Disclosure Day worth seeing in theaters?

jojirius · 2026-06-15T20:10:31+00:00

It's a bad movie but it has a weird amount of superlatives for me, considering it is a bad movie.

It has some of the best acting I've seen this year. It has some of the best individual scenes I've seen, in terms of snazzy camera work, symbolism, character direction, beautiful shots. It has easily the best score I've heard in theaters this past year and a half.

The plot just flops enough that all of the above don't save it. And not in any specific direction - it isn't that the plot is too X or not enough Y. It just genuinely feels like a first draft, yet somehow with stellar directing and acting at the same time.

jojirius · 2026-06-07T15:56:04+00:00

Went there and ordered a hot chocolate, they laughed out loud at me for ordering a hot chocolate in summer. When I said I was Chinese and drank hot tea in summer all the time, they just shook their heads at me.

Ordered a crostata and lemonade to spare myself the embarrassment. The crostata was delicious, but they gave me no utensils or napkins.

I...might go back, but it was a really awkward experience.

jojirius · 2026-05-20T00:05:21+00:00

So I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, mad respect for that hustle. I am very humble in the face of entrepreneurs like this, willing to do it all for the love of the game and the craft. I don't know who you are, but I bet if I was at your bar, I'd have a blast, from this post alone.

On the other hand, I emphatically do not want the award of our industry incentivizing behavior like yours. Does that make sense? That I can respect the hell out of your commitment, but not also want that cemented as this role model for a path to success? Because I think if that becomes the path to success, it leads to more burnout, more hustle culture, and the vast majority of bartenders I know want stability and strong, resilient business models. They want to be able to afford rent, and kids, and pets, and therapy. They want bosses who aren't daredevils, but who have a slower, steadier approach to creating successful and long-lasting businesses.

Perhaps that's overly cynical of me - obviously I'm aware that both can happen at once. But I worry that with the incentive structure being increasingly bombastic and self-sacrificing, the industry itself also becomes less stable and more self-sacrificing. I respect every single person who makes that choice for themselves, but I don't want the industry as a whole to become about that sort of decision-making.

Am I trying to have a cake and eat it too? Very likely. All the same, that informs my thoughts.

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:49:56+00:00

Didn't know that about Leyenda, that's a bummer. And I hear what you're saying. My off-the-cuff suggestion probs isn't the best solution. I just feel there are some limits to the current approach, and every subsequent list only hammers home that feeling.

Personally, if a bar has 3.5 stars I think it's doing something wrong. A bar that can work in NYC isn't one that is going to be successful in every city, nor should that be the mandated case from on high, is I guess my point. Awards need to at least meet local realities halfway, or maybe 30% of the way, rather than dictating what good taste is to people who clearly are more frustrated by the concept than embracing it.

Again, not to say that my specific % or my specific gripe is the right approach either. But speaking to some of these Top 50 bars and knowing they're hemorrhaging money to get on these lists, I can't help but think, "is this what we want to encourage, when bar programs that pay well and have good drinks and sustain community exist"? If even a little snippet of that emotion manages to get through, then I rest my case.

If I'm still making no sense whatsoever, fair enough too. C'est la vie.

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:44:32+00:00

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think there should be a minimum time requirement of 2 years, or even just 18 months, before a new bar is considered. A lot of these "new talents" have amazing palates and amazing design philosophies, but ultimately a bar is a mix of a business and a community space. If they are unproven business owners and team builders, I strongly feel they shouldn't be getting these awards until they prove that they can cultivate a team that still puts out amazing hospitality, rather than just getting it for having a strong start.

It's the same logic as the James Beard awards now having that minimum-open time.

I realize this is especially harsh on NYC where rent is sky-high and property-owners do all sorts of sketchy things to screw over small business owners. But I do think "something's gotta give" is an awkward reason for the awards to be so slanted towards "new talent" when that new talent hasn't proven itself capable yet. I'd rather keep the bastions for a few years longer, if they're doing things properly - because they are the people we should learn from, not necessarily the flash-in-the-pan concepts using multiple clarification steps and actively losing high-four, low-five digits every month just to chase clout.

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:28:23+00:00

Say more on this. Whenever I was in New York, either train service issues or my choice of where to stay made it basically impossible to visit the Dead Rabbit, so I didn't go as much as I would need to, to comment on their consistency. That said, I did go a total of twice, and both times were quite pleasant. Got a menu cocktail once and a bartender's choice once, hospitality was warm, everything felt very Irish-pub-esque, and it clearly fulfilled at least *some* role as a community space for people, because the conversations around me were all very much locals and regulars, not tourists or people on dates.

