Skip to main content

Speakeasy 21- Cocktails Downtown


It was my birthday last week, and a good friend and I started the celebration at Speakeasy 21.  I had avoided this place for a while; I find the bars right in the office towers downtown are often just too loud, or filled with, you know, rich idiots (I am trying to write at least one post without using the word douchebag, but perhaps one about the Bay street bar scene isn't the place to start.)



We were seated quickly, but it was pretty crowded for a Tuesday night.  It was indeed loud, but no worse than anywhere in the area, I guess.  The cocktail I had was delicious.  Now, I am fully aware that I am late to the party on practically everything cultural these days (just see my TV reviews; have you heard of this Game of Thrones business? ) but the throwback cocktail thing- I have been doing this for years.

I was ordering sidecars in bars back when you had to tell the bartender what was in them.  I was scouring antique stores for coupe glasses before they became ubiquitous again.  For me, it was an Algonquin Round Table thing.  My love of Dorothy Parker et al meant a lifelong infatuation with the style, if not the liquor itself.  Still, although it's delightful to have a drink at the actual Algonquin when I'm in New York, I'm relieved that I can finally get old-school cocktails in so many places.

At Speakeasy 21, I had a Sloe Gin 75, which was like a French 75 but with some Chambord thrown in.  Very good. I can't comment on the food, since my friend and I just had drinks, before meeting some others at Montecito for dinner (more on that later). I'd definitely go back and try something else from the menu.  I have 2 friends who work in that office tower, and I noticed they had patio furniture about to be set up, should this mother%$#*%ing Canadian winter ever end.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Now or Never Books

As I mentioned in a previous post , and as it's the season, I am in a purging and organizing mood.  No, I'm not following Marie Kondo's advice as closely as I should be, mostly because it's SO HARD with books, and I have more books than anything else.  I've gone over and over my bookshelves, but I just can't seem to part with any more titles.  The vast majority of my books do spark joy, even if it's just the memory of having read it; I know I'm supposed to get rid of them anyway.  Not sure I can. I have started making piles that I am calling "now or never" books.  One of the bits of advice in The  Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  is essentially: if you haven't read it yet, you're never going to.  I just can't face that.  In the pile pictured above are some books that I know will be amazing, but for some reason I haven't found the time. I have to read these in the next, let's say, 2 months, or they get donated.  It

Girls Who Wear Glasses

Image- Pinterest I had braces for 3 years.  That may give you some idea of how out of whack my teeth were as an adolescent.  My dad used to say I could eat corn on the cob through a picket fence.  Even with good insurance, he still referred to my braces as "the trip to Hawaii."  I had them removed just a few weeks into high school.  I was perfect, for about a month. Then, one day in math class, my teacher asked me to do the problem written on the blackboard.  "There's something written on the blackboard?" I said, which was both smart-ass and true.  I couldn't see a damn thing on it.  So, off I went for an eye exam, and, sure enough, I needed glasses.  I was  not  pleased.  Hipsters hadn't yet been spawned by the devil, and the only people who wore glasses were nerds and old people.

The Cottage Cookbook- Muskoka Memories

On one of my recent purging benders , I found this great old cookbook.  I got it decades ago from Mrs Morland, the mother of one of my parents' friends.  She had been an operator for Bell Canada in the stone age, when phones were essentially tin cans with string between them. Anyway, as a young woman, she'd bought quite a bit of stock in the company. By the time I knew her as an old lady in the late 70s, she was plenty loaded. And if you were even passably flush in Ontario in the 70s, you had a cottage in Muskoka , or as we always called it, "up north." Pointe au Baril, Ontario. This cookbook is from Pointe au Baril , a beautiful area on the Georgian Bay part of Lake Huron, for those of you not from these parts.  I don't remember going there as a kid, but I probably did.  My earliest cottage memories were in Bala  and Baysville, with my family, and with friends in Lake of Bays, or when we were in the mood for bear sightings, Cache Bay, on the north side of L