Forgotten Sleep

This past weekend, I had the great fortune of going out for a girls’ night with a wonderful friend. It’s the first time that either one of us had really gone out for a night on the town in a long, long while.

Courtesy of a lovely car service, we were escorted to the city just over the county line and had a grand time enjoying spectacular martinis at our first stop. I highly recommend a Strawberry Balsamic martini if you find a place that makes them.

The next location in our fun-filled evening was far less impressive. It clearly wanted to be a big city club — something you’d see in New York, L.A., perhaps even the swankier clubs in D.C. In fact, it wanted to be so much like these clubs that the doorman tried to charge us $10 cover a piece. Stop. Say what? Hmmm…no. Not happening. Not at this location, in this city, at this early hour. Wrong. See ya. The doorman literally chased after us, saying he’d stamp our hands and let us in for free. Well…okay. And we giggled all the way up the stairs.

Too bad the giggling had to stop. We slid up to the bar, and I ordered my very standard (and I assumed very easy) rum & coke. My friend ordered a Stinger. I wasn’t familiar with the stinger, but she informed me that it was made from brandy and white creme de menthe. Being a little tipsy, we were quite excited when the drinks arrived. Sip, sip — what the hell is this?!

My rum & coke was virtually clear. It had the slightly brown look associated with dirty well water, and it didn’t taste much better. It was obviously the lowest shelf rum available, and the Coke was flat. Perhaps the soda itself had even been watered down. It was so foul, it was undrinkable.

My friend’s Stinger was equally as disappointing. Instead of brandy and white creme de menthe, she got courvoisier and a liberal squeeze of lemon juice. It looked, smelled and tasted a bit like lemon-scented PineSol. Back to the bar it went. The bartender didn’t realize the drink was supposed to have creme de menthe, so she remade the drink. This time, it tasted like a liquid version of a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum.

At this point, there was nothing left to do but dissolve into derisive laughter. Here was this new club, posing to be a posh locale where all the pretty people convened to drink the night away, and all they could offer were weak and incorrectly-made drinks.

We left the nearly full drinks on the bar, exited stage left and went directly into the Irish pub next door.

The doorman clearly made the right decision in letting us in without paying cover — I just might have demanded my money back.