Things I'm looking forward to about 'home': Junk Food Heaven!

Past experience suggests that I will be unlikely to get through 72 hours back in the land of my birth before once again succumbing to the unhealthy allure of the baton-of-fat that is the Greggs sausage roll.

However, thanks to this website, I have just discovered that there are even greater culinary delights awaiting me in my homeland these days. The 'Munchy Box', I gather, has become a favourite Friday night order in parts of Glasgow. I'm not sure that it's yet on offer anywhere else in the UK, or even in Scotland, but this looks as if it could be worth a trip up there. Doner kebab and chips and an Indian takeaway served in a pizza box - INSPIRED!!

Who says we Brits can't cook??!!

Mind you, I have long been thinking of opening up a Uyghur Restaurant in Britain...

HELP is at hand

Courtesy of The Choirboy's tireless surfing of the Irish news, I yesterday received a link to this item in the Irish Times. I learned that Dr Jason Bourke (no, not Bourne) has set up a visiting 'hangover cure' service in Las Vegas. Just get on the bus, Gus - for some intensive rehydration.

I think the PSB should rip off the idea and start running one of these around Sanlitun in the early hours of Friday and Saturday mornings. Willingness to request 'the cure' could reasonably be taken as proof of excessive drunkenness in public, which is clearly "disrespectful" of "China's laws and customs" (if not actually illegal). The bus could then run straight to the airport as a Deportation Express.

Luckily, I don't get hangovers. Nor do I get indecently drunk in public. (Well, not very often.) Nor do I frequent Sanlitun. At the moment, however, such virtues are not sufficient to protect one from being arbitrarily thrown out of the country.

That sinking feeling

By one of those odd cosmic coincidences, yesterday marked the centennials of the loss of the Titanic and the birth of Kim Il-sung (one wonders if the father of the Juche philosophy may not perhaps have been a prompt reincarnation of one the illustrious victims of the disaster in the North Atlantic, such as the super-wealthy property magnate J.J. Astor IV). Since I was unable to get over to Pyongyang with my friends from Koryo Tours for the big knees-up in honour of the latter event, I was glad that Steven Schwankert of SinoScuba had volunteered to commemorate the former with a Titanic-related trivia quiz at my local bar, 12 Square Metres.

I have long been a bit of a Titanic nerd, and have been treated to a slew of documentaries about the disaster on the National Geographic channel over the past week; so, I was feeling quietly confident about my prospects for success. Ah, hubris! My personal iceberg came in the person of a former schoolteacher from Halifax, Nova Scotia (closest landfall to the site of the sinking, and hence the place where most of the recovered bodies were eventually buried), who knew... well, everything there was to know about it; even more, I suspect, than Steven himself, who is extremely knowledgeable on the subject. It seemed likely he knew the names of most of the crew (he did know the names of the members of the ship's band!)... and the passengers... and how much they'd paid for their tickets and what their cabin numbers had been. He was not even stumped when Steven broadened the scope of the questions to tangentially related topics like other maritime disasters and films about the Titanic. The chap only dropped one mark in the entire thing, and this solitary lapse soon began to seem so out of character that I began to fret that I must have made an error in marking his answer sheet. He really was robotically perfect (most folks, even if they know all the the answers, will usually blank on something here or there in the heat of competition, or make a careless error in writing down the right letter for a multi-choice answer, or be undone by phantom doubts and second thoughts about something they're only 98% confident of; this guy didn't falter the least little bit - uncanny!!). This was the most devastatingly comprehensive quiz performance I have ever witnessed - a worthy winner indeed. I was a very, very distant second.

Well, congratulations to Canadian Bruce, the most formidable Titanic expert in Beijing. And many thanks to Steven for an extremely well-balanced and entertaining quiz.

I think such themed quiz nights could perhaps become a semi-regular event at our little bar. We're a bit too small and off-the-beaten track to sustain a regular type of quiz, but a special event like this once or twice a month might draw a modest crowd.

Return of the Band Names game!!

While enjoying the sanba show at Temple with a couple of girlie chums the other night, we achieved the collective realisation that Beijing bluegrass favourites The Randy Abel Stable are now 'big' enough to warrant their own tribute band (Peter immediately asked if he could join; I don't think you can be in your own tribute band...). We have decided to call it The Unstable Table (perhaps, like Brick Tamland, we were just being inspired by random items in our immediate environment....).

Later, challenged to come up with a name for a friend's new band, I suggested Bye Bye Kitty. This is not exactly a new idea, since haters of the noxiously cute Japanese cartoon character Hello Kitty arguably outnumber the idolaters, but I don't think it's yet been done as a band name. And such opposition seems particularly needful in China, since attachment to the emetic pussycat is almost universal among young women here. I envisage a logo with the loathsome kitten tied to railway tracks...

But this might also do...

Anyway, this sudden splurge of band-naming frivolity reminded me of The Band Names Game - my 'most popular' post ever on this blog, but lapsed into silence for the past two years. Now seems like an opportune time to try to revive it - follow that link, and get naming!

Buy 28, get 1 free!

The latest of my insanely inventive bar promotion ideas, a little something special for Leap Day!

I imagine MB might be a little more willing to trial this down at the bar than my previous suggestion of a 'Singles get doubles' promotion for Valentine's Day. My friend, JK, the previous landlord, however, would almost certainly have felt that it would bite into his margins unacceptably.

[In fact, MB is taking a years rather than days approach to the 'leap' phenomenon, coming up with an altogether more realistic Buy-3-Get-1-FREE deal. That I might have to check out...

