Notes from Tuesday

By Todd Stadler · Friday, December 7, 2007 8:45am

You can tell how sluggish I am about blogging when even a short, quotidian entry like this one gets pushed out three days from when the events it describes occurred. Sigh. But at least you get an introductory paragraph topped with self-deprecation. So it's not all negatives.

Anyhow, a group of us went to the Teardrop Lounge* Tuesday night, just because we so rarely get out during the week.

The Teardrop is in Portland's Pearl District, which, being a high-falutin' area, tends to give me the heebie-jeebies. Or so I like to pretend. It's not that I don't appreciate the several quadrillion fancy condos (or "rip-offs") interspersed with fancy shopping opportunities (or "shopportunities" — okay, I've never used that term), it's more that I can't afford to go there very often.

Anyhow, the Teardrop has a reputation for well-crafted cocktails that actually justify their price tag, so I was curious. But mainly it was about the friends.

We seemed quite lucky to get a large horseshoe-shaped booth in the back, given that there was also some sort of media shindig at the same time in the Teardrop. But maybe it wasn't packed at happy hour because it's, well, ugly. I understand the appeal of the stark, modern look, but this wasn't it. It was the sort of decor that made me want to stare intensely at the menu — maybe that's the point.

Thankfully, the menu required lots of staring, full as it was of long lists of ingredients, many of them obscure, a few of them possibly completely made-up. "Germain robin alembic brandy"? "Meyer-lemon-sake gastrique"? "Pineau de charentes"? And those are all from one drink! (The drink, the Hard Sell, also includes Cynar, which I am familiar with and even own a bottle for some reason; it's an artichoke-derived liquor, and as such pretty darn weird.)

Anyhow, we all seemed to enjoy our drinks, which, as our waiter reminded us several times, were in the "pre-Prohibition" style. Frankly, that phrase holds no deep meaning for me. They ... contain alcohol? Each drink is served with the waiter saying, "Here you go, old sport"? I don't know.

But if that was a bit odd, what was even odder was hearing the waiter continually ask people at our table, "What is your flavor profile?" Someone would show hesitation in choosing a drink, and he'd ask it: "What is your flavor profile?" Um ... Romanesque? Tasty? Awesome? It's just fine, thank you? Isn't flavor profiling illegal?

Oh, fine, I get what he was asking, but it seems like a really tortured/precious way to ask people what other drinks or flavors they like. I wouldn't complain if the question had worked, but instead it only generated further confusion, punctuated by uncomfortable chair-shifting, and concluded with a finger stabbing at the menu and "I'll just have this one."

One drawback to sitting in the horseshoe-shaped booth was that there were no chairs to hang our coats and bags on. So we piled them on top of the booth's ledge. In a posher place, this would have been incredibly gauche of us, but frankly, our mass of winter jackets served to obscure some ugly glass vases, so I felt no compunction.

That would have been all well and good, but at some point a lady came along who apparently thought that our pile was the official place to plop one's coat, even though she wasn't sitting with us — say what you will about our manners, we did demonstrate leadership!

Unfortunately, she was rather clumsy (eh ... drunk), and managed to break most of the glass vases on the ledge. Tada! As an encore, she also managed to land her jacket on top of one of the very hot halogen lamps set into the booth ledge — something we noticed only after they'd cleaned up all the glass: "Do you smell popcorn"?

But the single thing that probably compelled me to write this all down for you was when my friend Kim remembered that I'd gone to Rice (wait for it ...), and noted that her cousin had also gone to Rice (wait ...), probably even my year (get ready ...), and did I possibly know Eric Horler? (Can you feel the suspense?)

Criminy. Of course I know Eric Horler! (Denouement!) He was in my college (that is, dorm), Lovett, and I particularly hung around with him my freshman year. So by my estimation, the earth lost several inches of diameter with that conversation.

Anyhow, I didn't say it'd be an interesting story.

*A side note on the Teardop's Web site: it's horrible. First, you can't find it by Googling, because the clever lads have made the entire site out of Flash, and search engines get no text to analyze. Clever. But I found it anyhow. Plus, you have to watch the animation every time you reload the page, and it's not even good animation. And it uses this really annoying display font everywhere that looks like the Web site got smeared with water. Clearly, the Teardrop people are putting way more time into their cocktails than their presence, either online or in real life. Okay, I'm done now.