Planters Limited Edition Brittle Nut Medley

We baked way too many sweets today. You know that frenzy people get in around Christmas, the one that compels them to justify buying extravagant items they can't afford and stupid things like Hickory Farms and Soap-on-a-Rope gift packs? Well, it's also the one that, for one month out of the year, flips on the homing mechanism switch that whispers crafty thoughts in your ear while you sleep. "The more cookies you bake, the more people will love you," and, "You're only as gay as the quantity of rainbow sprinkles you can cram into your baked goods." True story. As a result of this sudden urge to bake and make merry, merry love, we have four batches of cookies, most of which are cat-shaped gingerbread people. #futurecrazycatlady
During this bake-a-thon, I got a package from Planters, which I received from the UPS man in my smoking jacket while chewing on a log of cookie dough. Keeping it classy all the time, son. Inside the package were six new limited edition Planters nut flavors, one of which I almost baked into another batch of cookies because it's so freaking delicious. That, my friends, is the terribly named Brittle Nut Medley, which isn't so much a name as it is a description of its contents. Let's break it down like it's 1980. Brittle. Despite being literally the first word of the title, this only makes up for about 20% of the overall mix. It's okay, I can deal because it smells awesome. If it were a perfume it would be Calvin Klein Legume. Nut. It's nuts, but that's not grammatically correct. Honey-roasted peanuts and cashews abound. Medley. Okay, so it's a term I'm more inclined to associate with mashups of the soundtrack to Carousel, but it's okay. That compromises the two wild cards of the bunch, pretzels and yogurt-covered raisins.
Overall, it's a group that leans toward the candy side of nut mixes, but manages to not create multiple cavities after a handful or two. The pieces are solid and whole, one of the least messy trail mix-style snacks I've tried, and are just as pleasant eaten together or individually. The brittle is the star of the show, a pity as most of it is so weighty that it's sunken down to the bottom. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like digging through a can of nuts to grab delicious candy. Altruism is so 2011. The brittle comes in molar-sized pieces, ironically as it will be your molars that are attacked first, and is mixed throughout the medley. It carries a salty, vaguely sweet flavor as addictive as potato chips with a little brown sugar thrown in for kicks. Eaten with the salty pretzel rods, they're a real treat. In fact, the little extras outshadow the nuts- the very crux of the snack itself. These are abundant and tasty, but I found the honey-roasting on the peanuts to be overkill in the sugar department. The neutrality of the cashews was refreshing after all the sweeter flavors.
The yogurt-covered raisins were surprisingly the only component of this snack that I was pretty ambivalent with. Normally I'd be excited about a snack that packs a ton of faux Raisinets in their mix, but these were basically flavorless and had a waxy, crumbly texture reeking of mockolate. I wished that these had imparted a more wintry flavor unto the mix, like spices or eggnog. Enjoyed with everything else, though, they were inoffensive and pleasant to munch on after a day of baking coo. All in all, a really good and creative mix to snack mindlessly on during A Christmas Story, or, if you're awesome like me, American Psycho, on Christmas night. Go on and brush your shoulders off, Mr. Peanut. You deserved it.

