Friday, June 25, 2010

Detective Liver Punisher and the Curious Case of the Patriot Shot


Earlier this week, Monday to be precise, having wrapped up practice with the new band, Modestly Nautical, we decided that some post practice libations were in order. The closest watering hole to Joe’s house/practice spot is a fantastic little dive bar in South Euclid known as: The Razzle Dazzle!

This is the kind of place you’d expect to see your uncle who thinks Larry the Cable Guy is hilarious or that neighbor with the Iroc and the wraparound shades. It’s a working man’s bar and it is damn proud of it, too. It’s décor is simple, a few tables and chairs, bar stools, giant American flag, the usual, with a few slot machine-like skill games in the corner and a big screen TV that yearns for the return of football season. In a nutshell: this bar is perfect.

The drink selection is somewhat limited, mostly domestic beers—I think I saw Heineken’s in the cooler, but that’s less an import and more a waste of money—and the standard gin/tequila/rum/vodka/whiskey behind the bar along side some very old looking fairly dusty bottles of amaretto and other cordials that seem to be as much decoration as ingredient.

As we were ordering a round of Buds and Miller Lites our extremely friendly bartender mentioned there was a special shot available should we want and that a dollar from the price of each shot would be donated to the USO. The name of this drink-for-charity? The Patriot Shot, of course.

Two rounds in, we’d all switched to High Life at this point, our collective interests were piqued. I walked inside to buy my round of beers and a few Patriot Shots for the table. When this option had been first broached by the bartender we were trying to figure out what this “sweet, delicious, red-white-and-blue” shot might entail. My guess was a layered shot with grenadine, lemonade, and blue Curacao floating on top of each other. After ordering them I found that I wasn’t too far of the mark.

Here’s how it went down:
First the bartender filled a rocks glass a third to a half full with Smirnoff Ice. He then tipped the glass and carefully poured grenadine down the side of the glass which is thick and syrupy enough to lift the Smirnoff ice up a quarter of an inch. So that’s the red and the white, but how does the blue get in there? Well, the barkeep grabbed a cocktail shaker—I was a little surprised that the Raz Daz has one—scooped in some ice then poured in blue Curacao and vodka and gave the whole thing a good shake. This blue vodka mix was doled out into shot glasses and were set, not dropped a la Jaeger Bomb, into the rocks glass. The effect is somewhat like an inverted Bomb Pop with a blue vein running through out and peeking out the top.

And the taste:
Not bad considering the Smirnoff Ice or gross juice as I like to call it. It’s got the sugary candy blast from the grenadine and the orangey bite from the Curacao which balance out the chemically painful sweet-n-sour zing of the gross juice. The Patriot Shot goes down smooth and tastes too good to be alcoholic, but it is. It seems like there would be a better way to build this without sweet-n-sour malt liquor, but I’m not sure what. Coconut rum? Real, actual lemonade? Anything other than barfy-time hangover juice would be an improvement.

And now you know what to serve your friends and family this Fourth of July weekend, because nothing says America quite like booze and patriotism!





Oh! Speaking of Smirnoff Ice, am I the last person to find out about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/media/09adco.html?scp=1&sq=bros%20icing%20bros&st=cse

1 comments:

Bobby said...

I am loving the crap out of this blog. Keep up the good work.

 
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