Solo Travel / Drinking
The Highs and Lows of An Old Fashioned in Buenos Aires
A brief moment at a new bar in a new city
A guy — you can probably just assume it’s me — walks into a bar. It’s a very good-looking bar, full of good-looking Porteños, both the drinking ones and the working ones. The lights are on low, and the candles are on high, so maybe that’s why it seems like that. Good lighting is everything.
It’s my first time in this bar and really it’s my first time in any bar in this city and in this country, and I think to myself, “In you go…It’s different from home, let’s see what this place is all about.” I have found through extensive research that a bar is a bar no matter where I’ve gone and since I’m alone it’s almost like I’m invisible anyway. So up I belly.
This particular place is called Negroni and I have to be in a very specific mood for one of those and I know enough about myself to know that I’m not in that mood right now. And anyway, I’m usually only good for about two sips of one. Why do I expect a bright red drink to taste like juice? And why would I want juice? It fools me every time.
What I want is an Old Fashioned and I have reason to believe that any bar that’s called Negroni can make a Negroni but can also make me the Old Fashioned that I want. Still, I know it’s early and the type of activity going on behind the bar says that they are getting ready for a busy night ahead and they are only just starting to organise themselves. So I’ll give them a fair chance to finish up their bottle wiping and their ice getting and their glass polishing and turn to face me and take care of what I believe are my relatively simple needs.
I have a funny relationship with patience in situations like these. But I am here to relax. So…just be cool. Pretend like you’ve done this before.
It finally does happen, and with any misgivings placed to one side, I watch this bartender put together the Old Fashioned that I have ordered. I have sampled my fair share of these things in my day but I have never really watched one being assembled by a true professional like this woman. Skill, craft, care…love, even…these all are being poured into this one drink as though our lives themselves depend on it.
Sugar, not too much, but just enough. Bitters, not too much, but just enough. These are then encouraged to mingle together and get to know each other and dance around the inner surface of the glass, and then left to sit while the flavours mixed. Then ice, lots of ice. Then the bourbon…not one I recognized but delicious just the same. Then a swirl with a long-handled spoon, but more of an easy stir. Some other liquid went in there, but I didn’t recognize it. It might have been what gave my drink a very slight mint finish at the end of each sip. She was not shy with the requisite orange peel either.
She put this drink together in a way I had never seen it done until then. And before the first swallow was finished, I knew that this was going to be the best Old Fashioned that I’d ever had. I told her so…ok, not in so many words, but I did say that it was perfect. And it truly was. And though she seemed pleased with my review, those were the last words we exchanged.
I drank it long and I drank it deep. I was the only one sitting at the bar, so I reached for a magazine and flipped through it a few times. The three bartenders behind the bar beavered away at their tasks and none paid me another second of attention. They had a lot of bottles to clean and I guess not a lot of time in which to clean them.
An empty glass of dwindling ice cubes didn’t seem to trouble them either. Clinking those cubes only seemed to make them more focused on their bottles, which was the opposite effect that I’d had in mind. I got my money out, but they could not have seen that, with their backs to me.
I asked for the bill. And then I asked for it again. I paid it, and I left. I left laughing to myself. Or perhaps at myself. I wanted it to be good. It was. But I wanted it to be beyond good and satisfy all my drinking needs at that moment. It wasn’t.
I walked by there again tonight. The place was empty. I can only imagine why.
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