The Snapper

 

Barbara,

 

This is the manager, Justin from last night. I’m writing in regards to your snapper which you ordered and never received.

 

I want to tell you about my middle school principal. I can’t remember his name. A towering man who would speak only in song as he chastised us and handed out detention slips. As he walked the hallways, we would hear him before we saw him- because he had this incredibly rhythmic snap. It popped like the crack of a gunshot. “Ticky tacky mr. Justin with no belt looks slacky. One hour of detention.” He was so weird.

 

We’ll get to your fish in a second.

 

It was common knowledge that this man had spent time in Vietnam during the war. He was a stern guy, and kind of weird. What do you think he saw out there in the shit, Barbara? I think he saw terrible things. I could read it on his face, even though I could barely understand as a 12-year-old.

 

Trauma leaves marks on us Barbara, the way water carves canyons into mountains. And here was a man, molded into the strangest geological formation, just still doing his thing. I think the snap was where his power came from. He probably watched the light leave a man’s eyes and held him so that he didn’t have to die alone. Decades later he would give me a full day of detention for sticking carrots up my nose.

 

I think subconsciously I internalized that magnificent snap he had, as a way of focusing my scattered attention, of collecting my thoughts. I know it seems like a tangent but my mind went to him when your email found me, drunk on raspberry brandy on my patio, doing knife tricks. This will be important later I promise.

 

I am so sorry we forgot your snapper. Please don’t be upset with your server, he’s a good guy, an honest guy. It was a whole chain of command that broke down. It’s not just us, but the simulation that wronged you, it is definitely crashing. The vast algorithm that is our deterministic destiny fucked you, and honestly, I’m just as pissed as you are.

 

Im sorry about the snapper but Barbara, I gotta tell you- that snapper is gone forever. You’re never going to see it again and there is nothing you can do about it in this life or the next. I’ve seen your other timelines and in every single one, there is nothing we could have done to get you the snapper. It is your destiny to be denied this snapper.

 

Do you think it was because of negligence or lack of concern? Barb, holy shit. If I thought it would work, I would use shaped explosive charges to crack open tungsten bank vaults. I would assemble a sniper rifle on a Belarusian rooftop in the dead of night. I would enter The Gateway and steal that snapper from a happier timeline and poison the fabric of reality on my way out the cosmic door, just to make your dining experience special.

 

But all my tricks and all my navy SEAL gear are not enough to make it happen after the fact. For that I am truly sorry.

 

Please give us a chance to make it up to you. Please come into my apartment and sit in my empty bathtub. I will light every candle I own (approximately 80), pour you a glass of expensive scotch into a hand-cut crystal tumbler, and we will get to the bottom of this snapper thing.

 

Allow me to sit at a tasteful distance on the floor my bathroom as I make my case: I don’t think you needed that snapper in the first place. That snapper was holding you back, it was a weight on your shoulders and now that it’s gone for good you are finally free. You’re glowing.

 

And don’t think I didn’t notice the bravery it took to speak up. Many people in this world are filled with fear, Barbara- not you. From the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate the critical feedback. We want to know if we screw something up, and people don’t always feel comfortable saying something. We are emotionally invested in being huge badasses on the floor of this restaurant, and every mistake drives us mad, like a splinter in our brains. It’s not a healthy worldview, but this is just the way we are. We keep the knives sharp in case we need to reclaim our lost honor by disemboweling ourselves. The service industry is not for the faint of heart.

 

Sometimes I feel like that middle school principal. I’ve seen horrors too Barb. I’m grateful to be out of the jungle, but jesus is it weird to be in charge of anything. We hang onto this idea that we move forward in life when we’re ready. Like we’ve trained for something and some unseen arbiter is like, ok you’re ready to manage the comings and goings of other people. It just sounds like bullshit, you know?

 

I became a manager at the age of 22 after the GM was arrested. I was not then, nor am I now ready for the responsibilities placed upon me, your snapper being one of a myriad of challenges I don’t fully know how to handle. But at some point, we have to realize that the people that wait until they’re ready are never going to get to play the game.

 

I’ll do anything to buy the wine I want to sell Barbara. Letting you sit in my tub and drink my scotch is a small price to pay for autonomy. I’ll do so much more. Way more than makes sense, way more than is healthy. But I know why I do it, this is where my self-worth comes from. These days though if feels like a compulsion or a tic, I don’t know. I’m pretty concerned that if I don’t receive cool wine on a regular basis, I will fucking die. Handling customer service issues with empathy like this, it's just a pathway to my next fix.

 

That wasn’t meant to be a guilt trip - please help yourself to as much Springbank 21 as you like.

 

I don’t have a snapper for you but I have something more useful- I’m gonna teach you how to snap like that man.

 

First things first, this snap is not meant to be directed towards someone. It is my duty to inform you that snapping AT someone in a service situation is extremely rude. If you snap at the wrong person, you will put yourself in great danger. They will never find your body.

 

Best case scenario, you’re gonna want to pour a tiny bit of liquid on your hand to make sure the sound really travels- the scotch will work just fine. Raise your hand as high as you can get it, stand on a chair if one is available, like you’re looking for a cell signal.

 

This next part is the most important part Barbara: visualize the thing that is driving you insane. This is to be used for existential complaints, for things that regular channels cannot solve.

 

Then finally, press your thumb and middle finger together until your middle finger slips and collides with your palm hard enough to split atoms. You can do it once, you can do it a few times if you like.

