinary treats (Parker House rolls and Boston Cream Pie, both of which they still make very well indeed), they also have The Last Hurrah, a storied bar which is about as old-school as a bar can get–walking in gives a sense of the political movers and shakers that have both drunk and said too much within its walls (indeed, the name of the bar is a nod to a political bestseller by Edwin O'Connor).

Our evening started with a bit of pub grub, and then my friend Nik and I decide to have a nightcap at the 21st Amendment. My wife and I had a great evening last year drinking at the bar with the bartender, but this year the bar was far too crowded (and the craft cocktails touted on the chalkboard last year had been replaced with the month's Sam Adams specials–we'll try again next year). Not to be thwarted in our efforts, we decide to retreat back to the hotel and The Last Hurrah.

Now, this was not necessarily a problem. I had a terrific drink at the Hurrah last year, and I recalled the drink menu as excellent. My larger, general problem is that retreating back to your hotel at the end of a night always seems to me an admission of defeat. "Well [insert city name here], I've had a great time today, but now, there's nothing you have to offer me that is more interesting than watching Adult Swim in my hotel room bed." I know that if I can just stay out for another hour, something terribly interesting is going to happen, and THEN I can collapse back at the hotel, having fought the good fight. The [insert hotel bar name here] is a coward's choice; I want a drink, but can't be tossed to find the best one available to me within walking/cab/train/rickshaw distance. Hotels are a tool, not a destination.

All that said, Nik and I pull up a seat at the bar and order a couple of cocktails. Nik lives a state away from me, but getting together with him is always fun, and as he's someone I've known for over 25 years, and I'm not letting the evening go down without a fight. The first round was excellent, and we decide that we should have a bit of Scotch to end the evening, and we peruse the extensive list that the Last Hurrah has.

I like Scotch, and I'll further specify that I like peaty Scotch. When I visited Edinburgh for the first time, I took the Scottish Whisky Heritage Tour (which apparently has become a carnival ride in my absence), and walked out of the tasting room ready to buy my first bottle of Scotch (a 17-year Ardbeg from the original version of the distillery, of which I still have a bit left). I've had (and have purchased) other varieties, but for me, it's that smoky, campfire nose that I love about Scotch; it's that property that makes it different from other alcohols and what I seek out when I go for a Scotch.

But an expert, or even an informed amateur, I am not. So, I asked the bartender for a recommendation. "I'm not the best person to ask. You should talk to our manager Frank," he said, pointing behind me.
"He's the one that put together the list." I turned to look.

When you see Frank Weber standing in The Last Hurrah, you immediately think, "Well, of COURSE he's the manager." He looks at home, comfortable, aware of his surroundings, and attentive to what is going on around him. Not a surprise, really–he bartended at New York's Maxwell's Plum in the 1960's, opened bars in Cincinnati in the 1970's, turned around a few establishments, competed in some mixology competitions, and is now settled in as the food and drink manager at the Omni Parker House. This is a man who has built an establishment to his standards, and is consequently the core of its being when he strides around the place. This is HIS bar.

"So–what do you know about Scotch?"

Since my Scotland trip, I've learned an bit about the regionality and classifications for Scotch; I've purchased a bottle every year when I've been in Frankfurt, I've tried a variety and have a pretty good sense of what I like and don't like. Still, in the moment, there was a decision to make: do I sputter out something like "Islay peaty argledy blah," or do I let the nice man with several decades of experience tell me a story?

I smiled. "Let's assume I know nothing."

Frank gave us the basic tour, introduced us to Ardbeg Galileo (which if anyone reading this runs across a bottle sitting on a shelf somewhere, I need to know immediately) and the Balvenie Caribbean Cask, but it was terrific to have someone give me the guided tour, letting him share his knowledge and his bar without any pressure. It was a marvelous end to the evening, and Frank spent enough time with us to be memorable. I use "enough time" very deliberately–not so much as to interfere with his other duties, not so much as to not leave us wanting more, and enough to make two lads out for a drink on a Thursday night in Boston very happy.

Could I have represented myself as having more knowledge? Sure, but what would have been the point? There are wide categories of spirits that I have little experience with (tequila, I'm looking at you), spirits with long histories like Scotch that I know only the broadest level of information about, and even for things I am comfortable with talking about in detail, I try to be around people that know more about these things than I, because I'm NOT the expert - I'm just the guy who drinks their work and sings their praises. I am happy to be the student in most of my interactions, as it means I get the benefits of the knowledge with none of the expectations. There are parts of my life where I am the expert, and I do the teaching, but as far as my ongoing exploration of spirits goes, I am content to learn and share.

