‘I Like A Pina Colada’ – The Great Pina Colada Quest Part 2

BY SALLY CONOR

If anything, my pina colada obsession has only grown and pulsated since I first blogged about it. I’ve googled pina colada recipes. I’ve pondered the merits of the various glass shapes and of blending or mixing the pina colada. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to organise some kind of pina colada party mission or pub-crawl or some other such excuse for me to drink them in company rather than coping with the shame of ordering one alone. But by becoming a cocktail opportunist and tricking people into going for a drink with me and then sneakily ordering a pina colada before they realise what I’m doing, I’ve managed to gather data on four more bars and their pina colada prowess without once having to drink alone! Bonus!

Honey, O’Connell St

My friend and I were both a bit broke but we’d been working hard and had an hour to kill so went in search of some sweet PC action. Honey Bar SEEMS like a real cocktail bar with its long cocktail menu and oddly shaped furniture, but judging by the calibre of the drinks we were served, I’m now not so sure. It was a bit like Deschlers all over again (reminder: vomit-like, viscous, vile). I’m pretty sure the bartender didn’t know what she was doing. BUT the glass was posh and once we’d given the pina coladas ten minutes or so to defrost a little bit (it was basically a pineapple and Malibu frappé) we found they were almost drinkable. However, by this point we’d already switched to wine and were a bit beyond caring. Disappointing.

Dine, Sky City

My Mum’s birthday dinner at this frightfully wanky and overpriced Peter Gordon eatery provided the perfect opportunity to test a high-end cocktail without having to pay for it. Brilliant! Inwardly, I congratulated myself even as my Dad began to prematurely sweat at the expense of the drink, let alone the meal to follow. As one would expect at a restaurant where minimalism is a virtue, the pina colada that I ordered arrived totally ungarnished in a boring tall glass. I’m beginning to formulate a theory that the pina colada is largely about theatre. It’s a performance, an exercise in frivolous bad-taste. Tacky garnishes and the right sort of novelty glass are inherent to that performance. A place like Dine doesn’t do novelty, and their pina colada certainly betrayed this inability to have fun. Unlike at Deschlers and Honey, it was at least a pleasantly drinkable liquid having escaped being blended to a cement-like consistency with an entire bucket of ice. But there wasn’t enough pineapple and the overall result was pretty bland. I certainly couldn’t detect much alcohol and I didn’t finish drinking it. On the other hand, my meal was too rich. Happy medium, where are you hiding? Not at Dine apparently.

Hyatt Hotel Bar, Cnr. Princes St and Waterloo Quadrant

It seems to me that the hotel bar might be the natural home of the pina colada – tourists notoriously have bad taste in everything so it only seems right that the tackiest of drinks is actually ON THE MENU at the Hyatt! My friend had tipped me off that Teresa the bartender seemed to know what she was doing (shaking drinks in a capable fashion à la Cocktail the movie and performing the trick where they taste-test it with a straw) so we figured we’d give her pina colada a whirl. We sat out in the garden only to find ourselves seated next to a guy with a greasy rat’s-tail growing halfway down his back which was a little off-putting. That’s hotel bars for you though. And the complimentary bowl of cashews made up for it somewhat. Our drinks arrived promptly but at first glance were just as disappointing as those at Dine. Same tall glass, same lack of decorative flair. Alas. But the coconut foam on the top was excellent and the liquid appeared to have shards of real pineapple suspended in it! However, the presence of alcohol was in doubt right up until we looked at the bill and saw that no, we hadn’t accidentally ordered virgin pina coladas but were indeed paying fifteen dollars each for fairly ordinary desserts-in-a-glass. Better than Dine. Tangy-er. But still a bit average.

F.Y.I. The garden had a gate straight out onto the street which was wide open… it’s almost like they WANT you to order seven rum-and-cokes and then do a runner.

Mac’s Brew Bar a.k.a. Northern Steamship Company, Quay St

Yeah so these bars aren’t exactly famed for the quality of their cocktails but we were in the area and wanted to check that the stripey shirt crowd weren’t secretly receiving amazing cocktails while the rest of us suffered with our bad sav. I’ve begun to notice that when on a pina colada tasting mission, it is crucial to carefully note the bartender’s response when you request a pina colada. Doubt seems to be the most common response, followed by mild panic and/or fear. So far only Bar 3 and the Hyatt have been either totally fine with brewing such a drink, or have just hidden their horror better. At The Northern Steamship, there was a long pause while the bartender processed my enquiry as to if there was ‘any way you could make me a couple of pina coladas?’