Hi-Chew Mini X Fanta Honey Lemon

I rarely get ill, but when I do, it knocks me out for a few good days. One day I'll be running around, wiping my nose on my Robert Graham coat and soldiering on as I do my daily errands and assignments, the next day I'll be laid up in bed, alternating between crying and sleeping and requiring a constant stream of Fruit 2 O IV into my left arm. And that'll be the next two weeks. Because of my staunch aversion to tea and my annoyance with my school's incompetant healthcare system, when I get sick, I'm sick for a week. Who really enjoys tea, anyhow? Half the flavors of tea are flavors that can easily be accessed with a stick of gum, another habit I'm not overly fond of, and it tastes pretty gross.
Apparently, in Japan, many share my aversion to tea. Japan hates tea, right? That's why they created the Honey Lemon Fanta? Sure it is. On this blog, it is. Well, apparently there's a new Fanta flavor inspired by tea, and now there's a Hi-Chew flavor inspired by the Fanta flavor inspired by tea. They went deeper. Take note, Christopher Nolan. The Hi-Chew, courtesy of J-List, has crunchy lemon dragees surrounded by the quintessentially creamy, chewy base.
These are a pretty faithful iteration of a classic beverage. While most soda or drink-flavored candies utilize sodium bicarbonate to mimic carbonation or various combinations of sugar to get the flavor well, these mimic the drink to a "tea" while still providing a little texture and variation in each piece. The crunchy pieces are plentiful and evenly spread throughout the piece, as you can see. They are pretty sour and tart, reminiscent of a Lemonhead, but any tartness is tempered by the milkiness of the base, with a smoothness similar to a Starburst but springier. The honey flavor is quite bold, with a rich, buttery flavor bordering on caramel that interacts with the citrus and dairy exceptionally well.
My chief complaint is that this flavor only comes in the "mini" pack, which contains seven pieces of candy as opposed to the full-sized Hi-Chew, which typically contains anywhere from 8-12 pieces depending on the flavor. At $2.39 a pack, plus shipping, this comes out to a little over a dollar apiece. Unless you're a huge fan of lemon and honey or are placing a large order at J-List, don't go out of your way to order these. They're still delicious if you've got them around, though!

Bacon Steak and Tomato Doritos 'n' Chips for Highball

"Your mom. Champagne glass. 64% classier." - Your Mom Is Clubbin'
Here at Foodette, we prioritize a number of elite values in the food blogging world, not the least of which is "above all, pretension." And everyone knows that Japanified versions of American snacks designed to pair with cocktails are pretentious, to say the least, without even mentioning that these chips are endorsed by an expert, Japan's best sommelier in 1995, Shinya Tasaki. Hell yes? I mean, look at this guy's face. Sniffing out of a Riedel Burgundy glass in a tuxedo. I would trust everything that man said even if he told me he could take me on a tour of Hell in between sips of DRC La Tache.
J-List sent these over for us to try. According to the description, Mr. Tasaki and Frito-Lay formulated these chips to ride on the coattails of the burgeoning Asian wine market sales. Because nothing goes as well with an $8,000 bottle of 1947 Petrus like Doritos and Sun Chips, am I right? This particular flavor was designed to pair well with cocktails, presumably ones you can enjoy with Tasaki's $200 corkscrew and bottle opener. The bag has two different types of chips, flavored like bacon steak and tomato ketchup. The chips are smaller than your average Dorito but still have the rounded edges and thicker crunch of Japanese Doritos. The scent is pungent, like getting a noseful of Spanish paprika and tomato sauce, with an almost cloying initial sweetness wafting up from the bag.
The Doritos were definitely more successful than the Sun Chips, with a light, crispy crunch and wonderful flavor. These tasted like the Herr's Heinz ketchup chips but with a deeper, richer tomato sauce flavor, with a brown sugar edge and garlic bite to them. They were very sweet, but not in a way that made them inedible or incongruous with the rest of the chips. The natural sweet, oily flavor of the corn chip was a wonderful carrier of the ketchup flavor. It sort of put regular ketchup to shame as I felt that the flavor was just deeper and tangier, more of a marinara but somehow sweeter. Unique and a little strange to adjust to, but tasty.
The Sun Chips were supposed to mimic the exact flavor of the giant, quivering bacon slab on the package. A tough act to follow. And they crumbled in the face of porcine goodness, providing a weak smoky flavor dominated by the corny heft of the chip. No bacon, no fattiness, nothing that would have suggested meat or even barbecue sauce. It mainly tasted like ground black pepper and corn, not a bad flavor profile, but also not bacon. I've noted this before in Japanese Cheetos- all of the chips are much thicker and the denser ones end up having a dry noodle-like texture. Not a bad thing, but also kind of strange to get used to.
So the chips were good on their own, but what about alongside a few drinks? In one of the most stupidly surreal Foodette photoshoots ever, we documented the success of these chips as snacks and as cocktail pairings with what else? Bakon vodka, because you can't eat bacon chips without drinking a bacon drink. Says so somewhere in the Bible or something.
We made three cocktails, two contemporary and one classic to try with the chips. Our first cocktail didn't utilize bacon outside of a small curled garnish. It was a classic gin and tonic, nothing more, nothing less. The sweet cooked tomato flavor of the Doritos really amplified the sweet juniper notes in the gin, but neither was so sweet as to feel like a dessert or candy.
The second cocktail was kind of a "kitchen sink" style drink to gross out Miss Love and also see how the chips held up with a little spice. Enter the Flaming Bacon- bacon vodka, hot pepper vodka, Prometheus Springs pomegranate black pepper juice, club soda, and a salsa dipped bacon garnish. Despite the grocery list of ingredients and the science beaker presentation, it didn't taste like ass and the chips held up to the spice of the drink. It was surprisingly the best combination of the triad.
Our last drink failed and completely overwhelmed the chips. The Broker's Breakfast had hazelnut espresso vodka, bacon vodka, milk, and club soda. It was atrociously flavored and discordant with a fake sweetener aftertaste. The creaminess destroyed the flavors of the chips with a filmy, boozy tang. But aside from that, it seemed like the chips actually were congruent with fruity, tangy, and even spicy drinks. Then again, what salty snack isn't? These would be a unique alternative to a traditional pub mix, but didn't seem wildly outside of the realm of other sodium-laden nibbles designed to sop up booze. Maybe the wine-based Doritos will prove to be more successful.

