what’s wrong with this picture? blue. a martini shouldn’t be blue. your bar doesn’t need to stock curaçao because tidibowl.
on the plus side, commander’s palace is one of several old-school new orleans restaurants to encourage a now-rare pleasure, one that in my lifetime has gone from standard to illicit. i speak, of course, of day-drinking. Continue reading drinking problems (two)
first (and firmly): my habit is to relabel ‘problems’ as ‘opportunities’, but in the realm of alcohol, that doesn’t work. the surest way to know you have a drinking problem is that you seek drinking opportunities. if that’s you, then click on elsewhere; our premise today is that while measured drinking is convivial, being a drunk is loathsome.
first boundary in place, we can look at drinking as part of a healthy and happy life. a tot, a snort, a dram– no matter what you call it (and after sex and money, alcohol has prompted more slang than any other human realm) having a drink is a pleasure. the best way to increase that pleasure is not through greater intake, but with more care, consideration, and confidence. here are some lessons for the bar. . . Continue reading drinking problems (one)
the dennis severs house is rich and layered, a great fat cake of visual detail, of dense narrative, decades in the making, overwhelming by design. david hockney called the experience of it ‘one of the world’s great operas’. for concentrated passion and sensory intensity, for high rococo-cuckoo, operatic seems about right.
the house is jam-packed, not only with objects, but also with object lessons. naming and claiming those lessons, in the face of such ‘too-much-ness’, is a tall order. luckily, i know how to tackle a cake: let’s take just one slice, and learn from dennis severs as host.
being a great guest and being a great host are both on my mind. we’ve just enjoyed several nights of my parent’s masterful hospitality on the brogden road. meanwhile, back in atlanta, the finer details of guest spaces over on stovall street are coming into focus. i’m not sure if it’s god or the devil who dwells in the details, but i’m sure that mastery of detail makes for great hospitality.
Continue reading guesting/hosting (lessons from the brogden road)