He paused. He said he thought so. He whispered to another young guy who then appeared to call a meeting at the other end of the bar with two female staff. My friend and I covertly watched as they huddled together whispering furiously and then seemed to come to a decision. The young guy started mixing a very strange drink that contained copious amounts of Malibu (hurrah!), pineapple juice and… cream. Not coconut cream, just regular cream of cows. He kinda mixed it all in the glass as he went along, with the ice already in there. I kept trying to pay for the cocktails but the bartenders were ignoring me. We thought maybe we were being punished for ordering such uncool slash troublesome drinks?? Finally they arrived… again with the tall glass and the no garnish. At last I was allowed to pay. We tasted. The result was surprisingly drinkable but the lactosey richness of the cream hit us in the back of the throat, as did the Malibu. Within a minute, the pineapple juice and cream had started to curdle and the ice was melting and forming a sort of scum on the surface. Revolting little white scabs were floating in it after about five minutes. We bravely tried to soldier on but were defeated about halfway through. Top marks to the Mac’s bar team for creativity but really, those drinks weren’t pina coladas and if I wasn’t such a wuss I would have pointed out as much and asked for my money back. Quite repulsive.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m asking for the impossible. A pleasant, well balanced pina colada seems to be incredibly hard to find, let alone a pina colada with a nice cocktail umbrella or cherry in it. Has cocktail-making really become so po-faced and generally rubbish?? I think I need to hit the flash bars. I need to find the real professional cocktail-smiths in this town. And then I need to return to Bar 3 to determine if that now-legendary first pina colada was a figment of my imagination.



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Karaoke Call

BY AMBER EASBY

I can barely hold a tune and rarely know the words to even my favourite songs. Maybe that is why I love karaoke so much.

Until last night, I hadn’t karaoked in Auckland before. We tried Coherent, having heard about Sally’s killer rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U there a couple weeks back. We were hit with a $20 door charge. It was probably our casual attire (I had worn the same outfit for basketball) so we decided to try our luck elsewhere.

We settled on the old Paradise bar – I am not even sure what it is called now. The host was turning away customers and the place was empty. He gave us a room when we persisted but was reluctant to serve drinks. He said he was working until 8am but they were only open until three. Shady.

The selection was limited and the songbooks, difficult to navigate. It didn’t matter though. We were in a safe place, free of judgment and wait-time for the mic. One hour and $50 later, we had sung nearly twenty songs.

Highlights: Henry’s Lose Yourself, Helen’s Let's Dance and Gemma’s Say My Name. I highly recommend Lovefool as a fun and easy song to sing, especially if you need to redeem yourself after a harder-than-you-thought classic. Gemma’s rendering of Don’t Stop Me Now captured the overall spirit of the night. The finale was a heartwarming group effort: California Dreaming.

I am still feeling the Love Buzz from our efforts and am dying to karaoke again soon. Any recommendations for a new venue?



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BDO

BY AMBER EASBY

We made it to the stadium in good time. We arrived a little before 4pm, having missed the traffic and spent $20 on a car park close to the front gate. The security was more relaxed than I remembered – a quick glance in the bag, no physical pat down. As a teen, I hid a cask of wine in my underwear to avoid confiscation. My brother once went to the grounds a week in advance to bury a bag of weed and a bottle of Jack Daniels. This time, I was happy to make it through with my water bottle.

Dizzee Rascal had just started in the Boiler Room. The tent was packed and like stepping into a steamy shower of sweat. For the first time, those bikinis and bare chests made sense to me. I was expecting to see a skinny little kid but Dizzee was totally buff! It was a fun show and overall, the best sounding performance of the day.

We queued for the next 45minutes for the Immortals Lounge. It was only worth the wait for the use of clean, flushing toilets. You could also drink beer from a bottle. I tried Steinlager Pure for the first time and was disappointed. Sure – it’s natural but so is urine.