MiO Energy Liquid Water Enhancer

Final exams bring out my most terrible habits. Despite lingering over the fact that the bulk of my exams were arbitrarily assigned at the end of the term, it led to a staunch examination of my vices when under pressure. Late-night snacking was a given, especially when the dining halls and wing delivery places were all open later. Incentive snacking also reared its sweet head. "I have twenty pages to paste together, so I think I'll eat one M&M for every 200 coherent words I write." Yeah, turns out M&M's are the perfect snack to eat while watching Scarface on Netflix, too. The world is yours, but only if you finish this science report. Sigh. But by far, the worst crutch I developed was a dependency to energy drinks. I've never been the type to drink Monster or even Mountain Dew because both taste like bitter, overly sweet motor oil, but then I found out that some energy drinks were mixed with coffee or chocolate milk. Hey, I love coffee and chocolate milk, I think I'll- why am I watching Food Network at 4 AM? It was dangerous. And kind of awesome.
Now that I'm done with finals I can slowly wean myself back to a non-caffeinated drink schedule and a normal bedtime of 10 PM, but not without one last hurrah. That's right, MiO is at it again, replacing Sassy Gay Friend with non-porn star "Thunder" Dave Steinman to debut their new energy formulas, MiO Energy. Kraft sent me these two bottles to review fo' free, but first, I need to clear something up. Thunder, are you a satire or are you a human? Either way, you look a little like Dale from Rescue Rangers. I want to punch you in the face and then go grab a beer. MiO Energy comes in two flavors, Mountain Dew Green Thunder and Black Cherry. Perfect for the holidays, if your wish list also includes no sex and an XBox. If you haven't already tried MiO, the liquid water enhancer, check out my review here.
Both MiO Energy flavors are incredibly concentrated out of the bottle and smell very medicinal before mixed in water. Both have no sugar and 60 mg of caffeine per squirt, about as much as an 8 oz. mug of instant coffee. Green Thunder appears to be less of a citrus-inspired drink and more of an energy-flavored drink, and by "energy-flavored" I mean liquid Smarties and carbonated aspirin. And that's basically what this one tastes like at first. It gets a little better after sitting for a while, and ends up tasting like fruit-flavored candies, but comes nowhere near having an actual fruity flavor. It's the poor man's Monster and the rich man's Vault.
I much preferred the Black Cherry flavor. Despite having the stainability of a Sharpie, it has a much more floral, delicate flavor with a rich cherry flavor that masks the caffeine and doesn't end up tasting like cough syrup. Like its noncaffeinated predecessor, it has a slightly viscous texture that later smooths out after mixing, and would taste good mixed with either juices or even another MiO flavor. It feels like a more thought-out, versatile flavor with the ability to add a fruity kick to whatever you're drinking and is luscious and tangy.
MiO Energy isn't supposed to be added to alcohol, but I can't help but be curious about revamping the classic Red Bull and Coke with a few squirts of this red-eye style. I'm not sure if the Green Thunder would taste good with anything other than vodka, but the cherry could prove to be versatile in a number of situations involving booze. But mainly all-night gaming sessions and frat parties. MiO Energy is an interesting concept, but the twelve servings in the bottle only makes you roughly six water bottles or twelve glasses full of beverage. If you're looking for small bursts of energy over a long period of time, it might be helpful, but won't give you the same long stride as a 5-Hour Energy (138 mg/2 oz) or even a NOS (140 mg/8 oz) will. As always, I prefer MiO a hair stronger than the recommended serving size, so perhaps adjusting the dose will vary your mileage. Just make sure not to drink this in eveningwear.

