FrogPrincesse

It's different. It's not going to relace my favorite sweet vermouths - Dolin, Cocchi vermouth di Torino, Punt e Mes - but it's nice to have some variety!

Cocktails - I've been to Rumba recently. It's great. Classic cocktails with an emphasis on rum, tiki drinks, etc. Fun place too and they serve food (small plates) as well. For food - I really loved Lark which has a fantastic selection of local seafood/produce etc. A bit on the expensive side but very worth it. For less expensive seafood, Taylor Shellfish is great and completely unpretentious/super casual.

Sure. I've used it to add a bit of fruit and punch to a Smash (Gascon Smash), to modify a Martini (Plum Blossom Martini), in a Fizz (a variation on Toby Maloney’s Williams Fizz), a Dark & Stormy variation (Alastair Burgess' Perfect Storm), etc. Death & Co has a few recipes that use a touch of eau-de-vie as an ingredient to add flavor without adding sweetness.

That looks nice. The technique with rosemary smoke is similar to Jamie Boudreau's Rubicon Cocktail.

Improved whiskey cocktail with High West Double Rye!, Luxardo maraschino liquor, St. George absinthe, Creole & Peychaud's bitters. This is great. I don't really enjoy this rye whiskey straight, but in this drink it is great.

Well, I only had a small bowl full but it didn't agree with me at all. I felt really queasy afterwards. Thank god for Fernet. Best remedy for upset stomachs.

It'd be probably better with Campari... Like an Old Pal/Left Hand variation.

Old Fashioned with Nikka coffey grain Japanese whisky, gum syrup, Boker's bitters (and Angostura bitters). The floral acidity of the whisky clashed with the Boker's. It was better with Angostura.

It is very heavily flavored. Cheddar and porky smoke. A bit overwhelming after a few handfuls.

Thanks @scubadoo97. I added a bit more black pepper after the picture.

Finally a sparkling cocktail with a little more punch, the rum version of Milk & Honey's sparkling Manhattan, the Chicago Cocktail. South Sider (Alex Day) with El Dorado 8 demerara rum (substituted for the 12), Maurin sweet vermouth (subbed for Carpano Antica), Angostura bitters, Peychaud's and Creole bitters, dry Champagne. At first there is some tomato sauce/savory notes from the vermouth but then I got these crazy smooth vanilla notes from the rum as everything meshed together. This is very good.

Goat cheese with golden beets and Italian parsley from my CSA. Red wine vinegar and olive oil vinaigrette. So good.

Sandbass with Meyer lemon herb salsa and thyme creme fraiche, red spinach.

More sparkling cocktails exploration. This one was a bit better. It's a cognac/sparkling take on the Last Word but obviously with the Champagne it tastes much lighter. Julien Sorel (Phil Ward) with Pierre Ferrand 1840 and Landy VS cognac, green Chartreuse, Luxardo maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, Pierre Gimonnet dry Champagne.

Ramen noodles have a different texture (and taste) compared to soba or udon... They are not interchangeable. This description might help.

Polite Provisions has been nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program. The judges must have a sweet tooth. Seriously, it's fantastic to see San Diego's cocktail scene acknowledged as being on par with the best of the country.

Calva Dorsa Royale (Phil Ward) with Daron XO calvados, St-Germain, St George absinthe, Pierre Gimmonet brut dry Champagne. It's ok... Better with a heavy hand on the absinthe so the St-Germain is somewhat covered up. But I am not entirely convinced it's not a waste of good Calvados or good Champagne...

@Tri2Cook That looks very nice. Thanks for the recommendation!

That's kind of a funky measurement, right? I was thinking the same thing when I was re-reading the recipe the other day. I am pretty sure it's a "dash" in the original recipe, and I won't go into the rabbit hole of trying to figure out again what a dash is... In any case, to answer your question, 1/8 tablespoon = 3/8 teaspoon = 1.5 1/4 teaspoon, so I would have measured a full 1/4 teaspoon, and then another half 1/4 teaspoon. When I made the cocktail most recently I measured 1/2 barspoon cause I wasn't going to bother with the 1/4 teaspoon. It worked fine.

That's appetizing. Are you trying to make me not like peaty scotch? I'm already hooked so it's not going to work. Back to the topic. I just thought of another source of smoke - tea, more specifically Lapsang souchong. I am really interested in that idea because I don't use tea enough in cocktails (I use it in punches but rarely in cocktails). Does anybody have experience with that? I know Death & Co has at least one recipe in that vein.

I don't think it's available anymore... The article that @Craig E already linked has all the info. The Hamilton 151 is a very good substitute and is fairly easy to find.

I tried Maurin sweet vermouth for the first time a few days ago. It's very savory, with a lot of herbs such as thyme. Almost reminiscent of the seasonings in tomato sauce. Apparently it's a fairly new product made based on an old recipe. Maurin currently belongs to Anchor Distilling. I used it to make a Negroni.

Imperial Cocktail with Tanqueray London dry gin, Noilly Prat extra dry vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, Angostura bitters. I like this one and it's pretty too.

I found this article in Serious Eats to be very informative about the different styles of ramens and classification by seasoning (shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce), miso (fermented bean paste), as well as broth type (tonkotsu, i.e., pork bone broth), discussion of toppings, etc. Here is an example of shio ramen I had just a couple of days ago at Yakyudori, a restaurant in San Diego. The pork belly topping was good and the egg had a nice texture. I am not a fan of the (canned?) corn but it seems very common. The noddle themselves were nothing special. Fermented bamboo shoots in the upper right corner, and plenty of scallions in the middle.

From the Little Italy Mercado farmers' market in San Diego: Ponderosa bitter lemon (50 cents a piece, I should have bought more than one!), Bouquet de Fleurs sour oranges (for marmalade but I was told they were sweet this year), passion fruit, Haas avocados, rhubarb, Perfection tangerines, sage + buckwheat & orange blossom honeys (this is my favorite honey vendor, Mikolich, and their sage & buckwheat honey just won a Good Foods award), Asian pears, bay leaves.