JK, I suspect would have favoured a Buy-4-Get-1/365th-Free formula.]

Singles get doubles!

My big idea for a Valentine's Day promotion!!

Take your mind off your loveless status by getting hammered on half-price spirits all night.

I doubt if I can persuade MB to give this a try down at the bar, alas.  I'd say it was worth experimenting with, because you still have a margin at two-for-one. And Tuesdays are otherwise a DEAD night...

Ah, look what the Internet turns up when you search for 'double shot'.... Only in America!

Another trivia quiz idea

The Hong Bao Quiz!

Last week, I pondered addressing the widely disparate ability among Beijing’s quizzers with a double quiz – two sets of questions being asked concurrently, one hard, one easy.

Some quizzes tackle this problem with ‘randomising’ elements - such as ‘jokers’ (where you can double your score on a nominated round of questions), ‘penalty’ rounds (where you forfeit your entire score if you make a mistake), or ‘gambling rounds’ (where you stake a certain proportion of your points total on the outcome of a short series of final tiebreak questions). Some have also tried to move away from trivia knowledge altogether, invoking ‘feats of strength’ such as arm-wrestling or downing pints in one, at least for tiebreaks.

But how about simply bribing the quizmaster – paying cash for answers/extra points? It’s so very appropriate for China!

And it would add nicely to the prize fund.

Double, double toil and trouble

I have been pondering the essence of the pub quiz. More specifically - wondering if there’s any room in Beijing for another one (Shuangjing upstarts Grinders and The Brick have recently added their own offerings in this category to the long-established ones at Lush, The Bookworm, Paddy O’Shea's, Texas Tim’s – and there are a few others as well). And, if there is, how could one differentiate it from the rest of this packed field?

The big problem with these events is balancing the difficulty of questions: you can’t humiliate the know-nothings by asking too many ‘hard’ questions, or bore the super-nerds by asking too many easy ones.

And so it came to me – what about A DOUBLE QUIZ: two sets of questions side by side, one hard, one easy; and separate prizes for each quiz? Too much bother????

Ah, I’m an ideas man, you know.

Name that tune

Last night, pondering possible new 'attractions' for the bar, we evolved a rather addictive little trivia challenge around the music playlist.

The initial concept was to see how many artists one could recognise from a given run of 5 songs. This would have been an individual challenge, with each evening's participants recorded on a blackboard behind the bar. 5 out of 5 wins you a shot.  This works well when things are quiet early evening. And it might be a format worth returning to, if we're going to make this a long-running gimmick. 

But.... well, last night got surprisingly busy, surprisingly early. So, we needed something rather more communal, a direct punter-against-punter challenge. The game became.... be the first person to reach a total of 5 correct calls. Because you're now competing against others at the bar, timing is of the essence: you have to shout out the artist's name first. Playing solo had been a bit too easy for me: after crashing out on 4 out of 5 a couple of times (I do not do rap/hip-hop!!), I'd won my first shot of the evening. The quick-on-the-draw elaboration, though, put me under a lot of pressure. A young American tourist proved to have an uncanny ability - a quirky super-power - to recognise songs before they had even started. I suppose he just has rather more sensitive hearing than me, particularly for the higher ranges: there really were a couple of occasions when he named an artist before I knew a new track was playing! And his speed of response was awe-inspiring: with Rolling Stones songs, in particular, he was invariably able to call them within a fraction of a second. My breadth of musical knowledge was slightly - only slightly - greater, but he was whooping my ass on speed.

However, this initial variation on the game had a fatal flaw: if the challenge was merely to be the first to reach 5 correct artist identifications, someone would inevitably 'win' every half hour or so - even with points deducted for incorrect guesses, or long strings of obscure songs that no-one could spot, it wouldn't take too long for someone to reach the required total. With three or four of us in the game, with overlapping areas of specialism - the Motown Queen nailing anything remotely funky, "Radar O'Reilly" snapping up all the Stones and Creedence, me proving to be inexplicably knowledgeable about the 1950s - we were calling nearly everything. This works very well when there's just a small number of people in the bar - although it's perhaps going to hurt the bar's bottom line to be giving away so many shots! However, the exercise seems to become more collaborative than competitive.

And so, the final elaboration of our 'iTunes Challenge' became.... be the first person to achieve a sequence of 5 correct identifications. You have to be the first person to name the artist. You wipe your score if you call something wrong. No second attempts on any given song (though other players can still make their one attempt to name it, if the first person gets it wrong). Now, this is compellingly competitive. But perhaps it's now just a little too damn hard to win: with such formidable contestants gathered at the bar, no-one managed to be first to the identification more than 2 or 3 times in succession. Also, it becomes very hard to keep track; you have to be able to trust your fellow drinkers/competitors to keep the tally straight. And it becomes a bit of a hassle for the barman to keep checking your answers against the playlist, especially when things get busy.

I think the first or second formats actually work better. But it might have to be just an occasional divertissement on slow nights, rather than a regular feature. We shall see.

The best thing in Kunming

I was down in Kunming at the beginning of the month for a wedding. And I hadn't especially been looking forward to it; I'd had a fairly miserable time there when visiting on business 4 years ago. However, this time the weather was glorious, and I was free of irksome work commitments; I had a much better time.

What I loved best about the place - even above its delightfully refreshing climate ("Spring" all year round), its endearingly laidback people, its more varied scenery (lush tropical greenery, hills, even a river [albeit a slow-moving one, choked with algae] - such a stimulating change from arid, flat-as-a-pancake Beijing) - was the ready availability of Beer Lao.

