My Return To Well Cocktails
He sets the tab in front of me. You can almost see the embarrassment in his eyes as he scoots away pretending to urgently make yet another round of Aperol Spritzes for yet another group of bachelorettes in town for the weekend.
My hand hovers over it. I know what it’s going to say, but I’m trying to enjoy the last few sips of my Negroni before having my night completely ruined. Taking my wallet out from under my phone that’s sitting on the bar, I grab my heaviest credit card so the bartender thinks I belong. It’s not a Black Card by any means, but I do get twice the points on bars and restaurants.
When I finally flip it open, I nearly spit out the final sip.
$21.36 — for one single cocktail.
Yes, I read the menu ahead of time and knew what I was getting myself into. No, that did not stop me.
Somewhere along the way, Austin became New York City. But a sweatier, less progressive, not-even-as-weird version of New York City despite our efforts to commandeer “weirdness” from every other city in America. The weirdest thing about Austin is that bats live under a bridge, but that’s neither here nor there.
The single-most New York City thing about Austin, however, is our newfound passion for charging $18 per cocktail. $22 in some cases. An arm and a leg for three-and-a-half ounces of Tito’s vodka and vermouth. I’d say I’d have to take out another mortgage on my house, but I also can’t dream of buying anything in my area code because Emma Stone just moved in down the street from my complex. It sounds cool until you check Zillow in the months following. The Emma Stone Bump is real.
But I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m done. And while it scares me to say this, I have no choice — I’m returning to well cocktails until further notice.
I know, I know, a hasty decision to say the least. But what about the hangovers? you may be wondering. Do you know how disgusting well vodka is in a martini? you may question. It’s worth the money to simply get something mid-tier, you plead. But your words fall on flat ears.
I’m done. It’s over. I no longer drink high-end cocktails — I want my liquor actively squeezed out of the plastic bottle as it hits the ice in the rocks glass. I want it to smell like ethanol when I bring it to my lips. I want to question if the liquor itself even has a genre it fits in because it smells so generically alcohol-ish.
This isn’t so much a retirement from craft cocktails as much as it is me spitting in the face of anyone who thinks it’s acceptable for a cocktail to cost more than a sandwich. With tip, you’re asking me to buy a new t-shirt with every round.
Give me a slightly dirty martini, up, a couple olives, McCormick’s. And yeah, let’s do that old fashioned with Old Crow. A mai tai for the gentleman at the end of the table — it’s his birthday so let’s dip into the nice stuff, Classic Club.
And when the tab arrives? $24.36 before tip. Yeah, not only are we rich now but our photos of our cocktails on Instagram look the exact same as yours so the playing field just got a lot more level, muchacho. It still counts as being “night luxe” if you can’t see the final tab.
I want my margaritas with Sauza and my gin and tonics with Gordon’s. I don’t want a Dirty Shirley unless it’s made with something that makes Svedka look high-end. I want to feel what my forefathers felt before America really honed in on their distillation techniques. I want to wonder if my cocktail will set on fire if it gets too close to the candle in the middle of our table.
Will I regret this torpedo I hopped on that’s headed directly into the sun? Maybe. Will I eventually ask my Uber driver to roll his window down because I’m going to hurl up a bunch of Korski? Of course. But will I still be a pawn to the expectation that cocktails should cost me a hard-earned Andrew Jackson? Absolutely not.
Call me Well deFries, because that’s what I be sippin’. You know, until I throw up after one-too-many Kentucky Deluxe Manhattans.