If I see a band I like at a festival, it usually makes me wish I were seeing them at their own (indoor) show. This was particularly true of Arcade Fire. The barricading of the main stage floor made it impossible to see or hear anything, unless you were the die-hard Rage Against the Machine fans who staked their claim (I am watching a lot of Deadwood) early on. I have seen this system work well overseas but here, it was poorly implemented. Long lines and confused security guards meant the flow of the crowd was heavily restricted. I was stuck on the periphery and might as well have been listening to the radio.

We ditched Arcade Fire to see Battles. They were a little too techy for me but Henry loved them. Maybe it is a dude thing. Gemma and I sat at the back and were still able to hear well. I had hot dogs and chips with the good tomato sauce - delicious! Henry sent me text message that I got four hours later, saying “Believe it or not, this is their hit song."

Determined for a more satisfactory main stage experience, we made our way to Bjork a little early. We caught the end of Shihad, a band that must organise their entire year/career around playing the Big Day Out. We managed to secure a slightly better spot. I stood on my tiptoes for as much as I could for Bjork. The marching band of Icelandic teenagers, the costumes, Bjork’s spidey hands – it was an amazing show. Unfortunately the creep factor was growing in anticipation for ‘Rage’. One guy was yelling, “You suck” throughout. I was stuck behind a loud stoner couple who thought they had lost their weed. If I had been at the movies, I would have ssshed them. When they finally found it (in their pocket), they started to roll a joint. One dude wedged himself between Gemma and me, hoping to catch the joint as it was passed back. Another apologized for pushing in with a slow, inappropriate rub of my arms and a “sorry babe”.

We made our way back to the Boiler Rom for LCD Soundsystem, which was everything you would hope. T O T A L D A N C E P A R T Y. Still, I couldn’t help but worry about the muddy ground ruining my shoes or the young girls wearing t-shirts that said, “I am with the band”. During North American Scum, a sixteen year old pushed me out of the way in excitement and I realised, I no longer have the ability to enjoy the festival for what it is. We skipped The Clean to avoid the traffic and were in bed by midnight.



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Hometown Superette Beverage Round-Up

BY SALLY CONOR

Jeez it’s hot! Usually I’m the kind of girl to hide away from the sun like a pasty grub in hibernation, but lately I keep finding myself trekking up Newton Rd in the middle of the day and by the time I make it to Symonds St I’m parched and sweaty. Hometown Superette at the Symonds St shops (next to the wig emporium) is like a cool oasis sans camels. One whole side of the shop is lined with fridges full of nice cold drinks. And such a variety! From your standard soft drinks and fruit juices through to incredibly obscure brands of sarsparilla and strange coffee-in-a-can. The choice is dizzying! Wow!! What follows is a brief survey of those beverages that I have sampled from Hometown so far:

Phoenix Elderflower

Okay so Phoenix is by no means obscure these days. Especially now they’re owned by Charlie’s. Fucking Mark Ellis again. Go away you dickbag! We all hate you! And your stupid advertising website is possibly the most abhorrent money-filching scheme ever conceived!! Get out of our faces and get yourself marooned on a rocky island populated by hungry Kimodo Dragons if at all possible!

So the Phoenix Elderflower drink is really really nice. Sweet and floral and refreshing. Good with gin! I tried it.

Ben Shaw’s Dandelion & Burdock

I was intrigued by this drink. It sat next to a whole lot of other weird-looking ones like Irn Bru, that kinda gross Fanta-like stuff from Scotland. The Dandelion & Burdock can was quite ugly, but I allowed myself to wonder what on earth a dandelion drink might taste like. I had visions of a lovely cool chamomile-style golden nectar that fairies drink out of acorn cups. I ignored the ‘burdock’ bit. This was unwise.

The drink is quite a dark brown and fizzy and almost 100% disgusting. Tastes cloyingly sweet and a bit like creaming soda but way more full-on. Perhaps this is what root beer is like? They were always drinking root beer in Babysitter’s Club novels and I never knew what it was. Kind of fake vanilla-ish and revolting. Avoid.

Mello Yello

Re-released! Again!

A bit like Lift. But not as good.

Lilt Fruit Crush Pineapple & Grapefruit

Another one from the weird shelf. Sounds like it should be awesome right? Pineapple and grapefruit together should be DELICIOUS. It even has a cool can! However, it does say in red letters on the back ‘Contains a source of phenylalanine’.Usually a bad sign. And indeed, this drink is a huge disappointment. Little trace of any pineapple or grapefruit flavour, only a vague, generic ‘fruit’ flavour, some bubbles, and an unpleasant furry coating on your teeth in the manner of Coke. Too bad! It seemed so promising. Sigh.

