The Ten Best Unpopular Highballs
It’s officially Spring in Baltimore. The good news is that Flowermart and Preakness are right around the corner. The bad news is that Spring also means household chores and Spring cleaning. There is a silver lining though, and it is that Spring cleaning also means cleaning out your home bar…
The Five Best Bottles of Liquor to Give as a Gift
Last Fall when we wrote about How to Stock a Home Bar we mentioned that you should save space for a couple of ‘special occasion bottles.’ You need a couple of bottles of the good stuff; a private stock, if you will. This is the stuff that you’ll break out for special occasions, and that is good enough that it will make any occasion special if you do break it out…
The Chop’s Two Boats Cocktail Recipe
Far down in the South Atlantic, midway between continents lies the tiny volcanic island of Saint Helena. Largely unknown to most people, this British colony’s major claim to fame was as the site of Napoleon’s exile in 1815. In the world of spirits though, it’s known as the home of the Tungi distillery, makers of one of the rarest and most unique spirits anywhere in the world. Distilled from the fruit of the locally grown prickly pear cactus, Tungi (pronounced toon-jee) is a clear, unaged, full strength spirit with a very distinctive flavor…
The World’s Best Cocktail Shaker
We don’t do a lot of showing off here at the Baltimore Chop. We like to err on the side of humility, and conspicuous consumption just isn’t our style. Last weekend though, we came across so fine a thing that it absolutely must be shared with the internet at large. Hey, if other bloggers can show off pictures of their crummy cats and dogs and children, then you can indulge us, for once, in showing off what’s truly important to us…
How to Build a Home Wine Collection
A couple of months ago, we did a post on How to Stock a Home Bar in Two Parts. We laid out an easy blueprint of follow for stocking an impressive bar on any budget, and steered clear of the shortcomings in most bar-stocking advice. One thing we mentioned then, that most writers on the subject neglect, is that wine does not belong on the bar. It belongs on the wine rack, separate from the bar…
The Chop’s Père Noël Cocktail Recipe
We would have liked to get this up before Christmas, when we were talking last week about ’tis the season for amaretto, but Christmas will sneak up on you quickly… like the Krampus. Anyway, this is the time of year when you seem to see bottles of amaretto floating around everywhere…
The Chop’s Sweet Russian Cocktail Recipe
The holiday season is that time of year when the Amaretto rears its ugly head in homes and hearths from Highlandtown to Upper Park Heights. In cookies, candies, hot chocolate mix, or liqueurs, the stuff is bound up with Christmas just as much as eggnog and greeting cards.
The Chop’s Holiday Egg Nog Cocktail Recipe
We like egg nog. We’ll make no apologies for that. If you’re one of these people who does not like egg nog, look at this, because that’s all we can do for you today. For the rest of you, we’ve come up with a damn near perfect way to mix up an egg nog cocktail that’s actually thinner than pea soup, and tastes so good you might even drink more than one of them…
Best Bets: Compass Box Scotch Whiskies
Words like “craft” and “artisan” are thrown around much too freely these days. Everything we buy now has to have some grand, romantic story attached to it. From furniture to farmers’ markets, from apparel to accessories, stories sell…
The Perfect Wine for Thanksgiving: Tawny Port
You’ve all probably figured out by now that the Chop really likes our liquor. We’ll always embrace the chance to try something new or compare two whiskies side by side. What you may not have realized though is that we also like wine quite a bit…
The Chop’s Cantonese Cookie Cocktail Recipe
First things first: since this is Baltimore, you can feel free to pronounce it ‘Duhmain d’Cant’n’. We really don’t think anyone’s going to call you on it, Hon. If they do look at you funny either for ordering it or for mispronouncing it… then fuck ‘em. You’re in the wrong bar anyway…
The Chop Endorses: The Dizzy Cocktail Glass
Whew! Well, that was a hell of a Halloween, don’t you think? We had a blast going out all weekend, but if there’s one thing we regret it’s got to be that we did so much reveling out on the town, there was scarcely any time left for imbibing at home…
How to Stock a Home Bar, Part 1
Quite honestly; comparing furniture, installing lighting, trying to match napkins to placemats, and deciding from among thousands of paint colors can become a tedious chore after a while. There’s only been one step of the process which we’ve thoroughly enjoyed every step of the way… building the bar.
How to Stock a Home Bar, Part 2
Welcome back, Choppers. Yesterday we went over the problems with most bar-stocking advice at great length. Today we’re back to give you some solid advice on how to get started on building a bar that even Churchill himself would be proud of.
The Chop’s Veracruz Cocktail Recipe
A lot of you may be scratching your heads on this one. You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘October is a great time for spiced cider drinks and rich, strong cocktails like Sidecars and White Russians. Why the hell is this blog giving me a recipe for a beach bar type cocktail? And you’re not wrong. But remember, we just returned from the desert. And it was hot in the desert. Even in the last week of September, it was hot enough to put us in mind of tequila.
The Chop’s Lemon Stick cocktail Recipe
The Chop had a good idea once. It was the kind of idea that’s so good it can wake you up out of a sound sleep and demand your entire attention. It was the kind of idea that was so simple it was brilliant. But it was the dead of Winter, and eventually, the idea allowed itself to lie dormant until spring.
So we didn’t get that sushi on last night’s Fell’s Point excursion, which means its definitely on the menu for tonight. We haven’t had any since we left for Europe, so it’s high time. The combination of tasty maki and warm weather with extra daylight puts us in mind of one of the Chop’s favorite cocktails…
The Chop’s Chartreuse Gimlet Cocktail Recipe
So we find ourselves in the thick of Memorial Day Weekend, and those of you that aren’t at the beach are probably spending today at some sort of cookout, potluck, garden party or other social event. In the spirit of the season, we’d like to humbly suggest you forgo the cheapie bottle of Australian Sauvignon Blanc…
The Baltimore Chop 