The Steampunk Drink (Part 2)

So – we have Byrrh. Now what?

On the back of the Byrrh bottle, I found what turned out to be 95% of the drink I wanted to make. The Le Negociant is a 4-ingredient French lovefest:
- 1 ounce Byrrh
- 1 ounce rhum agricole (which means "rum made straight from sugarcane, skipping the molasses step)
- .5 ounce elderflower liqueur
- .5 ounce lemon juice

Rhum agricole is by default French, since Clément or Rhum JM are the usual go-tos, and both hail from Martinique in the French West Indies. "Elderflower liqueur" is St. Germain, and do not waste time with anything else. And with Byrrh's pedigree, we're not only solid French, but we're golden on the age of all of the above – 1866 for Byrrh, 1887 for rhum, and 1884 for the process used to make St. Germain. ("Le Negociant", by the way, refers to a French wine producer who buys grapes from a mix of smaller vineyards and combines them to create their own label's release.)

The drink is terrific - the Byrrh's red wine (and, to be clear, this is mistelle – fortified red wine that's sweeter than a traditional red) gives it a front sweetness, the St. Germain gives it floral and citrus notes and a gentle sweetness, the rhum adds a light rum flavor that contributes another sweet note, the herbals and undernotes of the Byrrh and the St. Germain dancing just out of reach. It's a great drink...

Von's 1000Spirits. I took their word for it.

...but I did say the word "sweet" four times in the above paragraph. One of my mandates, as you'll recall, was that the current drink being served was "too sweet." Now, this is not pina colada sweet, but it's definitely going to register as sweet on the palate. This is not necessarily going to be a problem, but the closer I can walk to the border of sweet and tart, the wider the audience I can reach with this drink.

So, we flash forward to September, on a beautiful night in Seattle where my friend Ron and I are walking the streets of Seattle looking for Byrrh. (In reality, we're just looking for drinks, but if you've got a goal, it's purposeful drinking, right?) Surprisingly, there was no Byrrh at Von's 1000Spirits (though I did pick up another nifty trick for the steampunk bartender), and I had a great throwback drink with a nifty local story. At The Diller Room, I got a pity-carding at the door (at my age, always appreciated), and a great side-by-side comparison of a variety of quinquinas. No Byrrh, but I did get to try Cocchi Americano straight for the first time (think Byrrh, but with a moscato base) and the local entry into the category, Chinato D'Erbetti. Both were interesting, but not what I was after...

Finally, we ended up at the Zig Zag Café, tucked away as you head down towards the shoreline from Pike Place Market. Ron had been there the night before, and had sung the praises of the place effusively. Ricardo was our bartender for the evening, and upon asking about Byrrh, immediately produced a bottle of the stuff for our amusement. So, we had him mix up a Le Negociant, parse it out into a couple of glasses for control sample purposes, and resolved to come up with the perfect variant of the drink for our purposes.

After a couple of abortive attempts to add additional ingredients, Ricardo made an observation. The sweet is coming from three sources in the drink; what if we can modify one of the existing spirits in the drink to take the sweet edge off? The Byrrh was off-limits, and the St. Germain is a beloved favorite, so the rhum became the sacrificial victim. I really wanted to keep rum, but didn't want to add a rum that would overwhelm the drink (Bacardi would add a sharp undertone, anything dark would drown out the herbals, and so on).

Suddenly, Ricardo reached over to the rack and pulled down a semi-familiar bottle – Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. This was one of the stars of our rum dinner from a few months ago, providing a knife-like palate-cleansing alongside foie gras. The rum is navy-strength (meaning that it would not prevent gunpowder from igniting), and is a blend of two traditional Jamaican run processes (part aged less than a year, part aged 18-36 months). Adding it to the drink not only took a bit of sweet out (both in its own flavor and in the extra proof knocking a bit out of the front of the drink), it added some additional spice notes that worked beautifully with the drink. And, as required for steampunk purposes, the Smith & Cross mark dates to 1788. We had our cocktail recipe.

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Bullseye Martini Glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

Finally, we needed a name. Adding the Smith & Cross gets us a British/French blend that doesn't have a lot of commonality–Jamaica was a British colony, and I couldn't find anything evocative of a connection between the spirits or the countries of origin. So, I fell back on the original creators of my primary ingredient. We're only swapping one ingredient from the Le Negociant, but both to separate it from that drink, and to not force inebriated passengers to butcher French in front of our poor bartender, a simple nod to The Violet Brothers seems in order.

