nosh nook #199 - thursday, december 17, 2009

mixing meaty cocktails with a shot of celebrity (link)
12.16.09 - the ny times - by douglas quenqua

i've been claiming that i'm 80% vegetarian for some time now, given that i eat meat once maybe twice a week. usually that meat's chicken or fish, but every so often i break down & beef it up with a burger or steak tacos or something. i'd like to eventually cut out meat all together, but i'm a "baby steps" sort of gent & i've just managed to root out caffeine, so meat's a little bit down the road. it's a hard habit to break. i feel like i'm good at eating meat in moderation, so i'm not worried about the health effects. as long as i'm getting my meat from a clean, non-gargantuan non-slaughterhouse environment (which i often don't), my only argument against eating meat is the whole respect of other species thing. one day i'll move on from meat, but until that day, we cool.

but...if i was looking for a good reason to swear off meat forever, the ny times has alerted me to one today--cocktails made with meat. meaty cocktails have been getting a bit of buzz recently after allie ward & georgia hardstark, "a pair of winsome drinking buddies from los angeles" created the mcnuggetini, a mcdonald's-inspired drink that's "part chocolate shake, part chicken mcnugget" (in a bbq sauce-rimmed glass). they posted a video of how to make it on youtube & after doing so, the duo totally went viral. at the moment, the video "has been viewed nearly 70,000 times on youtube." it's no david after dentist, but it's pretty good for two women with a video about how to make a cocktail that has meat as a main ingredient.

the times speaks to what the appeal is. "one commenter on youtube summed up their appeal: 'well-dressed cute girls mixing god-awful drinks? i can’t stop watching.'" they're both definitely cute & have good presence, so when you combine that with the strangeness of making a drink that, in ms hardstark's words, "tastes like a white russian, but with meat," you've got a recipe for success. since the mcnuggetini clip hit the web, they've followed up with clips for a ham daiquiri & a bloody bacon and cheese. those two haven't been as big of a hit, but from here, they're hoping they can work their recent buzz into bigger things. ms ward put it this way in an email to the times--"denise richards is probably a millionaire, and lorenzo llamas’s children have their own TV deal, so my hosting a cooking or travel show really isn’t as mythical a notion as, say, unicorns or the kraken." oh, the kraken. it may not be as mythical as those two things, but those two probably taste far less disgusting.