Alchemist

It would be an a pleasure to serve you your first legal drink. if you can abstain until eight pm, please come to The Violet Hour and I will buy you a cocktail.

Sam, when will you be in the City of Broad Shoulders so you can judge if TVH is running with the wild horses. We are all raising the bar for eachother so I am competing only with myself. There are many places here that are doing wonderful things with libations. I won't mention any one in particular so as not to forget anyone.

I will personally stick a fork in you if you tell me you're done. Just to check. I belive you are rare and will allways be that way.

I would agree with you but there are other options as well. When I went to TFL I had read, talked studied hours and hours and was psyched. It exceeded my expectations. But I wanted it to. I am an enernal optimist. I look for the great an excuse little things easier than most. I think years of cooking/bartending/bussing/waiting has instilled that we live in a hostilly indifferent universe and somewtimes stuuf goes wrong. But there wasn't a single thing that was wrong with my meal at TFL. There are a lot of people who really enjoy knocking down sucessful people. The Inquirer/Star every other hollywood rag is proof enough. I feel sorry for them because they are only happy when they ar3e bitching about something. That seems a waste of time, life is short we should applaud the risk takers and the envelope pushers.

My favorite wine bar is Webster wine bar on (strangely enough) Webster between clybourn and ashland. It's mellow, libraryesque srtting, outstanding array of wines, ports, ect and extremly knowlagable staff make it a perfect way to while away a wait for the movies, or a place to discuss the movie you just saw.

Excellent point. It very well may be the last bastion of meritocracy. I would rather work beside a cook or bartender that has common sense and can system D their way out of anything, than someone who just graduated culinary school with honors. The wheat separates from the chaff very quickly at 8:30 Sat. night. The restaurant industry may be a f%#ked up little version of high school with it’s cliques, practical jokes, and prejudices, but when it’s go time, women, men, gay, straight, black, white, brown, and purple form a cohesive unit and get it done with grace, and precision.

Curse like a sailor, drink like a mick, your only words of wisdom being "suck my dick" Tell the dirtiest jokes, bleed the most, slam the oven door the hardest, keep the cleanest station, get your mise done first then help them with theirs, pull them out of the shit over and over, use your kitchen spanish liberaly, then once they stop being a bunch of sexist pigs, repeat.

8pm-3am Sat.

I graduated high school valedictorian. Attended some culinary school, dropped out to cook, went to Colombia for writing, dropped out, to cook, read voraciously and was lucky enough to have very smart very funny people around me in every restaurant. I, like stoilncuervo wonder if I am lazy, if I copped out by not trying to be something more accomplished, brain surgeon, a helicopter pilot saving lives, or a lawyer fighting for the innocent and unjustly accused. But if I had “bought in” (the nice way of saying selling out) and was chained to a desk over a hundred hours a week in my twenties, would I have lived in Thailand with it’s mind-blowing food, and even more mind blowing sticks. Most probably not. Would I have lived in India where I ate Pataak-a-shaak on my porch while watching the sun drape gold and violet on the Himalayas? My guess is…nope. Would I have traveled all over the globe with beautiful women eating and drinking wonderful things, meeting amazing people, and getting exotic intestinal diseases’. That would be a negatory. Would I have forged friendships in the pits of hell (the un-air-conditioned kitchen at the Blue Mesa in Chicago in July) that have lasted the trials of time and distance? Um, no. Would I have found an art that can titillate all five senses, an art that makes me so happy that I occasionally think I am going to have an ecstatic aneurism? Again, I must concede the negative. On the flip side, would my hands, and arms be covered in cuts, scars? No. Would My liver be more pristine without all the late nights, long ago, of too much booze, Bolivian marching powder and too many cocktail waitresses? You can probably guess the answer to THAT one. Would It have been nice to have health insurance so I could have dealt with knee and dental issues in a timely fashion. YUP!!! But I must quote the Chairman of the Board (and Sid Vicious) “Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again too few to mention” Am I Smart or Dumb? You be the Judge.

Do you mean that crazed bartener who showed up in a wife beater an slammed things around for about an hour before gracefully changing into a wicked suit to press the flesh and kiss some babes. Yes that was me. It was my first day off in over three months. The joys of owenership!!!

Well the cat is really out of the bag. If you have seen your Time Out Chicago, you will know the flood gates are open. Please eGulleteers, come sit at my bar so it is full of cocktail geeks instead of Goose and sodaers!

