Wilfrid

Filling in details, a roast turnip salad with sour cream; an enormous portion of pork shoulder with lentils; an unremarkable wedge of Camembert. Everything is basically portioned for two hungry people. I barely got halfway through the pork. Wine comes in generous quartinos; I ordered the cheese because I still had plenty of red. ISC pet nat from Illinois (pink and a bit too sweet) Bodegas Cuevas orange (excellent) A Catalan red I can’t find on the online list (Can Suriol I think) The list of dessert wines (includes aperitifs and digestifs) is wild.

Ended up at the West Loop branch of Avec. Inside, almost an exact carbon copy of Momofuku Ssam Bar, but with Mediterranean food. Nice service, good food, very interesting wine list. Preceded by drinks at Moneygun around the corner. Dive bar with classic cocktails and, again, nice service. Sad that Avec sits right next door to the very closed Blackbird.

For a year after moving into this apartment I wasn’t able to find a navy flat cap. I couldn’t see how it got lost in the move. All my other hats went in the moving box and arrived. I eventually theorized I had lost it before the move but hadn’t realized. Recently I opened a large bag for the first time in, well, a year as I had to tote a very heavy book back to the library. There it was.

Flying back tomorrow. Lucky not to have been flying back today. 💨

I do appreciate this, just turns out a little too late.

I think our area of disagreement is narrow. We both agree that serving a martini at room temperature maximizes flavor and bouquet. Nobody wants that. Introducing lower temperatures satisfies the equally important trigeminal satisfaction (it’s really important, see Coke example). Where is the best balance? Will differ for people, probably within fairly narrow terms. For me, it’s much better with the freezer/ice/chilled glass combo than starting with room temperature liquor. Of course there’s a trade off with bouquet and flavor. There is for even a very slightly chilled martini. W

Agree on Lasso. It had good moments, some big laughs, and I treasure Roy Fucking Kent. But overlong episodes with people mooning over love interest characters and I couldn’t really remember who they were. And Nate, well acted, but I was completely lost on his motivation (I’m manager of West Ham United, I’m a waiter…)

Man I have been all over Bresson, Ozu too.

Freezer temperature is not a specific thing. The gin comes out of the freezer, the other ingredients are added, then ice, then it’s stirred or shaken, poured and garnished. By the time you drink it, it’s not quite as cold. The room temperature gin you have a lot of hard work to try to get it as cold as the above and in my experience you fail. As you rightly say, few want to drink gin at room temperature. There is doubtless a temperature so low that would be aversive. Most of us find a place between those extremes. Many people find that place by using the freezer (fridge too of course

Streaming services so desperate. I got 30 days of free Mubi through a NYRB link. I wanted to see a movie reviewed in the New Yorker called in English Blind Spot, real and appropriate name Eine Reise Nach Lyon. A German scholar drifts around Lyon researching a 19th C feminist writer. This is an example of what I have learned to call “slow cinema” and I love it. Endless lingering on old broken walls and a magnificent, whispering soundtrack. Of perhaps wider appeal, Five Devils, intense and creepy, magic realism I guess, with a crazy performance by 12 year old Sally Drame, and Adele Exa

That's one thing that is indeed unresolved in this thread. Joe is suggesting that there are methods of making cocktails just as cold from room temperature bottles. Then there's the other suggestion (advanced I think by Arnold) that drinks can be too cold. In the abstract, that's undoubtedly right, but everyone will balance olfaction and the trigeminal reaction in their own way. If we privilege the first exclusively, we'll drink our gin at room temperature and get the maximum flavor and bouquet. That won't suit most of us.

We are stuck on that point. Cocktails made from a bottle stored in the freezer are clearly colder than cocktails made from a bottle I just carried home from the liquor store. No I am not using a thermometer. Additionally, what's the relevance of the Arnold piece if cocktails not made from the freezer can be just as cold as those made from the freezer? The only guidance I've seen on making cocktails from room temperature bottles as cold as those from the freezer is: right barware, right ice, right technique. Oh, and more ice. It's hard to evaluate that. I use a standard-sized

https://www.google.com/search?q=bars+store+gin+in+the+freezer&rlz=1CAWPBA_enUS971&oq=bars+store+gin+in+the+freezer&aqs=chrome..69i57.6111j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 For bars, there will be a space issue.

Arnold doesn't distinguish between olfaction and trigeminal reaction. Both are important. Warm, flat coke has the same olfactory properties as cold, fizzy coke. Most people hugely prefer the latter.

Apparently, to get a cocktail that cold, I need to: 1. Have the right barware (?) 2. Use the right kind of ice 3. Use the right technique 4. Use more ice (I still don't get that one). Alternatively, I can keep the gin in the freezer.

Yes, and why? People can do what they want. I am not telling everyone to keep their gin in the freezer.

Seriously, given what I've been saying in this thread, you think I am not filling the shaker with ice?

But I know when I am beaten. Even though it's conventional wisdom that gin should be stored in the fridge or freezer, in future I will up my game on barware, kind of ice, technique and somehow put more ice in the shaker (get a bigger shaker, I don't know). No more simply putting it in the freezer for me. You have convinced me. I was so wrong.

I am blown away that this is controversial.

It’s colder using a bottle from the freezer rather than a room temperature bottle. Plus the viscosity. This isn’t my theory. How much more ice can I get in the shaker?

It would probably be possible to sneak lime peel through security. 😆

People won’t read a two page New Yorker article and you want me to read that? Congratulations on the ice, barware and technique. Or you could just put it in the freezer (you really store your gin at room temperature?). If I plan badly, I have to make a gin cocktail from a room temperature bottle. It’s clearly warmer than the same cocktail made from gin from the freezer. If you like your cocktails warmer, do what you do.

I listened to Seven Psalms and the thing I’d recommend is the guitar playing. Simon knows how to play, and record, an acoustic guitar.

Not my preference, sorry.

If we shouldn't interpret "the neon god they made" as obviously a false god, I give up.