Beer Lao has long been acclaimed as the best beer in South-East Asia... indeed in the whole of Asia, the whole of Asia-Pacific. In the last few years, with the breaking down of trade barriers within ASEAN, it's finally started to spread outside of the borders of Laos (although it has long been available in a few nearby cross-border spots in Cambodia and Vietnam... and China's south-western province of Yunnan), and has been going down a storm in Thailand (which has one or two decent beers of its own). It has also been gaining favourable attention in Time (supposedly winning a 'Best Beer in Asia' accolade in 2009, although I can't find a link to that), and the New York Times, and is now starting to be introduced into the British and American markets, thanks to Carlsberg having acquired a 50% share in the brewery. But there's still no sign of it in Beijing - boo! It is far, far superior to any of the domestic Chinese products; or to any of the more commonly available American or European brands (such as Budweiser, Heineken, and, ahem, Carlsberg); and it's about half the price. I think I want to set myself up as an importer/distributor, perhaps even found a chain of Lao-themed bar/restaurants....

Ah, but in Kunming, lovely, lovely Kunming, it is available almost everywhere. And there is usually no differentiation in price between the standard product (huang pi - a refreshing lager beer of about 5% or so alcohol content) and the significantly more robust 'Dark Lager' (hei pi - really more of a stout, richly flavoured, and a dauntingly strong 6.5%). And that price is beguilingly low: usually only around 15 rmb for a 330ml bottle - less than we commonly now pay in Beijing even for a bottle of the piss-weak Tsingtao. (Well, my favourite little - nameless - drinking spot charged 16 rmb for the yellow beer and 18 rmb for the black; but you must expect to pay a small premium  for the privilege of sitting on a terrace with a view of Cuihu, the city's popular Green Lake. My journo friend Stroppy Tom, down there on a story, found a French-owned café that was selling both varieties for just 12 rmb. I later found a [not very good] restaurant that was practically giving the stuff away at 10 rmb a bottle. But the best value of all was a place that was selling large bottles - 680ml - for only 18 rmb.)

I am wistful to return already.

And even more intolerant than ever of the inflated prices being demanded of us for beer in Beijing.

You can start to make it better...

Voting for The Beijinger Bar & Club Awards closed on Monday, and the results are to be announced a week Thursday (Thursday?! WTF???) - May 19th.  I hope to look in on the awards ceremony for a while, but... Thursdays are a bit of a 'mare for me this month, with an evening training class being closely followed by an arduous trek out into the northern suburbs for a full-day training programme at dawn the next day; so, it might be a very token appearance from me at Tango next week.

As last year, I remain unconvinced that many of the votes will get counted. I think the two-stage voting system (where your votes are disregarded unless you respond promptly to a 'confirmation request' sent to your e-mail [in the middle of the night, days or weeks after you actually cast your votes]) is cumbersome and unnecessary - quite superfluous to a sensible validation regime. (Votes - apart from write-ins - can for be 'counted' automatically. If, after scrutiny, some 'voters' are found to be suspect, all of their votes can be removed from the count - again, automatically. It shouldn't be that hard to arrange.) Moreover, last year, the 'confirmation' was muddled and dangerously error-prone: a two-step process where you were apparently required to re-confirm your confirmation on an additional pop-up screen (which appeared only fleetingly, and quite some time after you'd pressed the initial 'confirmation' button); and neither of these two 'confirmations' generated an acknowledgement, so you were left in the dark as to whether you had successfully registered your votes or not. It does not instil confidence.

And while I've got my griping hat on, here are a few more suggestions for trying to make these awards a bit more worthwhile in future....

Do away with the nominations phase

It doesn't seem to accomplish any useful winnowing of the field, and is far too prone to manipulation by venue owners. (Everyone has some kind of personal interest in or loyalty to certain venues; and not many people are going to strive to be as objective as me about making nominations, and deliberately avoid puffing their own favourites!) Shortlists compiled by The Beijinger's editorial team might be subjective, limited, open to undue influence.... but at least then we know who to blame. With most categories, the number of eligible venues is decidedly finite - in fact, fairly small (there really is no excuse for leaving places like What Bar or Jianghu or Zui Yuefang off the list of 'Music Bars', for example): there should be no problem about listing ALL the eligible venues. More obscure venues that get overlooked by the shortlisting team would be unlikely to have any chance of winning anyway, but their supporters can use the 'write-in candidate' facility to draw attention to them.

Have sensible category definitions, and take responsibility for deciding which category each venue is entered in

If you want to have a prize for a 'Hutong Bar', take care to set out what a 'hutong bar' is. And avoid the annual farce of setting arbitrary dates for 'New Bar' eligibility in the middle of the year (but then not, for the most part, checking when bars actually opened, and so allowing many short-listed nominees who are not strictly eligible): a 'New Bar' should be any bar that first opened its doors at some point during 2010 (a bar that's only opened since the start of 2011 is really too new for us to have formed a reliable judgement of it, and should wait until next year for possible recognition).

Cut down the number of categories

I can see the argument for trying to inject some 'fun' into the awards ceremony by having a few more offbeat or frivolous categories, but at present there are just far too many of them. The prize-giving drags on for the best part of three hours; and many people are doubtless dissuaded from participating in the poll because the online voting form runs to several pages and takes 10 or 15 minutes to wade through.