The Violet Brothers
1 ounce Byrrh
1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
.5 ounce St. Germain
.5 ounce fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice in a cocktail strainer. Serve in a martini glass.

It's been a fun ride, and to all of my companions along the way, (especially Ricardo at the Zig Zag), I'm delighted to have a drink that I'm confident to pass along to our steampunk partygoers. Thanks to Kim Maita for the challenge, and if you try it, let me know what you think!

The Steampunk Drink (Part 1)

I met Kimberly Maita on a cruise ship. I'm sure that I talked to Kimberly, who runs an enterprise named Gamer Adventures, at a game convention or two before cruising with her, but I MET her onboard, over many drinks and shipboard relaxation. She is a delightful cruise coordinator, and a fun person to hang around with. (We keep trying to meet up in Las Vegas at Frankie's Tiki Room, but so far, no luck. The fact that we're still trying is to her credit.)

Early this year, I received a message from her, asking me to create a drink for her Steampunk Symposium onboard the Queen Mary in January. I said yes, because Kim is a friend and I figured it would be worth a few free drinks when next we met. Her requirements were modest–the current drink was "too sweet," and it should be something appropriate to the theme of the cruise.

I, of course, needed to make it harder. I had to rule out alcohols released after 1910 or so (which is pushing it for true steampunk, but I wanted some validation chronologically), and my starting point was something evocative of the theme. Steampunk is about creating an creative, just-off-center experience, with internal rules governing the flights of fancy on display. So, I wanted the drink to adhere to the same sorts of rules that I would apply to creating a costume for a steampunk event.

Additionally, there was one more rule Kim added: no absinthe. This struck me as an odd rule, and I'm not sure if this is a shipboard rule, or a personal preference, or just such a Victorian stereotype as to be instantly dismissed. This wasn't a huge deal, of course, but it did prevent one line of exploration (which would have been nice, as I have four bottles of the stuff at home, and I'd like an excuse to use a bit more of it than I do).

I also wanted to remember that this was going to be part of a cruise bar offering, of which its patrons are not known for their overall self-control. One drink becomes two, two becomes four, and by the end of the night it's hard to tell the rolling of the ship from the variations in gravity caused by your inebriated state. So, it needed to be a high-volume drink–no five-minute production processes, no eight-hour garnishes, but something that a working bartender could produce quickly and efficiently.

Two major avenues of exploration occurred to me. The first was to play off the "showy" side of steampunk–find something reactive in color or presentation that would provide a bit of a show during the production of the drink. In retrospect, it's not surprising that I found little on the subject; chemical reaction in consumables presents the challenge of taking two edible substances that combine into another edible substance, without the production of bad by-products or overly endo- or exothermic reactions. I'd love to explore this topic in the future, but I'm resigned to the the idea that it might need to be a much more controlled atmosphere for success than a working bar would provide. A few side explorations proved fruitless as well (who would have thought that Pop Rocks would be so very boring when added to vodka?...).

The second avenue also involved showmanship, but of an external variety. I imagined that a simple lightbox might be added to the bar as a mixing platform, allowing me to create blacklight-sensitive drinks. It's a very well-known fact that quinine is blacklight-reactive, casting off a bluish glow under ultraviolet. As quinine is an ingredient in tonic water, it means that any drink that uses tonic water to any great extent will provide that glow. Thing is, it works best with clear drinks–a gin and tonic is very pretty as the clear drink glows blue, but introduce any other color to the drink and the effect gets washed out enough as to not justify the extra bother of a lightbox.

This was my research status as of May, when I made a trip out to Charlottesville, Virginia for a Mayfair Games production meeting. When people ask if I play games for a living, these are the days where I can say "yes" - fourteen hour days where we're hammering at designs, or churning through a design an hour, or eating while discussing games and game designs. But, this is being done in a beautiful, relaxed setting, in the shadow of Monticello, with friends who are as engaged and focused on the games at hand as I (and usually more so).

The drink is pictured in the
Wave Polka Dot Shooter
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements
website

On our last day, we were making our traditional morning run to Spudnuts (a now-defunct national chain, with individual franchisees still operating, that makes lighter-than-air potato flour doughnuts). Needing my morning mocha, I wandered across the street to The Farm C'ville, a small grocery/deli with a bit of a wine selection on the side. While waiting for my coffee, I glanced over at a display shelf next to the register, and was immediately fixated on the word "quinquina." This is important because it means that it's in a family of apertifs that includes cinchona bark, which means quinine.