Nobel Gummy Yogurt Sours

Remember that physical contact, hand-eye coordination issue I mentioned a post or two back? Yeah, it's still here. I'm still pop, locking, and dropping like a champ. And it's laughing in the face of the kids on my college campus who insist on playing Humans vs. Zombies in the last balmy days of November. Yet another maddeningly insipid activity that further alienates me from people my own age, I'm still struggling not to scream at the kids in Steampunk bandanas with tricked out Nerf guns that they're all people- humans and zombies are people! a la Charlton Heston.
Well, little do they know, my street cred comes not from a $300 children's toy or an arsenal of foam darts, but from special Japanese gummies from the lovely Miss Love, Nobel Gummy Yogurt Sours, that bring me closer to being an actual, fairly witty zombie than they'll ever be. You see, these candies have a texture that I imagine is fairly precise to eating actual human flesh, which everyone knows is the choice nutritive supplement of the living dead. These are different from regular gummy bears in their chew, where the regular ones typically have a soft bite with a slight resistance, these are freaking fleshy, and biting into each one is like pinching the cartilage on your nose or elbow, with a decisive thud in each chomp.
The gummies are about the size of a small USB drive, with the same thickness as well. They resemble soft pieces of crystal quartz. They're an opaque, pearly shade of white, and have a hard coating of granulated sugar on their outer surface, which prevented sticky or oily residue from sticking to the fingers and added a much-needed sweet counterbalance to the tart flavor. When all the sugar is sucked off, the nude gummies are slippery in a weird way, so it's best to just chew them up before the sugar melts. While these are advertised as yogurt-flavored, they have a more saccharine, sticky taste with citrusy notes that render it more toward a generic soft drink palate, with a Sprite-like lemon flavor as the dominant taste and not a whole lot of dairy influence. Each piece ends with a persistent soapiness that isn't entirely unappealing. The entire combination, though a little esoteric piecemeal, grows on you with each piece eaten. By the end of the evening, we ate the entire bag!

McDonald's Big Mac

Everyone's first time is supposed to be memorable.

At least, that's what Hollywood told me. Note that I didn't say "special"- we can't all have Rick James, satin sheets, and a gorgeous body when we get down to business. I came to the shameful realization one lonely evening that, no matter how hard I tried to push it to the back of my mind, the facts were glaringly obvious. I was a 21 year old virgin to one of America's iconic symbols of happiness and prosperity.

How did it happen? I don't know. It could have been my staunch parental upbringing. A fear of commitment. However it came to that point, I knew it had to change. So I hiked up my jeans, I put on a special playlist of the Indigo Girls, Rod Stewart, and the original Broadway cast recording of Spring Awakening, ponied up $3.95 for what was promised to be a life-changing experience, and dug right in with a paper towel for a napkin. After living 7,714 days on this earth, I was about to have my first Big Mac.