For the main bar categories, venues should be entered in ONE only

Again, the editorial team should take responsibility for making the call in questionable cases. They could perhaps approach venue owners to ask how they'd like their joints to be classified, but I think they ought to be able to decide for themselves. Jianghu, I would suggest, is primarily a 'Music Bar', and therefore should not also be eligible in the 'Hutong Bar' category (an innovation which is perhaps otiose anyway); MaoMaoChong is primarily a 'Cocktail Bar', but would perhaps prefer to be judged as a 'Hutong Bar'. Is there any need for a 'Hutong Bar' and a 'Hidden Gem' award? If yes.... well, it can be argued that any venue that's become widely known as a 'Hutong Bar' (Amilal, MaoMaoChong, Great Leap, for example) can scarcely be called a 'Hidden Gem' any more, regardless of how difficult it may be to find for first-timers; but the 'Hidden Gem' category might encompass lesser known drinking spots inside malls and so on, as well as still obscure back-alley venues. 'Hotel Bars' are almost invariably known mainly for their cocktails, and often put on live music as well, but... they are very much their own kind of animal: I would limit them to this one category, to leave the field uncluttered for the otherwise very small number of dedicated 'Music Bars' and 'Cocktail Bars'. Lounge-type places (Kokomo, d-Lounge, etc.) are a problem: perhaps they should have their own 'Lounge Bar' category...

Use a weighted voting system

With many of the categories, punters don't devote themselves exclusively to one bar, and it might be very difficult to make a definitive choice (with 'Cocktails', for example, most enthusiasts have probably tried several different venues; I'd give the nod - narrowly - to Flamme; but I resent not being able to acknowledge Twilight and MaoMaoChong etc. as well). I'd suggest allowing up to 5 ranked votes in each category (with an automatic points allocation of, say, 50, 30, 20, 15, 10 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.).

Abolish 'Best Bar' as a separate voting category!

If they adopt my suggestions above - making the whole affair far more manageable, with a greatly reduced number of categories, and each bar appearing in only one category - I think it might become practicable to select an 'Overall Winner' from the votes/points awarded in each of the specialist categories. A weighted voting system should minimize the potential negative impact of split voting in the most hotly contested categories (in practice, I think, it's unlikely that any category will have more than 5 serious contenders). The greater difficulty is perhaps that certain categories - probably 'Sports Bar' and 'Live Music Bar' - may draw a much heavier response than others; but fair enough, if those sorts of bar have more of a following, I suppose they deserve to be front-runners for 'Best Bar' overall - such is the way of the world.

No, I'm not really serious about that last one. In an ideal world, I think it could work. But in our flawed reality, Yugong Yishan is likely to be such a runaway winner in the 'Live Music' category that it would also dominate any overall comparison and qualify as 'Best Bar' year after year - which is obvious nonsense: it's not really a bar at all!

I would, however, be quite happy to do away with the 'Best Bar' prize: it's fatuous, impossible to compare dance clubs with hotel lounges with hutong dives etc. Such a poll is meaningless. (Moreover, the selection of the 'Best Bar' shortlist rather presupposes that these candidates are the leaders in their individual categories - something that could improperly influence some people's voting. If they must have such a 'best of the best' award, they really ought to decide it by a second poll, with the candidates being the two or three top venues from each of the specialist categories... although I suppose they'd object that the awards ceremony would lose much of its excitement if the results of the individual categories were announced in advance. Hmm, maybe - but the results sometimes get leaked, or, in most cases, can be easily guessed in advance anyway; and there would, I suggest, be greatly enhanced excitement around the 'Best Bar' award if it were decided in this way.)

I would restrict the main voting categories to: Drinking Bar, Sports Bar, Student Bar, Hotel Bar, Live Music Venue, Dance Club, Cocktail Bar, Wine Bar.... and, maybe, Lounge Club and Hidden Gem. 'Hutong Bar', I feel, is too hard to define... and either too limited or too broad a notion (almost everything outside of Sanlitun is potentially a 'hutong bar'!). 'Whisky Bar' is too narrow a category to be worth including, I think (unless they expand it to Specialist Bar, encompassing things like soju bars as well). And notice what I led off with there - it's hard to know what to call them, but awards like this tend to highlight the various specialist kinds of bar so much that the down-to-earth bar that is just a bar gets completely overlooked: the best bars in this city are clearly places like Salud, The Tree, The Brick, and 12 Square Metres - but these scarcely get a nomination between them.

Other categories should recognise the best...
Bar Owner/Manager, Cocktail, (Cocktail) Barperson, Service, Bar Food, Happy Hour, Value Drinks, Music Selection, and Friendly Crowd. 'Best Whisky Selection', I think, can be dropped: that accolade obviously belongs to one of the handful of Japanese whisky bars in the city, but it's impossible to make the call between them, and it's too limited a competition to be interesting.

Yep, I think you could cut the whole shebang down to 15 or 20 categories - and abandon a 'Best Bar' award altogether. A radical proposal, I know: but I really think it would be a huge improvement.

Misnamed sausage?

JK was foolhardy enough to order some of the food in Paddy O'Shea's the other day. I warned him against it, but his munchies got the better of him. He plumped for the dish of 'cocktail sausages' - and found them to be tiny, deep-fried to excessive crunchiness, cut into the rather creepy 'octodog' floret shape (something surely only 8-year-olds could conceivably find an attractive novelty?!), and of a cheap local Chinese variety whose weird and inappropriate 'savouriness' was still repeating on him the next morning. Next time, heed the advice of the Froog, my friend!

However, this bizarre food encounter got me to thinking..... Why do we call them 'cocktail' sausages anyway?