What I was looking at was Byrrh (pronounced "beer," to the dismay of anyone wanting to buy a bottle somewhere, and having to start every conversation with a clerk with "Do you carry [beer]?"). It's an French herbal aperitif, created by two French brothers in 1866 and marketed as a health drink. In a typical French manner, they use red wine as the base, and the drink is sweet, but with a palate-clearing edge thanks to the quinine fluttering about at the end of the taste. It fell out of fashion pre-Prohibition in the US and has only been available again since 2012, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

I immediately snagged up a bottle, somehow knowing in my heart of hearts that this was the ingredient I needed to inspire my drink. But what to do with it?

That, dear friends, is a story for next week...

To Tell a Story

So, I had dinner with F. Paul Pacult a couple of months ago.

F. Paul Pacult runs the Spirit Journal newsletter, on top of an impressive body of writing, books and efforts to improve the exposure and quality of spirits (and their coverage). Rum is a particular passion of his (as is evidenced by his Rum For All initiative). This is a man who is passionate and knowledgeable about spirits. So, yeah, a person you would like to have dinner with.

And, when I say "with F. Paul Pacult" I really mean "with Steve, in a room with F. Paul Pacult." Steve's a friend of mine who I get together with every so often to drink and chat. It's something I look forward to every time, because he is funny and engaging and smart and picks up the tab half the time. He arranged for us to attend the event at The Ravens Club in Ann Arbor, and was my compatriot in crime for the evening.

And, when I say "dinner," I mean a five course extravaganza, paired with eight samplings of rum (plus a drink upon arrival). You can see the menu and drink list here. This was an amazing evening, with great food, wonderful company, and a funny and knowledgeable host. I want you to repeat that last sentence over and over again as we continue with our little story.

Before. (After is left to the imagination.)

So, when we sat down to dinner, we were already one drink into our evening, and had a row of eight shotglasses lined up for our pairings. All of the rums were great (half of them were already part of my bar, and a fifth has been since added–more on that next week). I immediately managed to knock over one (the Ron Zacapa 23 Year, which is as heinous an act of alcohol abuse as I've managed in a while), which was graciously replaced. We were a happy band of adventurers, ready for our rum exploration.

Thing is, that Paul is an enthusiastic presenter, and both he and us were eagerly anticipating each new rum we approached. So much so, that we got a bit ahead of the kitchen, as in we were on rum five about the time course two arrived from the kitchen. We were all desperately trying to hold a little back from each glass for the appropriate food, but rum is SOOOOOOOO good.

At this point, let us state a truism. We were a room of intelligent, sophisticated adults, there to learn about rum and to appreciate the nuances of the spirits presented. We were a warm and appreciative audience. But, good intentions aside, we were on our sixth drink when our second small plate was served. Whoever you may be, six drinks and you're going to be a bit on the toasty side.

And this is, of course, also the moment that our urbane New York City host realized that he was trapped in a room full of drunk Midwesterners. He'd already had to shush us more than a room of third graders, and by the time we took a break to let the kitchen catch up, one imagines he was already inwardly terrified that we'd all break out the Schlitz beer and start a spontaneous fish fry or something.

I took advantage of the break to approach him, finding him at the bar positioned as to protect his body from the increasing levels of inebriated provincialism in the room. I'd like to think I was coherent and concise, thanking him for the event and gushing for a moment over Ron Zacapa Etiqueta Negra (a 23-year dark rum with a Germany- and Italy-only release). He was gracious, also a fan of the Etiqueta Negra, and appreciative of my enthusiasm for his presentation.

You see, despite the amount of knowledge we were given, and the new rums explored (the Clement 6-Year Rhum Agricole was a revelation, and the Smith and Cross pairing with the foie torchon was amazing), one of his points–a side point, perhaps, for him, but my biggest takeaway from the evening–is that our preferences and favorites, and indeed the spirits themselves, are as much about the mythology, the history, the research–the storytelling–as the flavors themselves.

This blog is devoted to alcohol, but it's the story of myself and alcohol. I rely on experiences and repetition more than my unremarkable palate, and lean on the knowledge and bars of professionals as much as possible. If there's any particular skill that I bring to the table, it's telling the story of why a drink or an alcohol should be worthy of your attention–but not until I have a good story to tell.

And I've been remiss in my storytelling. I hope to get back on track in the next couple of weeks, and I have stories to tell–scotch in Boston, my steampunk drink journey, and more. So, welcome back, and I'll try and do a better and more timely job with entries.

Also, yay rum.

