* Captain Morgan was a real person. Sir Henry Morgan was a rather bloodthirsty 17th-century Welshman who blurred the line between privateer and pirate, plundering ships in the Caribbean. * Vice Admiral William Penn, whose son later founded Pennsylvania, was the first captain to make ...
Thank God for the Crusades, so to speak. On their 11th-century romp through the Holy Land, the Christians came upon a fabulous new foodstuff: sugar. A few centuries, some genocide and a slave trade later, Europe had commandeered most of the Caribbean, turned cotton and coffee ...
My Little Pony and Throbbing Gristle make strange bedfellows. No, not in that way. The plastic horse and a poster of the industrial noiseniks both decorate Shirokuma, a funny little bar on Shibuya's Center Gai. Give a kindergarten art class a room, some pocket money ...
Shibuya, I once wrote, is the heart of Young Japan, and the street named Center Gai is its throbbing artery. Some people pay handsomely for cliches like that. In truth, Shibuya is the nation's digestive system, mashing its myriad flavors into a creation that's ...
At the Sea Guardian II bar in Yokohama's historic Hotel New Grand, a laminated addendum to the menu offers thoughts on selected drinks. Of the Bamboo cocktail, the writer asks, "Is this the foreigners' image of Japan?" Clearly no, it's not. The Bamboo's blend of dry ...
"A bar is no place for a woman. The important characters are always men." Now that I have your attention, allow me to introduce Charles Schumann, who produced that quote in an interview with German Playboy some years back. Schumann is one of Europe's ...
There's a good reason that beer-makers use barley as a base ingredient. Fermentation only works on sugars, and grains don't contain any. But when a grain gets moist, it germinates, and its sprout contains an enzyme that converts starch into sugar. Some grains have ...
Evil cometh from the north, they say. Maybe it was sunlight streaming from the south that gave ancient theologians such a notion. Or perhaps the Arctic is gushing malevolence (compare and contrast: Australians and Scandinavians). Regardless, it was a fear of southbound evil that ...
Emperor Go Mizuno reportedly loved fucha ryori, and likely partook of it at Kanga-an Temple in Kyoto as he gazed at the enchanting green and gravel garden.
"Basically, no," said the bartender at one of Kyoto's ritzier drinking establishments when I asked if he could make something hot. I could have fancy juices, cream, egg whites or yolks in my cocktail, but I could not have heat. Even in winter. Bartenders ...