I suppose it's because this unsatisfying size of banger was developed as a finger-food for 'cocktail parties', when these became something of a social fad (when was that? '60s, early '70s? maybe earlier for the States, but I remember it as one of the odder background details to my early childhood in the UK).

Ah, but might it not be rather fun if one could develop an actual cocktail sausage - one that evoked something of the character of a classic mixed drink?

After all, we know that spiceyness and tomatoeyness work splendidly as an accompaniment to sausages of any size - so, some kind of Bloody Mary sausage ought to be possible. The challenge is to find a filling that can carry some flavour of the base spirit as well, and goes reasonably well with it. Something fairly bland and pale for vodka, I suppose (although I'm not sure that any food, certainly not any meat would really go all that well with vodka).

American whiskeys, because of their sweetness, have already been widely used in marinades and sauces for barbecued foods. So, I can see a Jack & Coke sausage, for example, being rather successful (although it's not exactly a cocktail; and I don't really approve of it as a drinks choice). And I see no reason why you couldn't add a whiff of vermouth (or port - yum!) to the mix to evoke a Manhattan.

I can see a mint'n'lime glaze going quite nicely with a lamb sausage too - but could you infuse it with the Mojito's rumminess?

I shall perhaps conduct some research over the coming summer to try to ascertain whether it is possible to impart some of the flavour of an alcoholic drink to a sausage (without making it taste disgusting).  Watch this space.

OffMyFaceBook

My disdain for 'social networking' sites such as Facebook is by now no doubt well known to all three of my regular readers.

However..... it occurred to me when I was down the bar one night a few weeks back that perhaps, perhaps I would give the idea a spin... if someone came up with a site that was geared  more toward my particular interests - i.e. getting drunk.

Then... inspiration struck!  

Of course!!   

OffMyFaceBook.com!!!  

Why has no-one thought of it already??

Instead of a 'wall' for messages, we could have a 'floor' - where your friends could leave little cartoon puddles of vomit to remind you of the forgotten excesses of the night before.  ("Oh no - the pavement taco!  We didn't eat Mexican, did we??")

And options for our 'relationship with the drink' status might include: On The Wagon; Social Drinker; Thank God It's Friday!; Drinking Heavily; Drinking To Forget... and so on.

"Social networking for the anti-social!"  I think there's some mileage in this.  And the photos section would surely attract a lot more traffic than staid old Facebook.

Unfortunately, someone is squatting that domain name at the moment.  Another of my million dollar ideas bites the dust!

Bad Santa(s)

I gather this Saturday's Beijing SantaCon was subdued ever so slightly by the hyper-anxious policing we've suffered in Beijing lately.  Many of the participants were deterred or prevented from joining the mass meet-up on Tiananmen Square by repeated demands to see passports and search bags, etc. from the goon squads patrolling the perimeter.

I'm amazed - relieved, but genuinely a little surprised - that any of them made it on to the Square.  Indeed, I'm surprised and relieved that none of them got themselves arrested.

But Santa Clauses are a disappointingly harmless and apolitical bunch, aren't they?  There wasn't much chance they were going to try to leave an empty chair on the Square, or break into a mass chorus of Free Nelson Mandela!  [I would have!  That's why I didn't go...]

That's the original version of the song by The Special AKA. I've just discovered a cover by Amy Winehouse, from an AIDS benefit concert in London in 2008 - great stuff!

God, I really hope somebody does a Chinese-language version of this for LXB. Though I think singing the original gets the point across quite well - but just obliquely enough to spare you from beating or imprisonment?

A taste of Xinjiang, in a glass

The last time I was in MaoMaoChong overindulging on one of their extremely generous '25 kuai Wednesdays' ("selected drinks" - which seems to mean just about all their current cocktail menu - just 25 kuai each on this night each week), I got into an experimental mode for a while.

They gave me something with a hefty garnish of coriander in it (their Mao Collins, I think it must have been). I was caught off guard for a moment, had been thinking it must be mint, and struggled at first to place this unexpected flavour - powerful, yet very appealing.

Once the penny dropped, I began wondering how best one might try to recreate the refreshing flavours of the classic Xinjiang salad lao hu cai in a cocktail.

Lao hu cai, the 'Old Tiger Dish', is an essential accompaniment to rou chuanr (mini mutton kebabs - an almost nightly snack for the Beijing drinker throughout the winter months), and, I think, one of the great litmus tests for a Xinjiang restaurant. It's delightfully simple, and brilliantly refreshing if done right; but so many places manage to find ways of screwing it up. It's just julienned cucumber mixed with a few strips of fiery green chilli, finished in a very light dressing (which is probably no more than heavily diluted vinegar) and garnished with handfuls of fresh coriander. When you get the proportions just so, the heat of the chillies is perfectly offset by the coolness of the cucumber, and there is no better palate cleanser for clearing the fattiness of the mutton-sticks (and the powdered chilli which encrusts them) out of your mouth. However..... well, sometimes a restaurant will apparently not have chilli, and will seek to substitute regular green bell peppers (or even just onions!) instead; that doesn't work. Sometimes, they'll have chillies that are far too hot, or use far too much of them; that, too, is a no-no. Occasionally, I've even known places to be out of cucumber, and try to serve the dish with just chilli (and maybe a bit of onion, for light relief). As I said, the ways of screwing something up in this country are legion. But when it's done right..... oh my!