Let me preface this by telling you that this was a completely blind tasting. I never heard the jingle, never took a bite of one, and never smelled one from afar. The closest I came to eating one of these was watching Morgan Spurlock maneuver one into his mouth in SuperSize Me. I was curious. Perhaps even fry-curious. My first gripe with this was the bulky, extensive myriad of plastic and paper packaging. The Big Mac, for all intents and purposes, isn't really that big. With the economy-sized bag and cardboard holding facility, I was a little disappointed to lift out a sandwich no bigger than a small portable hard drive with a somewhat emaciated-looking mere two ounces of beef. But as we all know, it's not about the size of the fries, it's about the motion of the 'Mac. Or so they say.

Flavor-wise, the sandwich is perfectly balanced. And not only balanced, but layered with textures and savory sensations. The first bite was as beautiful as I'd imagined it, with an initially sweet, slightly sour crunch of pickles and onions mingling with the seductively creamy Special Sauce. I was surprised that the beef took such a backseat to the veggies but came together so well, letting the more superfluous elements in some sandwiches take first billing with each bite. The buns were cotton soft, but not chewy, and melted into the meat. I had to admit I was pretty impressed.

Structurally, we're in a whole other ballpark. That was my main beef with this, (please pause to laugh) as by my third bite roughly two minutes in, the sandwich had completely disintegrated in my hands, spewing lettuce shreds and special sauce all over the place. What had once been a regal skyscraper of a sandwich was now a hot, wet mess in my hands. And then, things started to get a little weird. It was like all the integrity of the burger was in its perfect structure and balance. After that one stupendous bite, flaws started to perk up as the sandwich entered Bizarro territory. The flavor of the onions started to linger with a briny, salty aftertaste. The buns got mushy and soggy and tasted greasy and buttery when eaten alone. I lost the flavor of the beef completely.

If the euphoria of that perfect bite had been consistent throughout the sandwich, I'd have no qualms giving it my highest rating. It is, after all, engineered like the McGriddle to max out our pleasure and tantalize us long into the night. But in all things, I value consistency, cleverness, and maximum pleasure (which makes Keepitcoming Love my McGriddle) and in five minutes, this went from amazing to falling apart. It was like making out with a cute guy and realizing that underneath his perfectly coiffed hair and sweater vest, he had a tattooed quote from Twilight on his bicep. Not abhorrent, but not ideal and certainly not what I initially expected.

I soon realized that despite its perfect exterior and legendary reputation, it wasn't perfect. Did I learn from my mistakes? Yes. Do I regret it? Not for a second. I may not ever order this again, but for one brief moment in time (what is now a stunted timespan due to this consumption) I had the Big Mac, and that is a moment that will forever remain special.

Ocean Spray Cranberry Orange Muffin Oatmeal

The storm is over, I have seen the light! And yea, I have passed thirty two hours in sin, wandering distant lands in mine bathrobe, clutching a lone box of oatmeal amidst the dim backup generator lighting of the Stop and Shop. And let this oatmeal be my salvation, look for your critic, for she has not forgotten your hunger, and let this review be my command.

Holy crap, guys. Turn off the power for a day and a half and watch an upper middle class town in New England go insane. Seriously. Last thing I remember is buying this oatmeal in a coffee withdrawal daze and next thing I know, it's six at night, pitch black, and I'm crying under the covers and screaming at the general concept of candles, wondering if Yankee Candle has power or if they have to burn their remaining stock for heat and light.

And now everything is okay. And I have oatmeal to show you. Today's treat features the greatest collaboration this side of Lazy Town and Lil' Jon, Ocean Spray's Cranberry Orange Muffin Oatmeal! This stuff is delicious, but I say this with the disclaimer that at the time, I ate four packets of it lukewarm to build up strength and bulk in the hopes that it would aid me in hibernation through difficult times. Its flavor scarily mimics St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin, down to the creamy, medicinal tang. Luckily, that happens to be one of the best things ever, and helps wean me of my dangerous Flintstones Chewables kick in the process. Aside from the strange flavor, it's like regular oatmeal in consistency.