 

This is our prayer, Barbara. It’s never answered, but if you’re doing it right, you’ll grow accustomed to the screeching madness of reality and you won’t have a psychotic break when something goes wrong. Something is always going wrong, hourly. That’s just the job. I don’t mean it in a mean way, but your snapper wasn’t special in terms of dragons I tried to slay that evening.

 

What is special is that you wanted to be heard about what went awry and well, hopefully it’s obvious we’re hearing you. We can hear everything from miles away.

 

To tell you the truth Barbara, I empathize with your pain in this whole snapper mess. I’m looking for a snapper too- a snapper I was supposed to get but didn’t. If you’re snapping for that snapper later, will you do it for me as well? I could go for a snapper, but honestly any fish, cooked respectfully would do nicely.

 

I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today Barbara. I’ll need you to finish the rest of your Scotch and get out of my bathtub. I have to get back to my knife tricks. 

The Raccoon Situation

Click here for the version of this that appeared in Good Beer Hunting.

It was early summer in 2008, and I was a 23-year-old sommelier at a fancy restaurant. We were gearing up for a busy Saturday evening.

After lineup I noticed my manager motioning for me to join him in the mezzanine above the dining room. He was waving his hand in short, urgent come-hither motions and inhaling rapidly, his eyes wide and crazy, his head whipping around, looking for something.

“What’s up Kay?” As I ascended the staircase I smelled bloated, dead bodies decomposing in locked cars on a freeway, abandoned in a nameless cataclysm. My nostrils flared defensively, making it worse- green, rotten slabs of meat braising in seafood restaurant summer dumpster juice. A warm, endless island of wet shit, melting and swirling into an ocean of burning poison. It was horrifying sensory data to ingest in a steakhouse, to the tune of Frank Sinatra, among tables of pressed white linens and crystal stemware. To date, it is the clearest most picturesque smell memory of death I possess. The icy tingle of panic had started in the periphery of my brain, and I fought back the urge to puke on the carpet.

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet

Through his teeth Kay said, “A fucking raccoon died in the wall.” It was never clear to me how he knew it was a raccoon, but there was no time to wonder: the dead raccoon smell was fully compromising every table in the mezzanine. We had over 300 covers on the books, and if we didn’t seat the tables, the wait would grow interminably long. Impatient regulars would riot, and tear us limb from limb. They freak out when we don’t have Duckhorn “Three Palms” Merlot in stock, or when we forget to offer them a black napkin for their eveningwear. So there was no way this didn’t involve me getting screamed at by a pediatric surgeon who desperately needed a beefy, winey escape from his 16 hour workday bringing sick children back from the edge of death, and occasionally failing.

a pawn and a king

I was very young at this point in my life and definitely not fit to solve complex, bizzare problems like this. Kay was using every muscle in his face to frown. He was staring INTO the wall, looking beyond the drywall and support beams and (I believe this) actually looking at the stupid, dead raccoon, with the kind of astral plane third eye that only a fully panicked restaurant manager on duty has the power to summon. I felt it too, the hate emanating from Kay towards our furry little Icarus: chasing a bug in our walls until his hubris cost him everything. Now they were our problem. No, before you think it, there was not a drop of air freshener in the building. Suddenly it came to him and he blurted, “GET ME A TRAY JACK” and he flew down the stairs, three at a time, bounding towards the kitchen.

I've been up and down and over and out

With shaking hands I assembled the tray jack while Kay came back with a portable propane burner. “I’ll be right back”, he practically jumped the whole flight of stairs. Based on the evidence so far it seemed he was going to make tableside bananas foster. In the empty mezzanine. As an offering to our dead raccoon? I was completely lost.

and I know one thing

As a large party walked in, Kay did the thing that I only now know how to do- turn off the subroutine that transmits your emotions to your face, and instead pull on a mask of calm, collected sanity. “Welcome back folks! Happy Birthday!” His pace slowed just enough to imply that he was not proceeding directly towards an emergency with a block of butter and a deli container of a mysterious substance.

We do this every day, by the way- something is always going horribly wrong, and we are joyfully carrying on our conversation about your fishing trip in the Ozarks while a bartender whispers in my ear that cobras are coming out of the toilets and the hand sinks are slowly filling with blood. I can think of few other industries that teach us how to stare unflinching, directly into the eyes of chaos without blinking.

each time I find myself

Kay put his mis-en-place on the guerdon behind him and lit up the portable burner on top of the tray jack. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he set the burner on high, and set a non-stick pan on top of it.

“Kay what the hell are you doing? And how do I help?”

He took out the brick of butter, unwrapped it and dropped it into the pan. It glided across the hot pan quickly, beginning to bubble and brown.

laying flat on my face

“This is an old trick I learned from years of working in an Italian restaurant!” He opened up a pint container to reveal the secret ingredient: finely chopped fresh garlic. The butter was now a pool, and he inverted the container. For a blink of an eye it clung to its container.

“Works every time!”

As I watched the garlic fall in slow motion, I had several questions, but the big ones were, what exactly is this a trick for, and what does it succeed in doing every time? Surely he wasn’t talking about a trick Italian restaurants use to make dead animal smells go away, right? This isn’t a problem that Italian joints deal with disproportionately- animals crawling into the walls to die… right??

The garlic hit the pan and hissed violently.

I just pick myself up and get

It took one heartbeat for the smell explosion to reach me- a golden brown, buttery wave of hot umami rolled over me and enveloped me in its oily embrace. To this day the memory of it still makes my eyes water with that far-away feeling of a beautiful, tender moment. It was a moment of feeling completely safe and content. It was so much more than a smell- Kay had cast a powerful enchantment that I watched pour down the stairs and flow in real time across the main dining room, striking each guest in waves as the mushroom cloud of pure flavor swept across their bodies.

