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What you're looking for is Luxardo maraschino... much more complex than Stock, though no less sweet. I recall a friend telling me that Luxardo had changed their bottles from the old-school wicker wrapped ones to something more modern and less distinctive... If I rightly recall, he told me he had observed the new bottles at a liquor store somewhere in his 'hood, around the intersection of W 4th st and W 12ths st in the ever-confusing warren of the West Village. I'm recalling the store being called something castle-y sounding, but wouldn't swear to it. I'd pull a phone book, look up liquor stores, and call all the ones from 14th st to Perry St, between 7th ave and Hudson. I'll bet you'll have luck. FWIW, I bought my first bottle luxardo from Mr. Wrights on 2nd Ave in the high 80's/low 90's.

I spent two years of the hunt living in New York checking every liquor store for dusty bottles... to no avail... called Remy Amerique who I'd found to be the last importer... stopped importing it the early 1990s... Called Young's Something-or-other in california who Harrington indicated to be a source of the stuff... to no avail... I did see reference to the rumor that the Torani syrup company in California makes one alcoholic product, a clone of Picon... but it gets no distribution... I've never felt like pressing my luck with mail ordering booze, given the jail time the guy in virginia got for buying wine over the net a few years ago... I'm not one for putting myself in the sites of a DA who wants to score points with MADD... So, a friend of mine who does a lot of transatlantic hopping thought to bring a bottle of the stuff along from Paris for my birthday a couple of years ago...

I'm in compete agreement that Paul Harrington is a great source for revived classic cocktails. He really understands the principles behind the drinks, and the few new creations he suggests are worthy successors to the classics. He set me off on many wonderful hunts for rare and forgotten ingredients... Even inspired me to create a cocktail of my own that has been a staple amongst my circle of friends for a half dozen years now... my only gripe with him is that he really didn't take into account the unavailablity of some of his ingredients, namely Amer Picon. The Picon Punch and Picon Limon seemed so wonderful from the write-ups, yet I had to wait 4 years until somebody thought to bring a bottle of the stuff back from France for me, after hearing that I had given up on my hunt for it in the USA.

Glad to hear the Gales HSB is still as good as I remember it was from back when I was living in Winchester... Sad to say I can't be of any help to you in your hunt in London. Do remember that Winchester is only an hour's train ride away from London, though, and you can definitely get it there. Maybe even closer, but I'm without the specific knowledge to say so. Edit: grammar clarification

Ahhh... the Distinguished Wakamba Social Club... Spent an interesting afternoon there once with friends who lived up a little bit up 8th Ave from there... Definitely a dive...

Well... there are the Champagnes of Thierry Triolet, which do to some extent taste like a cross between champagne and sherry (in a good way).

Hmmm.... the "American Hoagie" is another beast altogether... I thought the question was the difference b/t "Regular" and "Italian". The American sounds like a scary thing to be avoided. My take on hoagies is stilted by the fact that I'm up in Penna. Dutch country, so while there is a strongly entrenched meat curing and sausage making tradition, it is very different from the Italian tradition. Which means that, while Philly traditions like cheesesteaks and hoagies are common out here, the ingredients are skewed toward the locally made produce which is interesting and not frighteningly bland like Scoats' depiction of an American hoagie, but is also very very very not italian. This is a part of the world where garlic is not a common ingredient, and cured meats have a higher water content, and are generally pink. The beautiful reddish brown of a dryer capicola is never seen up here... it is the pink of deli ham and the local "cooked salami". Even up here in Penna Dutch country, a regular hoagie is an Italian, though with germanic charcuterie. Getting a baloney and american cheese on a hoagie roll would require asking for just that... (and you'd have to specify lebanon or american bologna, and which of the five varieties of the latter that are available.)

Here's another take on it... In the USA, "ethnic" is what food is before it is assimilated into the common experience of most Americans. Indiagirl's point about "ethnic" food being food that requires ingredients that you can't get through mass marketing distribution chains backs up this theory. The cultural and racial aspects are, I'd suggest, artifacts of the distribution networks for the required ingredients. "Ethnic" is a stage that food passes through in the marketplace, until it is either accepted and folded into the mainstream, or remains sidelined for lack of economic pressure to incoprorate it into the mass market. As Indiagirl said, a hallmark of "ethnic" food is that certain ingredients must be imported or otherwise recreated in this country. Who is going to know how to select/reproduce the desired ingredient? Somebody who is from the point of origin, with first-hand knowledge of what the ingredient is like in its original environment. The person with this first-hand knowledge is also likely to have a social network of people of similar familiarity with the foreign point of origin and its language and culture, some of whom are likely to be people who want cook with familiar ingredients in a foreign land, and others are the entrepreneurial budding "ethnic" restauranteurs. Thus is explained the cultural homogenaeity at the beginning of the introduction of food into America. A few examples to beat the dead horse that it is access to non-mainstream ingredients that is a hallmark of "ethnic" cuisine: French isn't "ethnic" because you can walk into a supermarket and pick up just about everything you need to cook a french meal, because those ingredients are in the mass market distribution chain (with notable annoying exceptions like unsmoked bacon.) Southern Italian might have once been "ethnic" when mainstream grocers didn't carry basil and olive oil, though northern Italian would never have ethnic since it's distinctive ingredients (except maybe certain cheeses) have been available in the mainstream larder. Food stops being ethnic when its ingredients reach a critical mass of distribution, and become integrated into the greater melange that American cuisine has become. There was a time, if i recall correctly, that brocolli was considered ethnic italian food. Not any more. Plenty more examples... grocery store pierogies... grocery store dolmas (though very infrequently the grape leaves from which they're made.) Foods transition through "ethnic" status...

In my experience, the terms regular and Italian are interchangable in most places. The few places that do differentiate between regular and Italian do so based on the provenance of the meats that go into the sandwich... i.e. cheaper domestic salami and ham in the regular, imported Italian meats in an Italian. I'd probably say "what the xxxxxxxxx is this" if something like, say, pepperoni turned up in a hoagie... I'm largely forgiving of different varieties of ham... I'm happy when real sopresatta gets subbed in for the cooked salami, but either is acceptable. American cheese (or anything not provalone) would certainly raise a "wft!?!?" reaction from me...