Text 34526, 55 rader
Skriven 2015-12-25 01:33:24 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: the bar at the Hilton 715
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By the way, I meant to say St. Charles when I said Canal above.

Sunday at around 8 we discovered that we hadn't eaten enough`
during the day to make an evening meal totally, if you will, 
suppernumerary, so we wandered around the vicinity of the
Riverwalk, discovering that all the restaurants were closed!
so we went back to the hotel bar, which goes under one or both 
of the descriptive but not imaginative monickers Spirits Bar 
or Cocktails in Comfort, depending on what hotel literature
you read. It is next to Drago's, which we weren't hungry
enough for, but doesn't share a kitchen, though in concession
to the tourists, it will call next door for the famed char-
grilled oysters, for which it tacks on a buck surcharge. Not
so the rest of the menu - one can't even get raw oysters.
The native menu is your usual bar food, burgers, wraps, fried
stuff out of the freezer, that kind of thing. 

The Sazerac is supposed to be a specialty here (tttt, it's
supposed to be a specialty at half the bars in town), and it
was only $10, and we hadn't gotten uptown to some bar that
Lilli had read about where they are only $5, so what the
hey, the things are too sweet for me, but all in the interest
of amity. So we got one. The genial bartendress I believe must
have substituted anisette for pastis (which is itself a mean 
substitute for absinthe) and then got the proportion wrong - 
it's supposed to be more booze, Jim Beam rye, in this case, 
than licorice stuff, but it was more sweeter and less boozier, 
which was a modest disappointment. There was, as a consolation, 
quite a big hit of real Peychaud's bitters, giving the drink
a lurid almost glow-in-the-dark appearance.

I was pretty sure she wouldn't like that cocktail, so I ordered 
a glass of Terrazas Malbec as backup. It was reliably mediocre
and saved the day.

Being only slightly peckish, we decided to split a burger. The 
bartender lady asked if we wanted it cut in half, to which we 
said okay. It came on two plates, each with a full serving of 
French fries. Whoops - I could see an enormous extra plate 
charge in my future.

The burger, rare as ordered, was about 6 oz, hand formed, on a 
squishy bun and topped with curly lettuce, a slice each of 
tomato and sweet red onion, and the cheese of one's choice of 
American, Cheddar, or Swiss. We chose no cheese. On the side 
the previously mentioned fries, thin, crisp, and actually quite 
delicious, and a little pile of sweet bread-and-butter pickles, 
quite strange. Pretty good meat,  ground fresh that day, I'd 
guess 85%, not particularly rich in flavor but more than decent.

Strangeness of strangenesses, when the bill came, there was
no surcharge for the split. So I split the difference and
left a 25% tip.
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