I just celebrated a birthday – 45 and the most content I have been all my life. I love this.
Last night, I took myself for a massage, mmmmmmhhhhh. Then my main squeeze and I went for drinks and a bite to eat at a lovely hip local watering hole called “Fieldguide“.
Being the age I am, mixed drinks don’t have the same appeal they used to. But heck – this was my birthday! So I ordered my favourite: a ‘dark and stormy’ – something I was introduce to while sailing classic wooden boats during the Antigua Classics. This drink consists of rum, lime juice, and spicy ginger beer. But at the Fieldguide (BTW, that link to a Coast article is really worth following up on, just sayin’), they take their ingredients very, very seriously – and so don’t just use bottled ginger beer, but instead they press fresh ginger through their juicer to prepare that drink. Yikes, I’ll tell you – it makes a difference in how it goes into your body! There is plant life in it, plant alive-ness.
The food in the place is similarly alive: like the speckled trout sashimi in a home-made dashi (made not from fish-flakes, as traditional dashi would be, but from the the smoked meats of the charcuterie next door!), which is held at bay (literally) by a purée of house-made kimchi and local carrots.
Friggin brilliant, if you’d ask me.
Don’t get too attached to the idea – the menu changes every week or two, as local ingredients allow. These folks even make their own syrups for their drinks, and their own butter. They buy what is locally available, in seasons … go figure!
I was watching Shane Beehan, the award-winning bartender, mix a second drink for me (blush) – I had asked him to make something specifically for me, that had fruit but wasn’t too sweet, and that would have some kick to it. The man loves a challenge. The result was perfect, I was amazed. My companion commented that Shane seems to enter the trance of a ‘whirling dervish’ when he mixes those drinks! And I, as a maker, commented on the fact that I truly believe that passion goes right into what we make. It was such an interesting experience for me to understand that commonality between us as artists: like Fieldguide’s chefs, this bartender’s every heart and soul goes into every single work of art-drink he puts in front of you. And I feel the same about the body adornments I create!
Contently yours,
Dorothée