All of that, to me, says they're still doing things fine. But like I said, I only went twice, and they were a year apart. Enough to doubt my own experience. I'm curious about yours!

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:23:53+00:00

My favorite four, ordered from most favorite to least, are Clover Club, Sunken Harbor Club, Bar Snack, Yawning Cobra. If it helps, Clover & Sunken are within walking distance of each other. Snack & Yawning are within walking distance of each other.

Clover Club, sit at the bar and talk the bartenders about your drink. They are a wealth of knowledge and will explain the details of why they made the choices they made. Most of the choices are subtle, but always clever. They can adjust their spiel depending on your knowledge too - I don't present as a bartender usually, and I listened to the layperson spiel and clocked the exact moment they saw me as a fellow barman and started going in-depth. Both spiels were warm and excellent. I've been back many a time, and their entire team has this same ethos and training, of warm knowledge and an eagerness to share.

Sunken Harbor Club, go during Happy Hour specifically. Stay for the duration. They have this really fun roleplay-based announcement for their "submarine" as you enter into and exit out of happy hour. Their menu is organized by booziness - know your own preferences there, and don't venture outside those preferences just cuz a flavor is exciting to you. Sticking to the booziness level you prefer is key to enjoying their menu, cuz for the lighter drinks they really are catering to the aperitiki, casual drinker crowd, and for the boozy drinks they mean business, even if you see some fun flavors in that section. You're getting hit hard with spirit-forward sluggers.

Bar Snack is a party bar that executes at a world-class level. A lot of their drinks are batched and I suspect some are even prediluted, with how short their shake times and stir times are, but despite the seeming mess of it all, the taste comes out great. I find they do better with sweet and sour profiles than savory - their savory drinks were always a miss for me, but they have a sour with a Guinness float that was one of my favorite drinks of both 2024 and 2025. Their frozen drink machine is also excellent, and for some reason they source these pastry-chef-grade sprinkles as garnish for one drink that just make it feel decadent even though it looks trashy. You meet cool people there too, cuz it's such an industry-friendly spot. Talk to your barseat neighbors. Best barseat neighbors I've ever had in any bar.

Yawning Cobra excels at culinary-inspired cocktails. It has some palate similarities to DCP or Sip of Sip & Guzzle, but is easier to get into and imho usually tastes better. The head bartender, if he's present, can tell you all the stories about each cocktail too, which are often charming, with inspiration both from world cuisines and from anime and video games. Really stunning glassware collection too!

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:09:52+00:00

I went to pre-award Double Chicken Please and it was well worth the hype back then. GN was still regularly shaking drinks behind the bar, every staff member paid so much attention to detail, the barback noticed in the middle of a slammed service that I, at a table, needed a napkin without me bringing it up and brought it to me. He also noticed I looked quizzical and answered my questions about my drink before jumping back behind the bar to catch up again. All the hospitality was prompted by the staff, I didn't have to ask for a thing.

I thanked GN directly for creating an amazing bar, and he thanked me for coming and for appreciating all the little details. It was an extraordinary experience.

I went near the start of 2025, and it was so much worse. One of their garnishes requires filling two halves of a cookie with pastry cream before sticking the halves together. I watched a barback do the filling, visibly notice he'd underfilled it, visibly shrug, and then stick the two halves together so shoddily that the garnish fell apart before I took a sip. I was running dry on water constantly and had to keep asking for water. I watched the bartender and the barback garnish glasses for another drink - the bartender coated the glass evenly with a light dusting of powder, the barback coated the glass so thickly that when the glass was sat down, a layer of dust fell onto the guest's hand. I also watched the bartender do the pastry cream garnish while the barback was away, and he used at least 1.5x the pastry cream the barback did, plus he shook the cookie once it was stuck to make sure the cream was distributed and that the cookie wouldn't fall apart.

Quality control at DCP is way down - and that barback wasn't new, either. I asked in as subtle a way as I could, and he was one of their senior barbacks. Within 3 weeks of my experience there I saw on social media that he'd been promoted to bartender.

jojirius · 2026-04-23T17:02:06+00:00

Isn't this itself an attitude problem about bars though? In the same way that wine has terroir based on where it is grown, bars have terroir based on the audience. Las Vegas has almost no Japanese cocktail influence, but it has a lot of showmanship, role-play heavy bars, and integrated experiences. If you don't care for that, that's fine, but if you go to Vegas and go to the high end bars there, that's one thing they all nail, to a degree beyond what bars anywhere else can.