One by one, their conversations dwindled and smiles crept across their faces. They started looking around for the source of this feeling, but Kay was actually fully hidden from line of sight in the mezzanine. The music got louder, the light got dimmer but warmer. Any fake smiles fully transformed into genuine, crinkle-at-the-corner-of-the-eyes grins. Then we heard them say it one way or another:

“Something smells amazing!”  “Wow, I am starving.” “They’re cooking something tasty somewhere!”

Kay’s garlic hex seized the room and we were transported to a restaurant that was just a little bit better. Our food was great, the wine list ranneth over, but this was that extra something. This was the smell of the 70 year old Italian maitre’d that remembers your name and knows to cue the bar to start shaking that massive dirty vodka martini just the way you like it. It smelled like that little two top being whisked out of nowhere so that you and yours can have a front row seat to watch Old Blues Eyes or some analog thereof croon in a just-smoky-enough room. Like we were a part of something big, even though it was just a few hundred people. It was the union of people that wanted to be taken care of, and people that wanted to take care of someone.

Back in the race

I wheeled back to Kay, and I took a deep breath. The nightmarish raccoon corpse smell was gone- all that remained was our garlicky celebration of life.

“It’s working.” I yelped. “It works!”

Kay looked me in the eyes, grabbed the pan, and swiftly tossed the hot garlic in the air, never breaking eye contact. It landed neatly back into the pan. He smiled, soothed as the encore rose up like a typhoon to re-baste every guest.

“Every time.” He reminded me.

That’s life!

Another beat elapsed. “So… what are you gonna do with all this cooked garlic?”

“No fucking idea. Just stand here and enjoy it for a second longer.”

In that moment I felt bad for hating the raccoon so much. The garlic made our pulse stabilize, our fists unclench, and we could see that the raccoon wasn’t trying to ruin our lives. This was no kamikaze mission; they probably just saw something shiny. It’s the kind of trouble I would be in danger of getting into. I’m grateful nobody builds traps with nice half bottles of amontillado to lure me- it would be easy to kill me. I would be the one stinking up someone else’s Saturday night.

In the privacy of my own thoughts, I dedicated this dinner service to the raccoon. I made a note that everyone here was secretly celebrating a raccoon wake, and raising a glass to that crazy fuck. Here’s to you- long dead trash panda: may you find all the unsecured dumpsters full of fresh produce, discarded by some wasteful line cooks in the sky. I ate a piece of rock lobster tail off of a dirty plate in your honor that night.

There was probably someone in the restaurant that didn’t enjoy the smell of garlic. That evening, they had the good sense to shut their mouths, as they knew in their hearts that they were wrong.

…

While all bars and restaurants are shut down to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, I know I speak for my service industry brethren when I say we find ourselves fantasizing about even the weirdest, worst nights of service in our lives. We would give anything to be quadruple sat with no support. To watch a ticket printer screech out eighteen feet of food tickets for a solid ninety seconds, all with dietary restrictions, poorly worded by weeded servers at the POS. I would give anything to argue with someone about how absinthe does not actually make you hallucinate, a conversation I once tired of.

I think of the garlic raccoon as one of the psychotic, joyful moments I miss right now that I am unable to work the floor of Public Services or Penny Quarter. Fortunately I’ve grown a lot as an operator since the night of the garlic raccoon, and enjoy the company of many seasoned badasses as business partners and coworkers today. I am a little more ready for every curveball I receive, and am far less likely to fry garlic as a solution to a problem.

There are lots of service industry professionals metaphorically frying garlic in the middle of this catastrophe right now. As one of them, allow me to confirm that global virus pandemics are not covered in standard hospitality training. We know how to do all kinds of things in service of your big night. But we have no idea how to survive, financially or emotionally, when our purpose has been taken by a necessary shutdown of our businesses. 

If you feel like helping, there are several things you can do to help us.

1. SPEAK UP ON OUR BEHALF

Fill out the following google document and mail it (electronically, physically, ideally both) to your representatives and senators. Economic aid packages being crafted right now disproportionately serve industries that can afford lobbyists, and corporations that already have political clout. Please consider speaking up for yourself, or if you’re not it the industry- speak up for those of us who struggle to make our voices heard.

CLICK HERE FOR LETTER TEMPLATE

2. INVITE OTHERS TO SPEAK UP

Share the methods of communication you used with other people on social media. Tell them during your now frequent evening face time sessions with everyone. Spreading the word to others is an important part of this.

3. CONTINUE TO SUPPORT SMALL BARS, RESTAURANTS, AND RETAILERS

If you have the ability to purchase to go or delivery items from the small businesses you used to frequent, KEEP DOING IT! Maybe they’re asking for donations for their staff in the event they cannot open at all- put something in their tip jar if they’ve touched your life in a meaningful way.

4. TELL YOUR STORY

If you have a good story about a bar or restaurant, share it. Guests and staff are both currently deprived of the experience of dining and drinking out. Remind people why it matters emotionally (not just that it represents 15 million people and a real chunk of the US economy).

5. FRY SOME GARLIC

It works. Everytime.

SOMMELIER OF FORTUNE

I have lived and worked in Houston, Texas my entire life. I would describe Texas as a mostly sane place, but one feature I still notice as being slightly odd is the preponderance of gun magazines on the rack at the grocery store. Today I counted ten (10) magazines that featured reviews of pistols and long arms for various purposes. As much as I enjoy guns, I’ve never felt compelled to discuss the merits of a weapon with the written word. Until now.

