In the “Five O’Clock Fridays” series, we’ll highlight a particular drink we’re loving right now. Depending on where we stumble upon this brilliant beverage, we’ll either provide a recipe to go along with it, or provide tasting notes and point you to where you can purchase it. Today’s edition: the Green Monk Fizz!
I don’t know about you, but Valentine’s Day usually sends me into a tailspin of stress. I always want to find the perfect grand romantic gesture, something that would have Lloyd Dobler — John Cusack’s character in Say Anything — nodding in approval.
Of course, this mostly revolves around upping our food and drinks game, not holding up boom boxes playing Peter Gabriel songs (though Mr. Five O’Clock does think it’s romantic when I sing to him, which happens maybe once a month). Sick of buying champagne every year, then, I decided to mix things up and seek out some creative pink and red drinks for my valentine this February.
Whether you’re in the mood for love or hanging out with your BFFs for Galentine’s Day, we’ve got you covered in the Valentine’s Day drinks department. Read on to see our colorful roundup of cocktails, wine, and beer!
(Updated August 2018) Manhattan, you’ve got some grade A competition when it comes to cocktail bars. Sure, you’ve got Dead Rabbit, Death & Co, and Raines Law Room. But sometimes, I just want to be able to walk for three minutes to get to my next bar instead of schlepping my stuff 20 minutes on the subway, you know? That’s why we’ve created this nifty Brooklyn cocktail bar crawl itinerary for everyone out there who wants an amazing cocktail without the hassle of taxis and trains.
It’s Five O’Clock Here: making your bar planning as easy and fun as possible. Oh man, that sounded way too cheesy.
Read on to discover where you should go next time you’re in Brooklyn, NYC’s coolest borough.
Despite being an East Coast transplant who lives and breathes New York City, I still find myself missing the West Coast at the most unexpected times. Sometimes, it’s those San Diego beach photos I see on Instagram during an especially vicious blizzard. Other times, it’s the thought of open spaces and towering California redwoods when I look up at silver Manhattan skyscrapers. But lately, I’ve been missing another West Coast city: Seattle.
Seattle has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. It may have had something to do with watching that particular Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie as a teen (I used to daydream about spending Valentine’s Day dining at the Space Needle). Or maybe it was because my sister-in-law, Rachel, had lived there for years, and her verdant, tranquil photos of the Pacific Northwest were giving me a major case of FOMO.
But whatever the reason, I finally made it over to the Emerald City back in September 2016. What I found was not only those amazing open spaces, but a bar scene that’s a cut above elsewhere.
Here’s a round up of my favorite places to drink in Seattle right now.
I’ll admit it: living in New York City can inflate your food and drink standards so high that you think nothing else can compare. Sometimes, this is warranted (see: Death & Co and Eleven Madison Park). But about half of the time, our friends want us to pull our heads out of our asses and give other cities a fighting chance. Building on our recent successes finding top notch drinks in London and Israel, then, we went into our Reykjavik bar explorations in October with high hopes.
So did Iceland’s capital make the cut when it comes to having an awesome bar scene? The answer, it turns out, is more complex than we expected.
London may be the one city in the world that can go head to head with New York City when it comes to all things libations-related. Don’t believe me? Look no further than the World’s 50 Best Bars list, and you’ll find that half of the top 10 bars are located in England’s capital city.
Before you blindly stumble into another pub that looks just like the last one you were in, here are five places you should consider drinking at the next time you’re in London.
UPDATE: Sadly, Betony closed its doors on December 31, 2016. RIP to one of our favorite cocktail spots.
Cocktail lovers, rejoice! No longer do you have to avoid Midtown Manhattan if you want high quality craft cocktails: Betony has got you covered.
You have to understand, Mr. Five O’Clock and I have been trying to find a suitable after-work spot to meet for drinks in this area for nearly four years. We’d wander around the oasis that is Central Park down to West 30th Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, desperately attempting to find some glimmer of hope.
It’s not that there’s a shortage of bars here–you can find Irish pubs galore near Penn Station and overpriced watery drinks all over Times Square. But there was nothing on the level of craft cocktail bars like Death and Company or Little Branch.
Enter Betony. This restaurant, located on West 57th Street in Manhattan, contains a beverage program so good that people will drop by the restaurant just for a drink. We can’t keep a secret this good forever, so here’s why we think Betony is Midtown Manhattan’s best cocktail spot.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: we had not one, but two itineraries for our recent trip to Israel.
One, of course, was the official daily trip itinerary provided to us by Honeymoon Israel for all nine days of our trip to the Holy Land. But we had a second list, one that resided in the shadows and was only good for the hours of 9 PM to 2 AM: where to drink the best cocktails in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
And so in between visits to holy sites and various outdoor activities, we set out to find the answer to one of our burning questions for the trip: Which Israeli city makes better cocktails, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv? Read More
The mint julep holds a special place in my heart. Prior to attending the Kentucky Derby in May 2013, Mr. Five O’Clock and I were die-hard wine fans and wouldn’t give cocktails much of a second thought. However, once we tasted this delicious, boozy concoction on Derby Day, we realized that—gasp!—bourbon could be just as interesting as a glass of Bordeaux or Barolo.
The mint julep became the official drink of the Kentucky Derby in 1938, but it turns out that they’ve been around much longer than that. According to David Wondrich’s Imbibe!, a “julep” was simply medicine at first (as early as 900 AD or even before that). How it turned into an alcoholic beverage is still up for debate, but Wondrich tells us that the original spirit of choice for a julep was actually French cognac (not whiskey!).
Given the variety of julep recipes out there, we thought we’d conduct a mint julep taste test of our own. Which version of this drink would wind up reigning supreme?
In true detective fashion, I conducted a very sophisticated focus group during yesterday’s 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby (read: invited over Miss Scarlet and Bourbon Broad for drinks). While the Kentucky Derby may be the quickest two minutes in sports, our debate about mint juleps proved to be the longest twenty-two minutes in the history of our taste tests. Find out which julep we’d drink over and over again.
Montreal, I’ve got to hand it to you: I had no idea that the caliber of your watering holes (not to mention your food) was so high. Here we are, sitting in New York City after a fantastic whirlwind getaway to Québec’s metropolis last weekend, and all Mr. Five O’Clock and I can think about is how soon we can return to your charming city to revisit our favorite spots and scout out new ones.
While there’s no doubt that our current residence will always have a new, hot “bar of the moment” to try, there’s something really exciting about a city that hasn’t been overrun with dozens of speakeasies and can hold its own in the world of excellent microbrews. If you find yourself up in the Great White North with a hankering for some booze, here are the top spots to grab a drink in Montreal right now.