I agree that the Why Chef is the most important thing in the kitchen. Then when you are chef to pass on all the information in your head to some budding little line sponge so they will become a better chef than you. That is the most important thing to learn is you are just a link in a very long chain that if you do your job right becomes stronger with each generation.

I would second the rum or whiskey with gingerale idea. Then get a handful of limes and squeeze away. Messy? Yes. Sticky? Don't you know it! Annoying to you, the bartender, and the people around you ? You bet your life!!! Still better than drinking something putrid. It's kinda' like going to a house of ill repute, paying for the service, then doing it yourself.

The AC went out on sat. In twenty some odd years I have NEVER seen an AC go down on a mon morn. It is ALLWAYS sat night when the place is rockin' and you are a wee hungover so you are sweating, oozing cuban rum.

The last comment in the box is mine, I have no idea why that happened.

Work a plethora of jobs (both front and back of the house) washing dishes, bussing tables, prep cook, anything you can get and work hard, don't complain, move up the ladder, to line cook and then make a desision when you graduate.

I had one friend whose childhood term for the above-referenced pasta item sounded more like "piss-getti"! (with appropriate amounts of childish giggling). And when my kid sister was very young, it was just "sketties." Another one from childhood: "sparrow-grass." ← It's interestinng how this thread and the Kitchen Language thread happen to be so very, very similar.

I've allways noticed that the hottest places have the spiciest food. Thailand Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico. And So I eat spiecy, and drink hot drinks as well when it's the dog days here in Chicago.

Are the subtlies of the botanicals going to degrade if it's not kept all cellar temp?

I would second the afore. Bartending is brutal on the body. Once you get into your mid thirties your knees start to go, tendenitis in the elbows and shoulders, the late nights are harder to recover from, the cute 22 year old cocktail waitress' start looking at you like a dirty old man, bruising the ego badly... I am working 7 night a week right now, albiet only for a few intense hours, and every muscle in my body is screaming obsenities at me eveery morning. But There is something about the dance the sweat, the music and the act of creation that keeps me feeling about six months younger than I actually am.

I have just come back to Chicago after over a decade of living in NYC, and I called up some friends that I waited tables with back then and after about six seconds it was like we had seen eachother yesterday. We just had lots of stories to tell. I think that there is something to this. Waiters and bartenders are soooo used to being social that we slide into comfortable social patterens quickly. The more I think about this thread the more I am wonderiing if we bring these traits to The Life or if they are forged in the heat of the kitchen and grown by hours in the weeds, or if we have the predalictions for our self destructive, and our good traits.

If you are in the writing, or barkeeping game all drinking is part of the job so there is nothing recreational about it.

I made resos at French Laundry 2 MONTHS in advance, and reso's for Alinia a MONTH AND A HALF in advance. And prison or being in the hospital in traction would be the only reasons I would miss being there on time, dressed to genocide, hungry as a hobo on thanksgiving. So I think that maybe our priorties are a bit out of wack to the "straight world". I have missed birthdays, holidays, messed up relationships, let work get in the way of family, but wild whores couldn't drag me away from a well appointed table.

Some Of the funniest bad customers, were at Taco Bell on 25$ Taco day. This paticular Tacco bell was in Boulder CO. So A LARGE majority would come in stoned to BeJesus with A fist full of change, three brain cells knocking about in the fog inside their craniums, Smelling of skunky weed. They would basicly stand there at the counter, open up thier hands, so we could count how many tacos they could afford. "Oh, dude and a ginormus water 'cause I got cottenmouth like a motherf@#er"

Last night I was feeling inspired. First there is the happy marriage of a treacle and a Hemingway Daiq. The Hemingway Treacle 2.5 oz. rum (I used Matusalem) .25 oz. Luxardo Marachino .25 barspoon demarerra syrup (2x1 sugar-water) Bitters (I would Go Peychaud's over Ang) On the rocks garnished with a twist of grapefruit Named rather indelicatly after the rose and cucumber aspects of this cocktail. The Juliet & Romeo 2.0 oz. Hendrix .75 oz. lime .75 oz. simple (1x1) 6 mint sprigs 3 slices cuke pinch of salt (or in a pinch 1/2 barspoon of olive brine) 3 drops of rose water serve up, garnish with a floating mint leaf, then spank the rest of the sprig.