The tastiest thing here is the cranberries. These are honest-to-god dehydrated pieces of cranberries that rehydrate surprisingly well in the cooking process. They have pieces of skin and ample amounts of pulp, with each packet containing a fairly generous portion. Unfortunately, the amount just isn't enough to balance the overpowering glutenous surge of oatmeal intensity, and ends up getting lost in each bite, unless you're OCD enough to pick out each individual berry slice and eat it separately. It should go without saying that the Ocean Spray scientists have not managed to make this mimic a muffin, and for good reason. I was bracing myself for a fake-butter, "freshly baked" aftertaste that never came. While I did buy it in the hopes that it would deliver that baked good charm (another lost George Harrison hit, CC) I felt better knowing that it stuck to a simpler formula and delivered good, if not great, results. Oh, and Happy Halloween.

California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Chicken and Bacon Ranch

Ah, legal loopholes. That simple twist of the tongue that leads to so many Homer Simpson "d'oh!" moments during checkout at the grocery store. Personal favorites include chocolate flavored, Chick'n, and as we've seen with the Taco Bell Chicken Bacon Ranch flatbread, "baconranch" the ex dolo malo of the food world, hated by all and loved by the toothless. When I brought this pizza home, I slapped my forehead in disgust, worrying that when I opened the box, I'd see a smattering of bacon-flavored ranch sauce covered with anemic tomatoes and little else. I sometimes feel like the abused child of the CPK industry. I've been burnt too many times.
This time was different, though. I can't say that CPK will stay this good, but this time, they were pretty decent. Much like my inherent weakness for small succulent plants, roadside tacos, and tight pants, I feel the compulsive need to purchase every single new pizza they've put out, despite their failure time and time again. Then again, it could be because they keep slapping "limited edition" on all their freaking pizzas. Not this time, Roasted 15 Veggie. Not this time.
I liked this pizza. It seemed as though with every misconception I had about this came a rebuttal of the finest form that blew my argument right out of the water. There will be no bacon! Oh, wait, actually, there's a metric asston (not to be confused with the hogshead) of bacon and it's all ground up and crispy and delicious. Oh. Okay, well, the tomatoes will suck? Mmm, wrong again, they're actually pretty juicy, some are yellow, and they're cut up in small enough pieces to get a bunch in every bite.
This was the point in the consumption where I furrowed my brow. Might I have actually gone out and purchased a pizza from a store and tried to trick myself using magical thinking to pretend this was from CPK? But the box was in the trash. It's not like this was a perfect, magical pizza. The crust was, as always damningly thin and crispy, but worked better with this combination of flavors than it had in the past. It created a crisped open-faced panini effect on the pie and lent itself to sandwiching quite well. The main drawback with this was that it was incredibly salty, no doubt aided in part by the gluey ranch sauce adhering its components together. Thankfully, the chicken wasn't seasoned and was strangely quiet throughout the entire lunch. I don't think I've ever had a prepackaged food item, pizza or otherwise, where the amount of bacon outweighed the amount of other proteins. It was strange. And yet, so epic.
But damn it, CPK, your website still looks like a Geocities reject. Why is that? Y U no change that? And so upsettingly sparse in places. I want wine recommendations for my chicken bacon ranchathon, please.

The Stockade Tavern, Kingston, NY

Food is wonderful, but old food is better. Not old in the sense of refrigerated cheese of questionable origin, but old in the unattainable, just out of reach allure of time's fleeting passage. Pre-McRib release old. Original formula Coca-Cola, now with real cocaine. Hershey's candy bars before chocolate flavoring became the norm. It seems that the foods of yore, simply because they're no longer around, are so much more desired than what's in front of us. The same could be said for cocktails, but like classic Jell-O salad recipes, many of them have simply faded away with the times. At Stockade Tavern in Kingston, NY, they're preserving the essence of these vintage cocktails with a selection of curious drinks spanning over a century's worth of red cheeks and stumbling, from 1806 to 1938. We checked it out last night with some friends and reported our drunken findings.