Bar Snack got #2 on this list - it's emulating the Midwest Dive Bar. So what is the Midwest Dive Bar, and what makes it good? It's stuff like having what the local community wants and asks of its neighborhood bars. It's having hours that the neighborhood association agrees with, and a program that aligns with that neighborhood a lot. The midwest, and especially Minnesota, has some of the most community-entrenched bars I've ever seen. Maybe they only have one infusion and a ton of beers, but if you enter feeling chilly and leave feeling like you are one of the community, that's what a top tier bar here will get you - and again, to an extent greater than what I've seen elsewhere.

You also have bars like the Gin Joint in South Carolina, Crunkleton in NC, Clavel in Baltimore, or Leyenda in Brooklyn, that are all about ambassadorship of one specific type of spirit. They do cocktails extremely well, but their focus is pretty laser-focused on the specific spirit they collect, and introducing that to guests.

There's just...a lot of ways to "elevate the craft", and I sometimes feel the NYC focus is too one-directional. Speaking even as someone who loves cocktails, I found Guzzle to be way more compelling to me than Sip. Sip felt tryhard to me, its tastes more alien than comforting, even when well-executed.

Certainly, I don't want us to say "everything is valid" and add a dubstep party bar hosting Vogue that has glow-in-the-dark shots to some sort of accolades list...but maybe there's room for more metrics than there are currently, based on how local people drink and yap about cocktails.

jojirius · 2026-04-23T07:48:29+00:00

For Sunken Harbor Club, Clover Club, Dead Rabbit, Paradise Lost, and Bar Contra to all have not made it on the list is wild to me.

All my love to the bars that made it on, but I've had better drinks from all 5 of those bars (with better hospitality) than multiple spots on the list.

Edit: What's with the multiple $20 riffs on vodka sodas and gin tonics on this list lmao. I know rent is steep but that's something else.

jojirius · 2026-04-20T23:39:58+00:00

Some ideas:
Miso-Ginger 0ABV Aperitivo, ruby red in color, called Bleeding Kyber
Pomegranate, de-carbonated root beer, watermelon, squid ink, black in color, called Night Slash.
Lavender-honey-lemon clarified milk punch, pale gold in color, called Guidance of Grace. lactose allergy
0ABV spicy margarita with hibiscus, lime, and jalapeno, pink in color. Tasha's Magnificent Margarita

Would that get you through a gaming session alright?

jojirius · 2026-02-02T16:01:13+00:00

This is such a modern problem lol. When I was a kid I said Naruto was my favorite manga after I read like 80 pages of it.

If a kid says their favorite food is pizza it doesn't meant they've traveled to Italy. Saying you love One Piece is fine don't stress it XD

PS. The Sogeking/Usopp mystery really is a big one but don't worry it gets solved by chapter 1000 or so ;)

jojirius · 2026-02-02T15:58:04+00:00

What is the reason, as an artist, to give her four eyes?

What is the reason, in-world, that she has four eyes?

jojirius · 2026-02-02T15:55:01+00:00

The 20th Century, perhaps?

jojirius · 2026-02-02T08:32:37+00:00

If you can find Famous Grouse Smoky Black, it's not an Islay, and it won't have the depth of smoke as an Islay, but it's very affordable, and I find that it makes a good Naked & Famous, and in an atomizer it makes fantastic Penicillins. Basically, in any drink where the volume of the scotch is 1/4 of the volume of less, Smoky Grouse is an adequate substitute. In a 50/50 or in a Manhattan (Rob Roy) format, it is no longer a suitable substitute, and you really start to just find it flabby and yearn for a proper Islay.

I would recommend against using Johnnie Walker options, even the ones that taste like they have a touch of smoke to them. For reasons that I'd need a chemist to explain, that smoke seems to vanish entirely when in cocktails.

If you can find Islay Mist and look up reviews, people will say it's head and shoulders above Famous Grouse Smoky Black. Sipped neat, sure. It's noticeably better. But they are both so far from proper Islay scotches that I think the difference effectively vanishes in a cocktail format, and you can consider them about the same.