Rumtopf and Kaiserschmarrn

I had to think a bit to come up with my first exposure to the concept of rumtopf, but I found it: a New Your Times article in 2010 describing the general concept and singing its praises. Anything with rum gets my attention, and I made a mental note to investigate this concept before the next growing season came along.

In general, the directions are simple (rum + fruit + sugar), but of course we immediately started to improvise when we started the process in the spring of 2011. Rather than the large ceramic jar that seems to be the favorite of traditionalists, we went with a series of mason jars, so that we could control the batches as well as have portions suitable for gift-giving. You're going to go through a LOT of rum no matter how you do this, though; I'd guess we used between 6 and 8 bottles of rum before we were done. I used a 50/50 mix of Bacardi white and Myers's rum; I wanted the neutral rum bite of the Bacardi, but also the dark-sweet taste of the Myers's.

The general rule of thumb is to put in a layer of fruit, pour a coating of sugar over it, and then fill the container so that the rum is a half-inch above the fruit. There's no stirring or mixing, no special preservatives, refrigeration or treatments necessary; as long as the rum is above the fruit, everything's good. If you begin to see any fermentation (the usual bubbles forming), the suggestion is to spike it with a bit of 151 rum, but we never saw any evidence of anything untoward in any of our jars.

Our goal was to use all local fruits, continuing to layer fruit and sugar throughout the span of the growing season. Here's what made it into our 2011 rumtopf:

• Strawberries
• Cherries (sweet black)
• Raspberries
• Gooseberries
• Plums
• Peaches
• Apricots

Here's a handy guide to some suggested (and discouraged) fruits to put into your rumtopf.

After the last fruit made it in at the end of August, we sealed the jars, and let them sit until December. About two-thirds of them went out the door as Christmas gifts, and we're looking to use the last of the jars we have this winter, doing a new batch in 2013. Some uses that we've had for it, or that giftees have reported back:

• Deglazing lamb/fowl/pork
• Spooning over ice cream
• Blenderizing fruit and rum, stewing down to syrup and using over pancakes/waffles/crepes
• A fruity spike in drinks (champagne, sangria)
• Straining out the fruit and drinking the liquid as a cordial

...and this is where the article lay, ready to publish, until last week. I'm with my wife at IKEA, admiring the many uses for lingonberries, when Julie ooh'ed at a bag of frozen Swedish pancakes. "You know what we could make with that/" she asked, and it only took a moment to catch up to her thought.

When we're in Essen Germany for the Essen Spiel Fest, one of our dinners is at an Austrian sports bar a couple of blocks south of the hotel. Sylter Kliff features a variety of tasty foods, but the first time that we ate there, the hostess served us an off-menu treat called "Kaiserschmarr'n"("Kaiser" means "king", and "Schmarrn" has become the English word "smear"). Basically, this is caramelized thin German-style pancakes, traditionally with rum-soaked raisins and plum sauce. When it's served to us, it's one giant platter of fruity, pancakey heaven for dessert.

Kaiserschmarrn, on a squiggle serving dish, available by
special order from Contemporary Complements

So, instead of just the obligatory picture of a canning jar full of fruit floating in rum, we've got this little bit of food porn to show you. My prep was very easy (here's a recipe you can use for details): place some rumtopf liquid into a pan over low heat until syrupy. Place a handful of raisins into a small bowl and cover with rum for 30 minutes. Either cook up the pancakes, or use a few from your frozen bag from IKEA (one note: I'd sear the IKEA pancakes over a bit of heat and butter, maybe 30 seconds a side, before the next step to get them up to temperature and to put a bit of crisp into the outside of the pancakes). Honestly, a basic batter here is so simple - 1 egg, a half-cup of flour and 3/4 cup milk, adjusting the flour up slightly to thicken the pancakes - that I'd usually just make them myself (and my batter leaves out the sugar from the Allrecipes version - you won't miss it).

Tear the pancakes into large bits (inch-by-inch or a bit larger) and toss them in a pan over medium-high heat with some butter; add in the rum raisins. Once tossed a bit, add a tablespoon or so of melted butter, and then introduce powdered sugar to the pan (again, Allrecipes has specific quantities, but just imagine you're making roux, and add sugar until the butter has been absorbed). Give the pancakes a minute or two to really sear and caramelize; a few crispy bit are good for this. Transfer the pancakes to a plate, add some additional berries if desired, and then drizzle the rumtopf glaze over the top. It should look something like this:

Rum and fruit and pancakes and yum.