Can we get that same impact in a glass? Well, the coriander is no problem: that clearly does work well in light, refreshing summer drinks. Soda water would seem to be the best fit for providing the mouth-cleansing, refreshing sensation of the dish. And the distinctive cucumberiness can be added by muddling some in the bottom of the glass (big lumps or fat slices will do, I think; no need to worry about producing the fine shreds of the dish itself). MMC proprietor Stephen Rocard infuses his own house spirits, so we thought his self-made chilli vodka (I love it in his Moscow Mule variation, the Stubborn Mule) seemed to be the ideal way to get the heat in the drink. However, I think his approach to the spicier infusions is perhaps a bit conservative; or maybe that particular bottle was somehow a bit weaker than usual - for me, it just didn't have quite the kick I was looking for. We 'fixed' it by adding a dribble of Tabasco as well.

And that, my friends, is Froog's Tiger Drink. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

I'm an ideas man, you see. I'm thinking I should add that as a category on here....

Mojito trough

When did mojitos become such a big thing?

I don't think I'd heard of the damn drink until I came to Beijing. I was first introduced to them 6 or 7 years ago by the rather fine interpretation produced by Mr Cho at Café Sambal; but in those days, not too many other people seemed to be drinking them; they certainly weren't as ubiquitous - inescapable - as they have become today.

Now, I have nothing against the mojito as such. It is a very tasty and refreshing drink, and I'm partial to one myself on occasion.


It's just that it is, well, how shall I put this, a f***ing selfish thing to order in a busy bar.

You ought to have some consideration for how labour intensive this drink is to make - if you're going to muddle the mint delicately (rather than just bashing the shit out of it for a few seconds), if you're going to juice a lime (rather than just mashing a few wedges in the bottom of the glass), if you're going to stir in the sugar properly..... it takes a little time. If you order six of them at once, it takes quite a lot of time. It is not a polite or considerate thing to order when the bar staff are a bit overstretched, when a lot of other people are waiting to be served.



Then, the other night, it struck me - to satisfy these people who want to order multiple mojitos (and to satisfy these people who crave endless new cheap drink promotions), why not have a MOJITO TROUGH? 50 or 80 or 100 RMB for all the mojito you can drink, but.... you have to drink it from a communal trough on the bar counter. (Well, maybe from a mini-trough with three or four friends.)

What do you mean, there are hygiene issues? This is China - if you're worried about hygiene, you should be living somewhere else. How many barmen use a scoop or tongs for the ice rather than just their fingers? And how clean do you suppose the tongs are anyway? And how do they make the ice??

Well, OK, maybe we could get some kind of fancy straw with a little valve mechanism to stop anything dribbling back into the trough. Happy now, Mr Hygiene Freak?

Of course, this is where the money really lies - the One-Way Hygienic Straw. I'm working on some technical drawings now, will be applying for patent soon.

I'm an ideas man, you see.

[Acknowledgements: In an early John Belushi skit on Saturday Night Live, they had a fast-food restaurant where people ate from a communal trough. I think it was supposed to be German food? Couldn't dig the clip out on YouTube.

A bar owner friend was telling me recently that she's contemplating having a 'same glass' promotion to address the irritating mojito orderers problem (or rather, the problem of people who order a mojito... and then a mint julep... and then a John Collins... and then another mojito): cheap drinks or all-you-can drink, provided you use the same glass for everything all night. I like the idea!

I hear Chad has been offering mojitos rather than martinis as his 1-kuai special for the 'First of the Month Madness' promotion at Fubar. I'm sceptical as to how well that works, but.... it's a bold pioneering step in the mass production of mojitos.

And, of course, Huxley at the old Nanjie used to do a 'fishbowl' of cocktails or mixed drinks - 1.5 litres, I think - which was pioneering the idea of sharing drinks through straws, albeit with 2 or 3 close friends rather than anyone who happens to be sitting next to you at the bar.]

Game of the names

Someone happened to ask me the other day - a not uncommon question, but the first time in ages it had been put to me - what would I call a bar or restaurant of my own?


Then, by one of those odd little coincidences, the very next evening I discovered in an old wallet a scrap of paper on which The Chairman and I had written down some name suggestions in a drunken and frivolous moment a couple of years back. [I believe that it may have been inspired by the "competition" the Room 101 owners announced to find a name for their relaunched and rebranded business towards the end of 2008. I never heard any more of that, and don't know if their eventual name selection did come from a customer suggestion or if it was rewarded in any way. I suspect not. One of the many extraordinary faux pas those guys committed in creating their new place was choosing the deeply crappy name Ginkgo for it. Nobody really knows what a 'ginkgo' is; almost no-one can spell it correctly (it's one of those words that I keep on tripping up over myself); nobody knows what it is in Chinese; and it has absolutely no associations with anything whatsoever. For me, it might perhaps be suggestive of a health-food or vitamin shop, or a massage parlour - but not a bloomin' restaurant!]

A further preamble - I don't at all approve of the idea of a combined bar/restaurant; I believe such places seldom or never really work (another element of the great sequential foot-shooting that Ginkgo pulled off!), and they hold no appeal for me. Now, there's no reason why a restaurant shouldn't have a separate bar area (although I don't think it ever really needs one); and it's nice if such a bar is good enough to draw customers of its own, independent of the restaurant's food; but if the bar gets too good, too successful, it starts distracting from the restaurant, dilutes the focus of the business. It's not easy - or desirable, I don't think - for a bar and a restaurant to co-exist successfully. This applies somewhat even to places that just do 'bar food': if the food becomes too elaborate or sophisticated, if the food starts becoming a major part of the draw, then the place is morphing into a restaurant - and suffering as a bar (it's one of the main reasons that I don't particularly like The Den or The Tree as drinking hangouts: far too many people go there to eat!).