I’m talking, of course, about the Champagne Machinegun.

Maybe watch the demo video below on silent if you don’t like EDM.

It's rough

The gun is made by a French nightclub-product company called Extra-Night, and distributed stateside by a gentleman in Miami named Jeremy Touitou. Mr. Touitou had built his empire on sparklers used to present bottles in clubs, so it would make sense that he remains on the bleeding edge of novel applications for sparkling wine in clubs.

I’m extremely pleased that someone has thought critically about a way to get people excited about spraying sparkling wine onto others. Methode Champenois sparkling wine is exciting even before being opened- no beverage on the planet is more dangerously carbonated at six atmospheres of pressure. This miracle of chemistry allows us the joyous spectacle of saberage. But that’s old news now- this is the next evolution of gregarious, attention-seeking champagne usage- delivering it across the room to a stranger’s face, potentially without their consent.

I have not personally held or tested this champagne machinegun, but based on pictures and video, combined with a little bit of weapon and sparkling wine knowledge, I’m prepared to discuss the pros and cons of this device.

The CMG does allow one to spray sparkling wine with more accuracy and stability than just holding your thumb over the bottle. It does this by introducing a rear and forward grip to the bottle with a chassis that resembles a tommy gun. It further improves on the thumb-on-the-bottle method by giving the champagne a narrow channel to flow through, regulating the rate of flow to a speed that empties a magnum in about 45 to 60 seconds. The CMG currently only fits magnums. This product was conceived to encourage sales of large format sparkling wine in clubs. I have every reason to believe it will succeed, because it is completely crazy, and people with money love crazy bullshit like this.

Since it is the first gun on the market that shoots champagne, we can say by a lack of competition that is it the best. However there is a lot of room for improvement and for the sake of progress, we should discuss the CMG’s shortcomings openly:

-It is full-auto only. Because this isn’t an actual gun with moving parts, it’s just a more stable way to hold a magnum while you shake it up to force wine out. Rocking the gun back and forth causes it to begin “firing”- this is an extremely imprecise method of firing. Full auto is only helpful if you intend to engage a large grouping of targets, or intend to engage one target heavily. Perhaps this is easy to accept if you’re firing a magnum of inexpensive cava, but let’s assume you’re rolling into the baby shower packing a mag of something more precious like Pierre Peters “Les Chetillons”, you’ll want to choose your targets more judiciously instead of spray and pray. Multiple firing modes like semiautomatic, and burst fire should be added if you wish to encourage truly high-end champagne shoot-outs.

-Its flashy appearance is not in tune with what the gun-loving public likes. I can understand the logic in selecting a tommy gun as the design for the CMG- it’s a classic American gangster weapon, associated with kingpins and ruthless crime bosses. However aside from the errant shiny gun in a rap video, the public wants modern, tactical looking guns, AKA Black Rifles. Sure, making it in various shiny colors makes sense in a club setting, but if they really want to see this weapon proliferated, they need to make it look like something you would plausibly see in a recent release of Call of Duty.

-It has no ability to accommodate accessories or modifications. A major oversight of the CMG is its lack of weapon attachment rails. These are essential for adding cool-looking and maybe practical devices like scopes, flashlights, lasers, even under-barrel grenade launchers (in case you have to blow up a car to squirt champagne on someone behind it).

-The price is $459. Just to put this price in context, you can get many different real guns for less than this. I don’t think I’m asking for too much for this to cost less than real guns. Right?

-Lastly, the gun does nothing to increase the effective range of champagne exiting a bottle. As mentioned before it is merely a glamorous holster for you to shake a bottle inside of. It is very unsatisfying that the firer does not get to actually pull a trigger.

I am not listing these faults in an attempt to discredit or undermine the Champagne Machinegun, Mr. Touitou, or Extra-Night. On the contrary, I am interested in pushing this idea forward, and creating a mass proliferation of champagne weapons. Here are a few additional suggestions for how to improve on this very good, albeit super crazy idea:

-Create a more powerful version that enhances the range of the gun by diverting sparkling wine into a secondary pressurized chamber. Making the wine come out of the actual gun barrel would be nice. Also, a semiautomatic fire mode would be a huge step up in conserving ammunition.

-Create a larger version that can accommodate various sizes of sparkling wine bottles up to as large as a Nebuchadnezzar (16 Liters). Obviously this will be prohibitively heavy to carry, so it will need to be mounted to a vehicle. A stretch hummer should do nicely.

-Create a smaller version that can shoot an entire bottle of champagne in 1 second. Sounds crazy right? It already exists. In the late 90’s Super Soaker released the CPS 2000, a water gun that could fire up to a liter of water in 1 second. All you have to do is buy one off ebay and reverse engineer it.

The bottom version is the original, which was recalled for being too powerful. It was awesome.

Do not waste our time by suggesting these requests are too complicated. Lockheed Martin just announced it is ready to deploy *laser weapons* into battle with US armed forces, so don’t tell me a better champagne machine gun is impossible.

There is a war going on out there, and we need all the help we can get in the fight against sobriety and boredom. Get to work.

If you need further help testing this gun, please feel free to send a sample to:

Public Services Bar

202 Travis St. Suite 100

Houston TX, 77002

TEXAS HIGHBALL

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Topo Chico

What Do Birds Eat?  