With a beautiful pressed tin ceiling and a friendly Standard Poodle greeting visitors, we made our way in. The Stockade boasts a selection of crazy drinks, all pre-World War I libations with funky ingredients and even funkier names. We ordered a selection of drinks, as well as a few sweet nibbles after dinner. Special cravings for the next time around included a Guadalajara, which I'd be ordering to work up the nerve to ask my girlfriend if I could take her down to Mexico- tequila, Fernet-Branca, agave syrup, mole bitters, and orange oil, or the Pink Stag, with horseradish vodka and tomato water forming a more masculine, nastier Bloody Mary. Regardless of the era of these drinks, they will really, really, really fuck you up. Honest to god.

We sampled four of these, two from the classic cocktail section and two from the vintage cocktails. Keepitcoming Love tried The Aqueduct, an original invention with vodka, Cointreau, apricot brandy, and lime juice. While booze heavy, it was tasty, but not incredibly lifechanging or mood-altering one way or another. We were hoping it would have more influence from the apricot, but mainly tasted sweet and tart from the lime juice and vaguely citrusy. Our friend D had a classic Mai Tai. One of the tastiest I've had, mainly because it was potently strong with a killer bite.

Our vintage cocktails were quite well-prepared, not that we'd tried any to compare it to. I tried their singular egg white cocktail, a Ramos Gin Fizz, from 1888, with a slew of ingredients practically designed to make it easy on the palate. With Beefeater Gin, cream, lemon and lime juice, egg white, orange flower water, and simple syrup, I expected it to be the adult equivalent of a milkshake. It was lighter than I expected, with a frothy texture from the egg white and a feminine set of flavors that I imagined set many a young lady giggling in days of yore, but unfortunately was bogged down with the rich dairy ingredients, masking the floral and citrusy flavors. Our last vintage selection was the Pendennis, from 1883, similar to the Aqueduct in that it utilized apricot brandy and lime juice, but swapped out the vodka for gin and the Cointreau for Peychaud's bitters. This combination worked in its favor, and the sweet dried stonefruit flavors were much more prominent and deep in the cocktail, aided by the spices in the gin with a natural sweetness. Very seductive.

We nibbled on a few nightly specials, including a grilled apple cider doughnut and a bowl of dark chocolate covered Corn Nuts with jalapeno dust, an addictive bar peanut alternative for sweet teeth. The doughnut wasn't really affected by the grilling. Its sweet, sugary interior maintained its flavor and didn't absorb as much smoke as we'd originally anticipated. The outside was crispy and had a nice char from the grilling, but just seized up with a tough crustiness rather than taking on any woodsy or smoky flavors. Still delicious, and it sopped up all the booze we'd been drinking!

The other snack we had blew the standard pub mix right out of the water. Never again will I chomp stale miniature pretzels or salty peanuts again. These corn nuts were covered in dark chocolate and jalapeno dust, a tasty coating that added a bit of sweetness to the corn nut pieces. Unfortunately, the jalapeno dust was merely another layer of salt to contend with, and imparted absolutely no heat even when eaten in succession. The eating multiple corn nuts in a row was purely for experimental purposes, of course. While heat, sweet, and salt would have been ideal, they were quite tasty on their own. It's a pleasant surprise to see a mignardises-style munchie with a cocktail, and it would be fun to see if there were other flavors to pair together. Candied pieces of jalapeno come to mind as a good snack, as do pieces of sweet candied bacon. Mmm. I wonder if there are any vintage bar snacks that have come and gone with the times? Something I'd be curious to find out. Overall, the drinks and food were more hit or miss than utter bliss, but it was better than a regular bar and made Beefeater fun again.