October Cocktail - Gimlet

I was more interested in the process of making lime cordial than I was in the actual gin gimlet. Over the last 10 months, I've grown to like gin. I may even say it's my favorite distilled alcohol. Anyhow, after I read Toby Cecchini's T Magazine (recipe at the bottom) article on making lime cordial, I added this drink to A COCKTAIL A MONTH.

I tried Hendricks, Plymouth, and Bluecoat and thought that Bluecoat was easily the best match. I don't know if it's the better gin, but seemed to pair with lime much better.

Once you make the cordial, the drink is easy to make.

Ingredients

1. 2 oz. gin
2. 1 oz. lime cordial
3. lime wedge

Directions

1. Add ice to tumbler
2. Add cordial
3. Add gin
4. Stir
5. Garnish with a lime wedge

Prime Meats (no. 7 of 12)

We are definitely not getting to all 12 restaurants. But we did visit Prime Meats last week. And overall, it was meh. Though related, Prime Meats is not as tasty as Frankie's. The food is good. The ambiance nice. The service was fine. Nothing wrong with the place, but it's not one of the places we'd decidedly return to.

So what did we have?

We started with oysters from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They were excellent - fresh, briny, juicy and visually appealing.

SOS followed that with her typical first-time-in-a-restaurant-order of a burger. This $18 burger was fine, almost too fine. The patty was a perfect cylinder that exactly met the bun's edges. The toppings were all sliced uniformly and were seemingly fresh. In the end, the burger had two downfalls. First, she asked for it to be medium rare. After finishing it, there wasn't a drop of "juice" on the plate. It was too medium and not juicy enough. Second, it had no soul. It felt like a picture postcard representation of a burger. Maybe in 2011 Brooklyn, we're too used to some burgers having a strong bacon taste while others have a unique crust and others have a good deal of salt within the meat. This had no character, no soul.

I ordered the choucroute garnie. It's a classic Alsatian dish and the preparation was fantastic. The sauerkraut was equally sour, rich, and cabbage-y. Delicious. And the meats were rich and slightly gamy. We loved it.

We ordered a quartino of the most bland, unappealing wine I can remember. Strangely, it came from the very reputable negociant - Joseph Drouhin. This wine tasted watered-down.

Total, with tax and tip came to $80. Not crazy, not a value. Very meh.