I’m intoxicated, waiting for lunch with the Jungle Bird at a lovely restaurant in Los Angeles. I’m honestly too jacked up for even the grocery store, and she’s introducing me to the director of operations or the GM, god help me. I’m talking with a mouthful of peanut butter, and moving underwater. When I’m like this, I just order drinks until everything starts making sense.

Sparkling rose.

Coffee.

Water.

And

A Topo Chico.

Los Angeles exists in this weird borderland between Topo Chico and Mountain Valley Spring water- there isn’t a clear favorite. I take a big sip of warm, fruity coffee and I feel my senses come back to me. A sip of sparkling rose, and I’m back in the game. She’s been talking, and I’ve been fading in and out. However we come to the topic that brings me back to sobriety: “I don’t like Mountain Valley Spring Water.” She says it matter-of-factly, I recoil in mock terror, she continues, “It’s barely even carbonated! Why bother?”

I say, “I have both of them in my fridge, b.” I’m a house divided, with Topo and Mountain Valley in my icebox. I choose my next words carefully, just in case anybody is watching my life unfold like a reality TV show, “They satisfy you in different ways.” I do a buffalo smile.

She’s not impressed. “I need a mineral water with… Savage carbonation.” For the first time with this whole highball mess, I feel like I’m not crazy. I don’t know what I’m doing with cocktails, and I rely on the opinions of people I trust.

She can read my mind maybe, and adds, “I don’t like Toki either. SORRY.” She said what she needed to say about Topo. But Toki is delicious.

Our food is arriving now, and when you’re bent, good food looks like sustenance from heaven. A brothy thing, Potato chips that are impossibly thin and crunchy. A cold, fluffy salad in some vinaigrette. Perfectly seasoned fish. Fried cubes of soft tofu and chilies. We tuck into it, and it’s just the best. Sunlight on my face, good company, and a whole room full of people revolving around just us. A good meal makes you feel like the center of the universe.

I take a big swig of Topo Chico, and I gaze upon this meticulously designed restaurant on a sloping hill of Los Angeles. I resolve to grow a fucking spine about Topo Chico, about highballs, and The Fox. She drops me off at the airport with a hug, and I check a backpack with half a case of burgundy and an unloaded flare gun onto my flight. 

Anvil’s Highball 

I can’t remember the exact moment I had my first Toki Highball, but it was definitely at Anvil. As far as I know, Anvil was the first place to serve Toki Highballs in Houston. Surely someone beat them to it, but nobody does it better than Anvil even to this day.

Bobby made sure to document the process of him, Peter, and Terry trying over a dozen sparkling waters at different ratios to find the perfect water. They settled on Mountain Valley Spring water. Mountain valley spring water has high alkalinity, and has moderate carbonation with tiny bubbles. They tell me this water is chemically similar to the water they use to make Japanese whisky, and similar in texture to the highballs they drank in Japan.

Toki is a blended Japanese whisky from Suntory. The whisky is kept in the freezer, as is the glass. You pour frozen whisky into a frozen glass, and you add cold Mountain Valley spring water. It’s got two fucking ingredients, and it is one of the slickest, most ethereally refreshing beverages I’ve ever tasted.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not some boring Collins glass- it’s a Japanese cut glass Highball that is nearly indestructible, and gleams like a gem when filled with whisky and soda. It’s either covered in frost, right out of the freezer; or as it comes up in temperature it glistens with moisture. The condensation paired with the sight of tiny bubbles floating up through the drink make it quite the spectacle.

Just to make sure you’re overwhelmed with the attention to detail, the drink is placed on a coaster with a Japanese flag stamped onto it. Literally the only thing that isn’t flawless about Anvil’s Toki highball is the Japanese flag is rarely centered on the coaster. For what it’s worth, Tongue Cut Sparrow’s logo is usually centered.

They popularized a beverage in Houston that taps into our childhood desire for popsicles, and our grownup desire to be drunk. The entire presentation is so confident it makes you feel like a secret agent, turning up before a high-stakes poker game in Monaco.

There is no “But…” to this. Anvil (and now Tongue Cut Sparrow) has the best Japanese Highball I’ve ever tasted. 

A Pale Imitation 

I began to ask, what would happen if one made Toki highballs with Topo Chico? Terry’s reaction was immediate, “Topo Chico tastes like saltwater. The carbonation is so high it almost hurts my mouth when I drink it.”  He’d harbored a dislike for Topo this whole time, and their highball research only drove him further away from it. Terry describes drinking Topo Chico like having acid thrown in one’s face, and this makes me like it more. It makes me feel tough. I’m not tough, but it makes me feel that way.

The trouble started when people began asking us for Toki Highballs at Public Services. Without a freezer, without a gorgeous glass to put it in, it was but a shadow of the glorious totem of refreshment Anvil was slinging. I would chill a glass and the jigger with ice water, but it wasn’t even close. We used Topo Chico.

While we were initially super excited for an inexpensive Japanese Whiskey, Sean fell out of love with Toki fast. “It tastes like nothing. It’s the Bud Light of Japanese Whisky.” Furthermore, it’s made exclusively for the American market, whatever that implies. A special, heavily diluted new blend to take our focus off of Hibiki, or so it seemed to a cynic.

I wrote Sean’s complaints off as being a hater. Sean does enjoy bombastic flavors, and it seemed to me that he wasn’t a highball person.

I started asking chef, “What if we got a freezer? We could finally store big cubes, and maybe even do highballs.”

Chef is pretty hostile to spending money with an ambiguous ROI. “No way dude. How many people are asking for Japanese highballs at the bar. One or two a week?” It was true; we weren’t a destination for highballs. However people ordered them and we made them to the best of our ability. They were just sort of cold. They were in a standard glass.