Having got that little gripe out of my system..... here are some of those names I dug up the other day. (I hasten to add that they are not particularly good names [though much, much better than Ginkgo!], being generated as they were by a drunken stream of consciousness, for a particular occasion. I'm still not sure how I'd answer that opening question: what would I call a bar of my own?)



Elysium
(I think that might have been one of The Chairman's offerings. Sounds more like a cocktail bar or wine bar than a bar bar to me....)

Winston's
(A natural development, of course, from Room 101.... which was in itself a fairly questionable piece of bar-naming ["the worst thing in the world"?!], but seemed to work out pretty well: it was simple, memorable, and those who knew the reference were prepared to treat it as intended ironically; and the owners elaborated on this quite cleverly - quite obscurely - by producing staff t-shirts with Winston Smith's citizen number on them.)

Elixir
(Another cocktail bar name....)

100 Flowers
(A very apposite reference for China - though not a very pleasant one. And perhaps a tad obscure for those who aren't au fait with their modern Chinese history.)

Agincourt
(A playful jibe at the French component of 101's original ownership syndicate! Ah, it would be a great name for an English restaurant.... if such a thing could ever exist!)

Cultureshock
(Hmm, I see this as being more of a studenty type of place up in Wudaokou - perhaps even a meat-market/disco like Propaganda.)

Rick's Café
(The only place I've ever come across somewhere that takes its name from Bogie's famous nightclub in Casablanca is Negril, at the western tip of Jamaica. Odd. You'd think that such a universally recognisable pop culture reference would have been exploited for marketing myriads of bars all around the world. I wonder if the Warner Bros. goons crack down on this kind of thing?? Not in China, surely?! I'd love to try and do a Rick's one day, somewhere; but I think my conception of the place - though it might include the jazz/cabaret of the movie - would be very different in lots of ways.)

Zebra
(This is the kind of name that is prompted primarily by the conceits of the interior design team rather than any other consideration: you can see that austere black-and-white theme, can't you? Not a completely terrible name; better than Ginkgo; but not great.)

The Workers' Flag
(".... is soaked in drink./ It's not as red as you may think...." Oh, how many times did I sing that in my far-off student days? An unusual name, but a very workable one, I think: fits in nicely with the locale in Communist China, immediately suggests a simple but catchy logo/symbol/gimmick.... and might possibly attract an amusingly outspoken clientele of would-be philosopher-revolutionaries.)

Destino
(One of my favourites from this little selection. For me, it would fit a restaurant better than a bar - but that was what Ginkgo was aiming to be. It's the Spanish for 'destiny' [the great golfer Seve Ballesteros used to invoke it a lot whenever his winning ways deserted him: "I feel I have many more victories yet in my destino."], so it might prove particularly attractive as a 'date place'.)

The Blackout Bar
(This was in fact a suggestion from my erstwhile drinking companion, the determinedly eccentric young American boozehound Crazy Chris - inspired by his experiences in Korea, where he was never able to remember the name of his favourite late-night drinking den.)

A-Train

(Now, this could definitely work! A New York cultural reference that will beguile the Chinese punters, and one that comes complete with its own - incomparably groovy - theme song. Oh yes, someone should do this.)

Oh, of course, I suggested Fubar as an ideal name for a bar in China on here long, long ago..... but someone has done that now. (I'm still waiting for my royalties.)

If you have any ideas for good bar names, I remind you that we already have a thread for that - please go and leave your contributions there.

Top Five Bar Promotion ideas

Now that he's expanded the bar to some forty-odd square metres, JK, the boss of my 'local', the now somewhat inaccurately-named 12 Square Metres, has been canvassing ideas for trying to boost the clientele. And I have been in a rich vein of creative form just lately. Unfortunately, our laoban does not seem to like any of my innovative suggestions - so I'll just have to share them on here with you instead.




My Top Five Ideas For Bar Promotions


5) The Secret Discount
Last week, when JK announced a one-off "two-for-one on everything" deal to try to attract some punters on a miserably rainy night, he was complaining that there were a couple of his more exotic spirit offerings on which he would - just about - be losing money. He was therefore unwilling to reveal what these critically-priced bottles were; this excited much speculation on the part of the few regulars, and we were in fact tempted to work our way along the top shelf whiskies until we saw evidence of an incipient heart attack in our profit-conscious host. This gave me the idea that if JK announced that each night one of the drinks in his impressively stocked back bar would be very heavily discounted - or perhaps even free - but not tell anyone which one it was..... well, I think it would be unlikely that anyone would discover what the 'secret discount' was (or would abuse it too much if they did), but many people might be encouraged to try more spirits than they otherwise would to try to find it.

[If the boss is so concerned about potentially losing a lot of money on this gimmick, you could hem it around with additional restrictions: perhaps only offer the drink FREE or VERY CHEAP until a certain time, or only to the first person to order it that evening. I'd suggest that the 'secret discount' should be written down inside a sealed envelope displayed on the bar, and that after 10 or 11pm - or after someone discovers it by chance - the envelope should be opened and the drink offered at half-price for the rest of the evening. Just a silly game - but quite compelling, I think.]


4) The Matrix Party
Costume parties are always fun. Costume parties with movie themes are the best. And the Matrix trilogy are particularly good films to have on in the background - so much action! Moreover, it's a relatively simple theme to dress for, so long as you have some sunglasses and something black to wear. Heck, you could even wear a grubby old sweater for the outside-the-Matrix look. Or a business suit (ideally with shades and earpiece) to be Agent Smith. Or you could go for one of the more exotic characters like the smoking-jacketed Merovingian or his glamorous Monica Bellucci Mrs or the scary-loony Trainman or.... Oh yes, endless possibilities. Probably better suited to the winter months, though. I really want to do one of these one day.