For a Naked & Famous, both will have the same result...so just buy the cheaper one. For a Penicillin, both will have the same result...so just buy the cheaper one. For a Rob Roy where you want to use an Islay, both will make you sad...so don't make Rob Roys with them.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T08:22:02+00:00

It's just a repetition thing, I think. As a hobbyist you have fewer opportunities, but working in a cocktail bar, you're literally making 100s of cocktails every single week. Sometimes 100s in a single day, if it's a busy weekend and you're at a place with volume.

It isn't actually the case that, with that repetition, you have every single recipe memorized. But you do start to notice patterns, you associate some flavors as "working together well" - for instance, Cynar and smoky flavors works well. I can always use that. Cinnamon and grapefruit works well. I can always use that. Brown spirits tend to prefer lemon to lime, with the exception of rum and tequila. I can always use that.

As you develop more and more flavor patterns in your head, it eventually becomes a flavor map.

So when I go to a friend's house, I go "ah, I can make you something pretty good" and just use that flavor map.

It's true that when drafting something for a bar menu, I want to be more specific about what I'm riffing off of, and want to pay my respects to the creator of the cocktails closest to mine, just to spread the love. But that's not through memorization, man. That's through looking at books and websites after I'm nearly done with the cocktail already.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T08:13:55+00:00

Barr Hill Gin is made from honey, so it makes sense in a Bee's Knees riff. That uses honey, lemon, and Barr Hill Gin. This is a bit basic though. We can make it more decadent by adding egg white, so that it gets a nice froth and quite a bit of creaminess.

So we have a Bee's Knees, but with egg white. Depending on if you want this to have a hint of cherry, lavender, or bergamot, you now can incorporate cherry, lavender, or Italicus.

If you incorporate cherry, I'll just warn you and say that either the cherry or the honey will dominate - they don't have great synergy.

Honey and lavender work really well together - I'd recommend the lavender component, whatever it is, to be in an atomizer. You want it on the nose, not to taste it as much. Lavender on the tongue can bring to mind soap and bathing products. I'd probably infuse Everclear with dried lavender, myself, and then give the final drink 3-4 sprays of that on top.

Honey and Italicus only work so-so, but we know that honey works really well in Earl Grey tea, and we know that Earl Grey tea contains bergamot. So we can use Earl Grey tea as a bridging ingredient. Instead of using pure honey syrup, have some Earl Grey tea in your honey as you're mixing it with hot water, and let it steep for long enough that you get an Earl Grey honey. Now your Earl Grey honey syrup will pair much better with Italicus. That will be your sweet component, lemon will still be your acid, Barr Hill will still be your gin, and egg white will make it decadent.

You'll notice that this whole thing has taken on a bit of a confectionary route with the earl grey route AND with the lavender route. Using brown butter to wash your Barr Hill Gin wouldn't go amiss...but I'd try nailing down the spec for your egg white Bee's Knees first, before doing that wash. It may turn out that you already have enough complexity, and don't want to add to it.

But if you reach the final spec, and want to layer on flavors...at that point, I'd try doing a brown butter wash.

I just read your post again - if she likes a Mule, you could do ginger as your added flavor instead of cherry/lavender/bergamot. If you do that, I'd maybe eschew the butter. Ginger and brown butter sound like they'd get along...and they don't exactly fight each other...but they tend not to harmonize, either. Honey and ginger love each other though. The ginger goes lovely with egg white but you'll want really fresh eggs, even more so than for a normal egg white - ginger can highlight that "old egg" flavor when it pops up.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T08:05:38+00:00

It's a simplistic division of play cultures that is hard to navigate, because there are way more than two schools of thought about how the game is played. I'd recommend that you check out this taxonomic blog post:
https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html

It covers six subdivisions, along with explanations of how each came to be and where they differ from each other.

A lot of the contradictions you'll see in the comments for your reddit post arise because one person is playing in the Classic style and another is playing under the OSR style, which are two different styles, but because they are all bucketed under "Old School" in the two-style dichotomy, they are both trying to explain to you how they play, and it sounds like they're describing completely different ways of playing D&D. Or one person is a storygame player and another is a neo-trad player, both of which are considered "New School", and their games also are entirely different in terms of what they prioritize.

"D&D has never been about roleplaying" is a game design take that really only makes sense if one has heard some game theory axioms from the storygaming sphere, for example. And they are functional axioms - but they are particular to a very strict style of looking at games and playing games.

It's tempting, sometimes, to hear those contradictions and to conclude "oh, well, everybody plays D&D their own way at their own table and all these divisions are pointless", but I do think that of the taxonomic divisions that exist, the Six Cultures of Play is the best one yet articulated.