Peter would come in and order highballs, but would lament the use of Topo Chico in a Nikka Highball. “It’s just not the same as Mountain Valley.” Peter isn’t a mean person; in fact he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He just doesn’t have any reservations saying if he thinks something is being done incorrectly. I imagine if we were on bad terms he wouldn’t have said anything at all. I will admit to you now though, that these comments from everyone did add up, and they got under my skin. Not because I have any problems hearing that I’m wrong, but I really just wanted a highball we could be proud of.

It’s really hard to drink a bunch of Toki highballs, to love the drink, and not have a highball in your own bar. 

Bobby Speaks Out 

What really kicked me in the balls though, was when Bobby spoke out about Topo Chico in Highballs. We’d been making our dumpy highballs with guilt in our hearts, and all of a sudden, Bobby goes on facebook and confirms my greatest fears:

You should not use Topo Chico for Toki highballs.

Topo Chico is a great soda for cocktails,

but it overwhelms the delicate flavor of Toki.

There was room for ambiguity before, but now the people that brought the magnificent Toki highball to life had confirmed: Topo Chico doesn’t make good Toki highballs. Run through the Justin Vann hyperbole translator, it sounded like this to me:

You have no idea what you’re doing.

You are bad at making cocktails.

Stick to wine.

I fantasized about pouring all our Toki down the drain. About lighting myself of fire in the street with Nikka From the Barrel. I know I’m spending a lot of time talking about how I didn’t take any of this personally, and I really truly didn’t. But yes, it sucked to hear all the authorities on the subject say that we were doing it wrong.

The worst part about Bobby’s statement on the matter is that he was right. A side-by-side tasting of two Toki Highballs of the same ratio and temperature with the different waters confirms the following:

1. Mountain Valley Spring Water makes Toki taste like spun gold, like early morning sunshine melting fresh snow in front of your dojo as you welcome your students to class.

2. Topo Chico makes Toki taste like Bud Light at a TGI Friday’s where you’re getting broken up with, and the couple in the next booth is making out in front of their kids.

The Pepsi challenge, like blind tasting, is the ultimate equalizer. Sean wasn’t crazy for disliking Toki Highballs as we made them after all. I felt guilty for doubting him, and then suddenly agreeing when Bobby Heugel concurred. 

The Fox Chooses 

One morning the Fox was rooting around in my fridge. I watched her pause to decide between the two waters. Three seconds stretched an eternity before she reached for the Mountain Valley instead of Topo Chico. She smiles and says, “They satisfy you in different ways.”

She twisted the cap off with a deafening crack. We’re having a conversation, I’m talking but I can’t hear her over the ringing in my ears. Like a grenade went off. I still can’t hear properly to this day. It meant nothing, but then why was my heart pounding?

I will tell myself that this was not an analogy for our relationship, which was built on a house of cards in a hurricane. This was just a lady getting a sparkling water out of my fridge. But when you’re a foreign correspondent embedded in the war zone of your own life, you notice these things. I wrote it on my hand that day, in the car. This is the split second that I did indeed take it personally. 

I’m a docent at the art exhibit of my own life, that’s what writing about yourself is like. I arranged the space, I placed the artifacts where I want to, and I decide how close you can get to them before I quietly whisper that you need to step back. It feels more than a little bit narcissistic, but I’m willing to sacrifice any image of modesty for the chance to tart up my past through a dramatic lens.

My love life and my work life are separated by a nothing more than one of those Japanese paper walls, if that. A psychologist could open our wine list and say, “Nineteen Madeiras by the glass? This is a cry for help.” You deserve to know that I regularly make decisions about our menu for all kinds of weird, emotional reasons. I am comfortable admitting to you that I am a weird, emotional person. 

Chef’s Present 

I had all but forgotten about the idea of ever having highballs at our bar. Then, a few months ago, chef calls me the Saturday morning I was supposed to join him at the Joe Presswood auction. “WAKE UP WAKE UP IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY!” Through the haze of a hangover I’m barely able to converse. But I did hear him say “freezer”. He repeats it, “I bought you a stupid freezer for the stupid bar.”

“Now you can make your stupid highballs.”

That Sunday, Chef and Peter loaded the freezer into our elevator. Sean was doing a Sean thing that evening- installing a beautiful tile floor in our mop closet- a floor that no mop closet could possibly deserve. I tucked the freezer into the far corner of the backbar and turned it on with shaking hands. I stocked a bunch of rocks glasses, and a few bottles that made sense: Nikka Coffey Grain, Willet 3 year Rye, and Paul Beau VS Cognac.

Stephanie and I went to eat dinner, and when we came back to the bar to meet Womack, the contents of the freezer were resting at 0 degrees Farenheit.

We got drunk. The highballs were delicious. And so cold.

The next day, everyone is joking about the freezer. “When is the Mountain Valley coming in, Jvann?” I don’t think we ever had to say it out loud. The Mountain Valley was never entering the building. We were going to build our highball in the opposite direction as the one that inspired us: we weren’t looking for a water to flatter Toki, we were looking for a spirit to flatter Topo Chico.

It was imperative that we didn’t copy Anvil. With something that simple, marketplace differentiation is important. But even if we loved Mountain Valley Spring water and identified with it emotionally, it just wouldn’t have been right.

As far as I’m concerned they own it. I have Toki in my freezer at home, but there’s no denying it- the drink tastes better when you’re sinking into one of the chesterfield couches at Tongue Cut Sparrow. That drink is a story of their travels, so too is the bar. I'd feel like we stole a picture off the wall of someone’s house and hung it in our own if we replicated their Toki Highball.