So: Kaiserschmarrn is a showy, fancy Austrian dessert that's really easy to make and looks impressive, and it's a great use for rumtopf. And rumtopf is as easy as anything you can make, and it really is drinking or eating a bit of summer. If you have access to fresh fruit, and you're a fan of rum, I can't recommend this enough!

Fire! Fire! Fire!

The Nuremberg Toy Fair is a Big Deal for the industry I work in. It's held in the sprawling Messe complex outside the city, and it's the largest toy trade show in the world. I spent a week talking (and playing) with a variety of game designers and industry folks, having a generally wonderful time. However, on the last day of the fair, everyone pulls down their booth (well, not everyone–most people have already left by the weekend, leaving schlubs like us to pull things down) and heads for the non-Nuremberg hills. This left me alone to feed myself in Nuremberg. The FOOLS!

Sure, I'd been eating wonderful regional German food at Steichele and Landbierparadies. The German beer had been frequent and copious, and although I hadn't eaten at Hutt'n yet, I had been by to pick up my now-annual bottle of Weihnachtslikör. So, forgive me if I decided to go non-traditional for my last meal.

Take a walk northeast from the Weißer Turm U-Bahn stop up towards the river, and just before you would cross the bridge to travel over to the Trödelmarkt (a tiny little shopping area on an island in the middle of the Pegnitz), you take a left down a dark residential street for a couple of blocks, and you'll find yourself at the Kon Tiki.

"Dinner?" I was asked (apparently I always look American) as I walked in the door, and a quick nod later I had an apertif thrust into my hand as I'm being escorted to my table. An auspicious start, thinks I.

I get to the table, peruse the drinks menu (dinner can wait), and I notice at the bottom their "Kon Tiki Surprise." Now, I am a bit self-conscious about things that include the word "surprise" in their description. If I'm in a group, one can order anything in the spirit of group experimentation, but, say, ordering the Mai-Kai Mystery Drink by myself would make me feel just a bit pervy (and not in a good way), doubly so since EVERYBODY'S WATCHING. So, maybe the Kon Tiki surprise is a really good drink, maybe two Samoan linebackers are going to burst out of the kitchen and beat the crap out of me. Only one way to find out, I suppose...

So the server comes back in a couple of minutes. A small sigh of relief: no parade, no sombreros to be forced onto my head, just a large, insanely garnished drink with a couple of sparklers stuck into the enclosing pineapple.

"Heh - better put those sparklers out before I start drinking..." thinks I.

The server sets down the drink, smiles, pulls out a lighter, and then sets off a car flare in the middle of my drink. You think I'm kidding. BEHOLD. I now have a 3-foot jet of flame shooting out of my drink, dangerously close to a triple-strong pool of alcohol, and I'm in a small alcove and EVERYTHING I'M SURROUNDED WITH IS BAMBOO.

So, yeah, Cloverfield-like, when confronted with a life-threatening event, I immediately pull out my phone to take a picture. This way, when they pull my charred, bamboo-fused remains from the ashes of the restaurant, my final moments will be sitting in the iCloud in order for my wife to print out and place in a frame on my coffin. (Most likely, with the caption "See what I had to deal with?")

This was the highlight of the experience, but only by a narrow margin, as the next thing to hit the table was my appetizer. Now, I've had pu pu platters, where I get to take my skewer of beef and add a little char at the table; I've had sizzling stone appetizers, where I get to place my paper-thin slices of meat on a hot rock and grill them. What I've not done in the past is cook raw meat over Sterno. Not that namby-pamby Sterno can that gets served inside a metal can on a wire rack underneath a hot place with a spoon to remove your food with–here, I get a bunch of raw flesh on skewers (completely murdering a pineapple just to have something to stick the skewers into), and a CUP of Sterno, alight in a coffee mug that's been wrapped in aluminum foil. I. Have. Proof.

I'd like to say that I have a recipe here, or at least a moral of some kind, but I don't. I enjoyed my dinner, the Surprise drink threw me under a bus more than one drink has in some time, and I got back to my hotel contented and char-free. Whether their trust in their guests is misplaced is debatable, although they've been open for 35 years without too much of a body count (presumably). I do know that the Ann Arbor fire marshall prevented a restaurant from serving s'mores with a Sterno can sealed inside a large iron centerpiece, so one can imagine the conniption our marshall would experience if presented with either of the above experiences. In any event, this record simply stands as homage to a nice evening out in Nuremberg. And next year, when I go back for dinner, you'll have this for my shrine at the funeral home if I don't get my pictures taken fast enough.