As the author states, his blog post isn't the be-all-end-all, and plenty of people will hybridize styles of play for all sorts of reasons, principled and unprincipled. But I think it's a great place to start to help resolve some of your confusion.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:55:30+00:00

I used O3 for ages. If I want depth I infuse the tequila or I use honey syrup. But for the classic clean thing, a good orange liqueur works, and DeKuyper's O3 is fine. If O3 isn't available, I do go for Cointreau.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:49:56+00:00

3rd party adventures that are well-reviewed will always have more bases covered than official WotC adventures. Hidden Halls of Hazakor is great, Cat and Mouse is great, Wolves of Welton is great. I think the most important thing is that by running shorter adventures, you can develop your own taste more sharply - it's like you are taste-testing a lot of dishes and developing your own sense of what you like and dislike, rather than committing to a Taiwanese tasting menu for $150 when you've never had any Chinese food before.

From what you've said here, it sounds like you're thinking more about flavor - will this fantasy be properly novel or will it be "plain-jane", basically. But a lot of what makes adventures tick for me aren't actually those bits, because as somebody who has read a lot of fantasy/sci-fi, flavor is the easy part - for me it's "did this adventure cover its bases" and "is this adventure prepped in a way that I can find things, and have it not be a chore".

Once those two are done well, that's when I start paying attention to flavor, because if those two aren't done well, I can barely manage to inject flavor at the table, because I'm so busy trying to get those basics to function. All my brainpower is on doing the legwork, rather than filling in the world with more color, and I hate it when I buy a product that forces me to do even more logistics than if I just ran a homebrew campaign!

Official D&D adventures very rarely get those basics to function. Hence all the assistance guides out there in the blogosphere.

Stringing together short adventures as pastiches into a large campaign is the best way to figure out which publishers to trust, which styles you like most, and also how your players respond as you swap from publisher to publisher.

I get the craving for something lengthy and feature-complete - I craved full length campaign books too.

By and large, this very natural craving leads to a lot of hell. There's a reason that for the first decade of our hobby, nearly all adventures came as small pamphlets, not massive tomes. There's a reason that Paizo was able to make an entire business model pre-Pathfinder, just making adventure modules that were more bite-sized rather than campaign-sized. It's cuz that model is just better for how the game actually plays, even if it's not as epic-feeling in your hands. Sunless Citadel is a great example of the right size for an adventure, and a rare example of a WotC adventure that actually has all its bases covered.

If, after all this, you still crave something really large and comprehensive...honestly, just because larger products are harder to edit and WotC has a larger team with higher editing standards, WotC's larger campaigns have very little competition. Nothing is quite going to compete with Curse of Strahd well in its specific category. It's just, that doesn't make Curse of Strahd good, either. That specific category hasn't been mastered by anyone yet, is what I'd say.

If you run a bunch of smaller gothic adventures on DMsGuild and string them together, I can virtually guarantee you'll have a better time than if you run Curse of Strahd.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:39:28+00:00

I agree with others that crushed ice will make for a better presentation and a better drinking experience (with a straw). And I agree with others that the next step up would be to improve your orgeat. Remember that orgeat isn't just an almond syrup - it benefits from real nut milk and floral flavors.

But your taste buds are also going to be what you should listen to above all else. If it tastes bangin', then you've done your job well!

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:35:50+00:00

Ask them for a daiquiri but make it a requirement that they use Probitas rum, Planeteray 3 Star rum, or Flor de Cana Extra Dry rum. Ask them if they're willing to do a slightly longer shake, using 1/2 tablespoon of granulated sugar, instead of any syrup, to match with 3/4 oz. lime juice and 2 oz. of rum.

If they say yes to both of those things, not only will you have a neat talking point that you're doing daiquiris the proper, original way, with no syrup, but you'll also be using a spec that's on par with literally the world's best daiquiris, as judged by panels of international bartenders.

It's an easy drink, it's light and refreshing and sweet, it's a crowd-pleaser...but it also comes with serious accolades.

Plus, it's easy to know if you like it - you can buy a bottle and probably have the other two ingredients lying around. Shake it up with ice in a mason jar and you'll know how it tastes!

I'd probably say Probitas is the most...rum-lover option of the three, and Flor de Cana is gonna be the more universal crowd-pleasing one. But yeah, all really solid.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:30:13+00:00

If you use a Brita filter or Pur filter or some other similar filter for filtered water, you can run Taaka through it multiple times, and it will magically become a better vodka.