Obviously though, I was comfortable stealing some of the technology that makes it work. 

Research and Development 

We immediately began freezing all kinds of stuff to try with Topo. For every spirit that worked, there were four that didn’t. These are the highlights.

American Whiskey: This seems too easy, but there are a lot of American Whiskies that don’t taste great this way. We’re currently using Willet 3 year rye and Weller Antique. These will change over time.

Japanese Whisky: While Toki doesn’t do great with Topo Chico, Nikka Coffey whiskies are pretty great. Topo seems to accentuate chocolate flavors in these whiskies. Perhaps every Japanese whisky highball would be better off with Mountain Valley. Either way, I would argue these are the two most suited to work with Topo. 

Eau de Vie: We got lucky, and the first one we tried was a hit. Clear Creek Pear Brandy retains its crystalline magic pear flavor in Topo, and takes on a slight haze that looks really cool. Every other Eau de Vie has been a flop.

Rum: Plantation Pineapple Rum will be in the freezer permanently, it tastes like cream soda with Topo.

Cognac: Paul Beau VS makes a great highball. Beyond it’s flavors, I’m so pleased to serve it since I remembered reading about “Fine a l’Eau” in the works of Hemingway and other great literary alcoholics.

Absinthe: I recommend doing this with zero sarcasm. Think about it: absinthe needs to be chilled and heavily diluted. Highballs are super cold and contain a bunch of water. They just make sense together.

Green Chartreuse: Everyone went through a brief period of drinking chartreuse straight and feeling cool about it. This brought an old flame back to life. Frozen Chartreuse in a highball will make you drunk very fast. 

The Glass 

We had the freezer, and we had the water/booze combos we liked. The last piece of the puzzle was a compelling highball glass. Anvil uses a Japanese glass, and like I said, it’s fucking gorgeous. The glass is more than a little bit of what makes the highball great.

We had to find a glass that wasn’t a standardized Collins or highball. Japanese highball glasses were an option. An expensive option that looks like copying Anvil. We thought about it.

Then I remembered those rocks glasses I drank from at the Ace Hotel in New Orleans. It was clearly an inexpensive glass, but its ridges were hypnotic. I stared at it for 20 minutes as I killed a Campari and Soda in the lobby bar. I drunkenly kicked it across the floor on accident. I drank ice-cold water out of it the next morning, and though I was near death, the glass brought me a weird comfort. Nice glassware will make even water seem luxurious. I barfed the same water up immediately and it was still very cold on the way back out. Chef and Stephanie took me to New Orleans for my birthday. We made our time there count.

The glass was a Duralex Manhattan Highball. It costs 4 bucks. This was to be our highball glass. It’s twice as thick as the Japanese highball glasses and I reason this will help it hold temperature longer. I don’t know shit or fuck about thermodynamics; this is just a guess. I do a lot of guessing when it comes to science.

At Blacksmith, I’m telling the GM Anderson about how we’re getting highball glasses. I show her a picture, and she recognizes it instantly, “Ah, Duralex Manhattan eh? Did you get those from the Ace?” Anderson used them in New Orleans too.

“You know what people are calling this drink up in the pacific northwest? A Texas Highball. That’s what they call a frozen whisky and a frozen glass with sparkling water. It has to be because of Anvil.” 

We fuckin stole it 

Christine Nguyen and John Ridgeway are making us look quite modest, highball wise. She famously ordered a Rochelt Elderberry highball at Tongue Cut Sparrow. Late at night I’m getting sent pictures of Jelínek Slivovitz and Vichy Catalan highballs. A liter of Vichy Catalan contains 40% of your daily-recommended intake of salt. I drank that water all over San Sebastian, pickling myself. One day I will try to trick Terry into drinking it.

Ben and Heidi from Oberlin and Birch were visiting chef. We went to Anvil first, and had some highballs. Then we went to public services, and had some more. By then Ben was convinced, “I’m totally taking Highballs back to Rhode Island.” I like the idea of the concept spreading, but I feel weird about it. When he got back home, I get the text, “How do I make a highball?!” In my head I’m thinking, I don’t know the rules man, We fuckin’ stole it. 

“Just make sure you balance the flavor of the water with the flavors of the spirit. Try different amounts of water too.” Ben’s using Lurisia up there.

Alex Negranza kegged Toki highballs for Iron Somm. I think he carbonated Fiji water for that. When I admitted to him that I was going to start doing highballs, he told me something very Alex Negranza of him: that I could add a custom mineral blend to distilled water to design and keg my own mineral water. “You can dial it in however you want!” If it made for a better flavor or a fun garnish, Alex would manipulate the very fabric of space and time if he had to. I respect this. 

These combinations of water & spirit thrill me in the same way pairing food and wine does. Just using the booze and the presentation with little cultural context is kinda the story of my life. This is how you wound up with Swiss cider and German riesling in your local Sichuan restaurant. God help you if one day I gain control of a restaurant pairing menu with a full liquor license, because highballs work with food. 

I do not approve of Highballs that contain more than two ingredients. Spirit/liqueur/water is just too much for me. Fortunately, almost everything in this universe can exist without my approval. See also: dessert pizza, malort, and durian.  

