The Restaurant Refugee

I have been known to frequent a bar or three in the past.  The frequency of my barfly evenings, however, has slowed since I rediscovered my love for entertaining at home.  Yet it was not entirely surprising that I found myself at the bar to watch the basketball game, have a cigar, a cocktail, and finish my newspaper – not at all in that order.

Three very attractive women celebrating “the two year anniversary of a 29^th birthday” happened to take residence in the seats next to me shortly after I arrived.  In deference to them, and because a good bartender tends to new people before friends, they ordered first.  My friend the Smoking Hot Bartender turned her attention to me.  Given the oppressive heat, I wanted something refreshing, bright, and interesting in a glass.  I wanted a Santero.

SBH is a very good bartender; however, maybe three bartenders in this city can make a Santero.  So I taught her.  The three women to my left were intrigued.  I offered them the cocktail to taste and then they were enthralled.  A conversation was sparked.  The four of us ran a conversational gamut between, the NBA Finals, current political landscape, post-feminist women, theatre, and more.

After returning from a visit to the wash closet, two of the three women had repaired to a table at the front of the lounge.  The remaining woman, a striking brunette from New Jersey about whom I could find no NJ jokes to be told, and with a conspiratorial look about her, told me that she wanted “me to have some privacy when I asked her for a date.”

RR: I am flattered you would say that, and at another time I would have already made the dinner reservations, but I am not in a great position to date at the moment.

SBNJ: Of Fuck, are you married?

RR: No, divorced.

SBNJ: Gay

RR: No.

SBNJ: Seeing someone

RR: No. (Interrupting her next query) Listen, I am a bit emotionally unavailable at the moment.  I dated someone recently, though briefly, that has forced me to recalibrate my approach to relationships.  It ended in perhaps the only way it could – badly for me.  Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I won’t say that the next person I date would be on some level a rebound because you just never know about these things.  However, I think a bit more time to get my head around this is the only fair way for me and whoever “she” may be.  I am still very happy we met this evening.  I am glad that I ignored my newspaper, only watched two minutes of the game and had a great conversation with you and your friends.  And I would love to continue getting to know you, but I don’t think you want to date me right now.

SBNJ: I understand, I think.  You’re probably right; I don’t want to date you right now.

RR: Friends, though, right?

SBNJ: I said I didn’t want to date you, now I just want to take you home.

I will never understand women.  I also wish that I knew how to date or “vote” for sport.  SBNJ, I look forward to our exceedingly platonic coffee this Sunday.

The Santero

Most people are familiar with the Cuban born Mojito; the Santero is its much lesser known but even more delicious sibling.  The Mojito was born out of humble beginnings in the slave farmed sugar cane fields of Cuba.  During the mid 19^th century slaves were mixing Guarapo (the forefather to rum,) sugar cane, lime and mint.  When slavery was abolished the drink slowly began to be mainstreamed but was most commonly consumed by the working poor of the island.  Circa 1940 a bartender at Havana’s Hotel Sevilla was tasked to make a Mojito like drink with more “appropriate lineage” for the socialites that were the hotel’s clientele.  He named it the Santero, a priest of Santoria the most common religion among Caribbean slaves, as homage to that less appropriate lineage. He replaced the sugar with honey, nixed the mint that sticks in your teeth, and topped it with Champagne rather than soda water.

2 tablespoons of honey

1 lime (medium to large) quartered

5 ounces of dark rum

2 ounces champagne (any dry sparkling wine will due)

Place the room temperature limes in a large cocktail shaker.  Add the honey and muddle thoroughly (the lime juice and honey need to be completely blended or the honey will coagulate when mixed with ice.)  Add the rum – do not add the ice yet – and give the shaker a thorough shake.  Fill the shaker with ice and shake until a bit of foam appears at the top.  Pour into two rocks glasses and top each with one ounce of champagne.  Garnish with a lime twist.