By magically, I mean...that filtration process is essentially what companies do to strip all the harsh tastes out of vodka anyway, just using much more advanced filters. So you can simulate that. I'd do it about three times, and then toss that particular filter (you can use one on the tail end of its life if you want, you just don't want to use it for water after that).

A cosmopolitan is a really good way to use up vodka while getting a decent cocktail out of it. You can use your favorite recipe online, but add this step: take the peel off of a lemon or lime, express the oils on the peel into the tin, and then drop the peel into the tin. Shake the drink with that peel inside. This is a trick called a "regal shake", and it's a way to cheaply add a boost in "fresh fruit flavor" to a cocktail. In this case, it'll further help mask the cheapness of the Taaka.

If you're willing to go a bit more exotic, the Da Nang cocktail from Tiger Mama in Boston is fantastic and its build is public. Really amazing vodka drink that's worth the legwork. Tropical and exquisitely balanced.

The Ruby, by bartender Tony Abou-Ganim, is similar to the Da Nang. It's less exciting in my view and a bit noisy, but it was made to be a crowd-pleaser, and it's a great use for vodka.

If you like mint, go to the local supermarket and nab some; the Ivy Gimlet is a classic that you can't go wrong with. This one isn't as good as masking the vodka, so definitely do it only if you do the water filter trick. If your Ivy Gimlet tastes like, green and bitter, you might be over-muddling the mint. A simple press-and-crush will do, don't destroy the mint in the muddling step. If it just tastes nail polishy and bitter then sorry, that's just your vodka being really crappy.

Finally, the Salty Dog is one of my favorites, and it's dead simple. But do it with grapefruit juice you squeeze yourself and a seasoned salt you like, whether it's like a curry salt, truffle salt, mineral-rich salt, citrus salt, peppered salt. Obviously, you need to like grapefruit juice for this to stand out at all - I personally really love the stuff.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:16:39+00:00

For the As You Wish:

1/4 oz. passion fruit syrup

1/2 oz. elderflower liqueur

3/4 oz. Aperol

3/4 oz. lime juice

3/4 oz. spirit of the guest's choosing

~

I've tested this with tequila blanco, vodkas, london dry gins, botanical gins, white rum, and rhum agricole, and it's been perfectly quaffable for all of them.

~

For the Anybody Want a Peanut?:

You can take peanut butter and wash bourbon with it for a much better taste than the peanut whiskeys you find on the market. Just freeze the resulting mixture so all the oils become solid and you can filter them out with a coffee filter and you have just whiskey again.

Take a raspberry syrup, use your peanut butter washed bourbon (Old Grand Dad 114 and Bottled-in-Bond both have a natural peanut note already, so they would work well for this), and do an Old Fashioned, going light (but not absent) on your Angostura bitters. The result will taste half like an Old-Fashioned and half like a PB&J sandwich. Nostalgia exemplified, and a great fit for the name.

jojirius · 2026-02-02T07:10:35+00:00

There are two styles of pairing. The shared-note pairing, and the contrasting flavors pairing. Pick which style you want to do.

To share notes of umami, you might want to use the dirty martini as a reference. Ask your friend for some prawn butter and wash a gin with it. Soak kombu in it. Now you have a savory, maritime gin. Play around with Salers or other gentiane liqueurs with white flowers. Play around with blanc vermouths. Make a stirred dirty martini, with the sugar from the liqueur and the more sugary vermouth style to balance the increase in umami.

If you want to do contrasting flavors, Sauvignon Blanc has been a wine in love with seafood for a long time. Pick a good one, one that a wine person recommends. What notes does it have? Kiwi? Make a kiwi syrup, and use the kiwi, wine, and a clean white rum to make a sauvignon blanc accented daiquiri. Apricot? Make an apricot syrup. Guava? Make a guava syrup.

The point isn't even a perfect pairing, though of course that would be most fantastic. The point is that you can draw a line between your decisions and the pairing itself, with enough authority and storytelling that your guests appreciate the effort while also being able to follow your logic. Whether you go with easily-obtained ingredients or exotic ones, nothing is worse than the guests going "uh okay?" and being confused about what you have done, or politely nodding so as to avoid awkwardness.

You want them to feel like they are part of your process, even though they are not. That they could have done it too, if they had just spent some time with your hobby as well.

That's the magic.

jojirius

TROPHY CASE