Conclusions 

Anvil’s Japanese Highball certainly inspired ours, but don’t call ours Japanese. Calling it a Texas Highball helps me picture a dramatic East / West showdown. A bloody melee in the streets of Houston between Samurais and Cowboys. Our highball isn’t exactly elegant, but it is memorable. This is a highball that speaks only in shouts, that drinks straight from the bottle. That turns the television off with a pistol. It is savagely carbonated, and cold as the icy fingers of death, which it does not fear.

But there is no confrontation to be had. We don’t have an adversarial relationship with the Anvil & Tongue Cut Sparrow folks, as I’m regularly asking them for advice on all kinds of things. The only thing I can really trade them is information on fortified wine. Thank god I can bring something to the table.

It is funny to me that the cocktail that captured my imagination the most as a fledgling bar owner is a whisky and soda. We will never shake a cocktail at Public Services if we can help it (we’ve never used shaker tins in 2.5 years so it’s looking good). Our goal is to serve alcohol as close to straight as possible. I’d tell you we’re a wine bar, not a cocktail bar; but my weekend product mix report might say otherwise. Either way, this presentation of a highball is ideal for our mission. It is a clever new gadget for our utility belt.

Now that I’ve digested and moved on from my insecurity over the whole thing, I simply have to thank Anvil for the idea and get on with my life. We didn’t invent a single cocktail on our menu. None of them are original. The highball is no exception to that. We didn’t invent sherry either, no matter what anyone tells you.

The lesson, if I have to offer one, is that there are no rules with highballs. Shit, there are barely rules in life. As long as you’re making people happy with the product that’s all that matters. Make your own highballs. Taste it against some others.

All I can say about them is that they satisfy you in different ways.

ROCHELT

Rochelt fruit brandies are so wonderful I’m positive they can heal wounds inflicted by mythical creatures that would otherwise be lethal. Got a super-infected Cajun Werewolf bite on your leg? Tell the Loup Garou to fuck off to its stupid face as it runs from the dawn. Pour half an ounce of Rochelt Elderberry on the bite, cover it in gauze and go about your business. Not only will you survive and not be turned, but you'll feel rested and alert. Are vampires tearing your city apart? Is society descending into chaos as they storm police headquarters, feeding on the brave men and women who dared to stay behind? Conventional ammunition is useless- the creatures heal immediately. Mix a little agar with your Rochelt, and use the tip of a small knife to scoop the solidified Rochelt into the concave tip of your hollow-point bullets. If you run, you can make it to battle in time to turn the tide. Kick the door in, and shoot a vampire in the face with a .45 caliber bullet laced with Rochelt Gravenstein apple brandy. As their body burns, it smells like sweet, juicy cider. Take back your city.

Look at this fucking bottle. Keep looking. Never stop looking.

They’re ground up jewels that you can drink. They’re promises of a better tomorrow from fairy godmothers. These brandies shouldn’t exist, and it breaks my heart every time I hold those perfect bottles in my hands and smell the impossibly dense and smooth liquor inside. What is it with those perfect bottle tops? Are they keys? Am I even ready to see what’s behind the doors they open? I am not ready. I will never be ready and it’s not going to stop me from going through.

The hideous expense of selecting perfectly ripe fruit from dozens of growers captivates my imagination. These raspberries aren’t perfect enough for our brandy production but we made you this decent raspberry cobbler. You’d take a bite and weep, knowing that the Rochelt family discarded more decadent fruit than you’ve ever actually tasted. Did the pie make you sad? No, you choke out between sobs. It was to touch true happiness, if for but a second.

To say they taste like their distillate base fruit doesn’t feel accurate. This is hyper real cherry flavor. If actual cherries tasted like Rochelt Morello Cherry brandy, people would be invading countries when they find out they have vast untapped cherry orchards. “No war for cherries”, the college students would chant during their useless demonstrations. Halliburton would lead the cherry orchard service industry, and receive decadent government contracts to grow and enrich cherries to simply be evaluated by Rochelt, with no guarantee they will be accepted. The ebb and flow of cherry production would drive the global economy, and the fate of the human race.

How many cherries go into making just 375ml of brandy? We don’t know for sure, but scientists estimate it’s between 300 and 400 quadrillion cherries per bottle. It's a big number.

I get the suspicion beings from a higher plane of existence left this stuff in our crappy universe on accident. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m not bringing this hypothesis to the theoretical physics community though, because I try not to question good things. Is it expensive? Yes- it’s frighteningly expensive. But give it a break; shipping costs get wacky when your perfect, ethereal brandy has to pass through the fucking Stargate unharmed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about inter-dimensional travel lately. Specifically, I wonder how long I could steal wine and liquor allocations from myself and my peers in alternate realities before they come hunting for me in my home dimension. I think there was a Jet Li movie about something like that (it had more to do with kung-fu than wine buying).

Walking the warehouse of every possible world

Rochelt though. It’s one of those things I get up for in the morning. The excitement of new alcohols is literally the only thing that carries me forward in life. Working in a bar, wearing pants, being nice to people and not biting them, getting haircuts somewhat regularly- it’s all to one end.

I’m very lucky to have a job that gives me the ability to obtain rare and exotic stuff like Rochelt. It’s a once in a lifetime beverage, and I only bought one bottle for Public Services. Anvil and Eight Row flint bought all four bottles that were offered to Texas, and in hindsight I feel slightly cowardly for not having gone all in. I’m not sweating it. We’ll bring the hammer down next time. Those places are still selling them, at really incredible prices.

Rochelt is truly magnificent. I’m so grateful to have glimpsed its sublime beauty. Find it if you can. Steal it from yourself on the other side. Run from your fate as long as you can, as long as there is more brandy to drink.

Rochelt is imported to the US by PM Spirits.