After a day of watching the lad, it’s time to get some cooking on.  Aviation cocktail and a 1.5 lb Red Snapper on the tapee.

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Slower | Start | Faster To see the full size images, you need to enable javascript in your browser. These awesome pics, by Gabi Porter, are of our recent Manhattan Cocktail Classic event at Hearth: From Farm to Still:  NY Spirits and NY Roast Pig.  65 people.  4 courses.  520 Cocktails.  In 2 hours. Huge […]

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What’s the date today?  Really?  Wow.  Where did the week go?  Oh, right.  We’re opening a new wine bar in the next few days…on a railroad track…in the sky…but more on that later. In the meantime, I must close up some loose ends for the Manhattan Cocktail Classic because it went more beautifully than a […]

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A pic from last night’s soiree at the 2012 Manhattan Cocktail Classic Gala with some of my fellow managers from Hearth & Terroir. And yes, that is a black bear behind us standing on his hind legs, fangs and claws bared.  Thankfully, we weren’t harmed, but I did hear the bear was spotted loitering around […]

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Last week, Serious Eats: Drinks was kind enough to do a piece about our bar program at Hearth, specifically the focus I decided to shine on New York spirits.  Click here to read the article (and be sure to view the kick-ass slideshow by Alice Gau). Since that fateful day six months ago, when I […]

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My English in-laws (and perhaps in a few states, outlaws?) rolled into town to begin laying grandparent groundwork.  Their first plan of attack was to prepare a heaping bowl of vegetable pasta.  And to compliment their efforts, I set off into the cold on a mission to the local wine shop. Now pay attention, here’s […]

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As I launch into my 36th year on this planet (don’t even get me started about my lifetimes on other planets), I’d like to take a moment and say thanks for all the great friends I am fortunate to have in my life.  I salute your humor, irreverance, loyalty, wit, charm and passion.  Continue to […]

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Spawning from the viral video, Shit Girls Say (or was it Shit My Dad Says on Twitter?) we’ve now seen an endless slew of snippet videos hit the web like Shit College Freshman Say, Shit Black Girls Say, Shit New Yorkers Say to Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys. It’s only right that the cocktail […]

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  I’d like to officially welcome these fine specimens into my collection.

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We figured with the baby only a few weeks away, we better get in as much wining, dining, cocktailing and beering as we can.  So, we hit up Julian Medina’s latin joint, Coppelia, last week and I was stoked to see a nice cocktail program in play. But to get away from the booze for […]

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Being pregnant sucks.  Well, let me rephrase that…being pregnant is beautiful…but not being able to savor the fine intracies of a well-balanced cocktail blows goats.  But rest assured, ladies-of-the-bump: a good mocktail can satisfy that craving, and not leave you with a sauced fetus. We recently checked out the new Astoria haunt, The Astor Room.  […]

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I have to admit, I don’t understand white whiskey.  As someone who oversees a bar program, I find myself confused as to how it fits into the mix.  Is it a sipping spirit?  Can it stand on its own?  Or is it simply something bound for a cocktail and that’s the end of it? To […]

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First Friday night in the new apartment.  Still surrounded by a sea of boxes but after a long work week and late nights of cobbling together furniture, it’s time to put the dogs up and kick it Repasado style.  ¡Salud!

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Yesterday, on a fine November day in Brooklyn— as the temperature soared to nearly 70 degrees and our sun-deprived flesh once again met it’s warm rays— twelve competitors stepped behind the bar of the Clover Club to do battle. Brandishing their Sherry-filled libation armaments, they let loose for a panel of esteemed judges and a crowd […]

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Just two weeks ago, I wrote about the mesmerizing hike along the cliff that connects the towns of Monterrosso and Vernazza in Italy’s Cinque Terre.  Yesterday, I froze as I read the disturbing news on Rick Steves’ website about the natural disaster that befell the area last week: “…with a freakishly intense rainstorm — like […]

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