3) Shots based on the i-Tunes playlist
We always used to complain that The B-52s came up rather too often on JK's background music selection at 12SqM; particularly as the playlist included only three of their songs - Rock Lobster, Love Shack, and Roam - and it tended to be the especially irritating Rock Lobster that would pop up almost every night, sometimes even more than once a night. However, this annoyance became much more tolerable when Dr Manhattan and I hit on the idea of using it as an excuse to order B-52 shots whenever one of these songs was played! Alas, the band seems to have been expunged from the playlist now - we used to hate them for their ubiquity, but we miss them now they're gone. The regulars are lobbying gently for their reinstatement. I've also recommended that JK devise some new shots related to regular highlights on his playlist - AC/DC, Guns'n'Roses, Shu-Bi-Dua (most excellent Danish calypso band!) - and offer them as a 'special' whenever one of the songs is randomly selected by i-Tunes (although there is of course one slight hazard: punters with i-Phones can log in to the playlist and 'promote' songs they want to hear in the projected running order).


2) The 'Crack-The-Seal' Party
The person who can drink the most draught beers before having to go to the toilet gets the cost of those beers refunded (OR all of his subsequent beers for free... OR a significant quantity of free beer, anyway). Beautifully simple in its appeal to the macho competitive instinct. I have suggested this as a theme to christen the new inside toilet at 12SqM (which JK is threatening to install within the next week or two). It has been objected that the idea is not novel, since Paddy O'Shea's has already tried something similar. I disagree: as you'd expect from a dump as resolutely unclassy as O'Shea's, their idea was to run a 'happy hour' until the first person in the bar went to the loo - a cheapskate way of ensuring that the promotion wouldn't go on too long, and a nasty invocation of peer pressure/mob rule reminiscent of those sadistically vindictive Japanese game shows. My idea is for a straight contest: individual, one-on-one, mano-a-mano - a laddish pissing competition; or, rather, a no-pissing competition. I think it could work well. And I'd rather fancy my chances.

But the pick of the crop is....

1) The Five-Minute 'Happy Hour'

'Happy Hour' discounts for five minutes at a time - whether at set times (e.g., every hour, on the hour) or randomly at various points during the evening, announced by the surprise ringing of a bell. This is in fact an inspiration from my erstwhile drinking companion Crazy Chris: we tried it at the old Room 101 a couple of years ago, and oh my god, did it work!!

Froog Solutions (4)

Froog's solution to the disturbing effeminacy of the Manhattan cocktail... Macho it up a bit, of course! The martini glass is a bad start. I like its elegant lines, I do; but it is a bit poofy. And I disdain to use it for anything other than a genuine martini. Dispense with the mixing glass too. Whiskey-based drinks don't need to be severely chilled, in my view. Serve in a good stout lowball glass, add two or three big rocks of ice... and mix it in the glass. Immediately heaps more masculine. That cherry has got to go! I'm not big on garnishes in a drink at the best of times, and certainly not one that threatens to make it sweeter. Likewise the sweet vermouth should be reduced to a bare minimum (on this point, at least, my buddy Dr Manhattan and I are as one: he prefers no more than "a whisper" of vermouth; although his "whispers" are a darn sight louder than mine). Bitters, on the other hand, are the raw meat of cocktail mixing, 100% masculine! Don't go overboard with them, but you can give yourself two or three big drops. Made this way, the Manhattan is a surprisingly robust and tasty drink. And your buddies won't laugh at you for drinking it.

The perfect name for a Chinese bar

FU Bar

Of course! Why didn't I think of it earlier??

富 (fu), you see, means 'riches', and is the character traditionally posted on the door to your house at Chinese New Year to express the hope for prosperity in the year ahead.

While, of course, in contemporary American slang, FUBAR..... er, well, it describes the current state of the world rather too aptly.

The Chinese version of the name might also work quite well, since 吧 (ba) is commonly used to represent the English 'bar' (though usually in the compound noun 酒吧 - jiu ba, an alcohol bar). Yet 吧 also serves as a modal particle added to the end of statements to transform them into polite questions or suggestions: so, in Chinese characters it would indicate a phrase like "Rich, yes?" or "How about some wealth?"

And there might be opportunity for some further punnery here, since 八 - meaning the number 8, traditionally viewed as the luckiest in Chinese numerology - has the same sound, ba.

So, if the logo says (in lucky red, of course)

富8

our Chinese friends will think it is an incredibly propitious place to drink in.... while we worldweary and cynical laowai will be put in quite a different sort of mood, but one no less conducive to drinking.

Erratum: Perhaps that should be

福8

I pulled the wrong fu from my online Chinese dictionary there. I don't read much Chinese, but I had a nagging feeling this character didn't look quite right. When I compared it to the 福 on my front door, I realised my mistake (although it's a little tricky to recognise this fu the right way up, as the traditional New Year's door decorations are always hung upside down; it's another one of those Chinese puns - apparently the words for 'down' and 'come' sound alike, so this is a way of saying "fu is here!"). 福 means 'happiness' or 'good fortune'; I think in fact I prefer the more blatantly materialistic 富, 'rich' - but maybe this is used only as an adjective. You can see that 福 is derived from it. Yes, 福 is probably the fu we should go for.

I really should add this to my Great Bar Names thread.