distilled holiday spirit

December 5

The holiday season is such a busy time for restaurants that it's supposed to be a slow time for food writers. So I don't understand why I had two events to go to last night. I started at the Pegu Club, a cocktail-oriented bar and restaurant on the south side of Houston, near West Broadway, where the Distilled Spirits Council was throwing a party in celebration of cordials. So a variety of different cordial marketers were positioned at tables, offering straight shots or cocktails made from their products.
Distilled Spirits Council parties are always fun, with plenty of distilled spirits, of course, and always a nod to the notion of drinking responsibly, which last night drew snickers from the people standing in back of me. Fair enough, certainly I wasn't fit to get behind a wheel by the time I'd visited the second table. Then again, I wasn't getting behind a wheel. I live in New York; I don't have to.
I had a nice conversation with a fellow food writer and his girlfriend. He suggested that all food writers invest in a single mediocre restaurant — a typical diner, say — and then all write about it, create buzz and make a lot of money, just to prove a point.

We continued on to the next party, at GoGo, a club on W. 19th Street. It was supposed to be a sort of masquerade gala, but like us, no one else was dressed up, so we just stood around and drank some more as musicians played loudly on percussion instruments and we were expected to dance to it.
I left after two bourbons on the rocks.