Ch’i

Yuuuummmmmmmm!!!! So eighties. So refreshing. So so good. Makes me feel a bit like Lana Cocroft when I drink it.

Ribena

Given last year’s false-advertising-vitamin-C-in-Ribena controversy, I thought I would re-test Ribena to see if the fact that it has not very much vitamin C in it detracts from its flavour. I got the kind in a juice-box (of course… does anybody actually buy it in those strange sac things?) and hoed into it with gusto. And then I remembered: I never drank Ribena for vitamin C in the first place! I drank it because it’s so goddam delicious. It tastes like my childhood. There’s something regressive about slurping out of a juice-box… it instantly makes one feel three years old again. It makes me wish I still needed two hands to hold onto Ribena! Remember how awesome it felt to have that much juice that you needed both hands?! They should put straw holes in the tops of big tetra-packs of juice, just so us grown-ups could experience that pleasure again. Kind of like when you get four Kit-Kat Chunkys and melt them together to make one giant Kit-Kat. Makes your hands feel really tiny!

I can highly recommend the Hometown Superette for all your beverage needs. They also have Dr Pepper and the full range of energy drinks if you need a bit of a pick-me-up on your way through town. They have an excellent range of chips as well. My kinda dairy.



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Lost Weekend

BY TAHI MOORE

GIN AND TONIC
Gin won't freeze if it's below 40 per cent alcohol or something like that. Having gotten some strong gin, usually from duty free where it's stronger, leave it in the freezer for a long time. 1/3 gin some lime juice from a lime 2/3 tonic. You have to drink it before the gin thaws out from its freezer visousity.

2 WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT
This I think is the law of gin, which can be awful, along with something else, which can be awful, which comes out good.



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‘I Like A Pina Colada’: The Great Pina Colada Quest – Part One

BY SALLY CONOR

The pina colada may well the lamest drink in the cocktail canon. It is streets ahead of all the others in terms of sheer naffness, and inspired what is quite possibly the worst song in history, thereby increasing its already formidable lameness. Probably the only thing more embarrassing than ordering a pina colada is ordering a VIRGIN pina colada. Pina coladas are so lame that they’ve come full circle and are now officially awesome.

Bar 3, Sky City
The pina colada that started it all.
I was at the Montana Book Awards back in July and was feeling rather fruity. I wanted a special drink, something I’d never had before, something exotic and zingy. ‘I know!’ I thought to myself, thinking I was oh-so-clever and tongue-in-cheek, ‘I’ll order a pina colada! Hilarious!’
The drink took ten minutes to make. The bartender crafted it with such care that you might think he had harvested the pineapples from Fiji himself. It was clear he was A Master. Eventually he presented me with a tall glass filled with a fluffy, faintly radiant lemon-coloured liquid and topped with delicious chunks of fresh pineapple. There were no glace cherries or umbrellas in sight.
I sipped it.
I almost cried with delight.
A really good cocktail is kind of like a cake. When it’s done right, all the ingredients cohere and become something other than the sum of their parts. It’s a chemical thing. This was a Pina Colada in capital letters, because I could no longer taste the juice and the liqueur and the coconut cream, I could only taste delicious tropical ambrosia. I was kind of like how I would imagine Hawaii to taste if it were a drink. It was perfect, right down to the creamy coconut foam on the top.
At this moment, a new obsession was born. I made it my mission to taste as many pina coladas around Auckland as I could.

Deschlers, High St
From an ecstatic high I tumbled to the deepest of lows.
I should have known this was a bad idea when the bartender grumpily made my friend and I go and buy our own coconut cream. I’m not joking. Some fumbling gestures resembling making a drink followed… he may even have consulted a cocktail book. For a pina colada! Possibly the most famous albeit lamest drink ever! Something was whizzed up in a blender. We were presented with two glasses of ungarnished goo.
VISCOUS was the word that instantly sprang to our lips. VOMIT was another one. As in ‘this is kind of like how I imagine it would taste if someone drank a pina colada and vomited it up into a glass’. We were forced to attempt to ‘drink’ the beverage using a spoon, due to its viscosity. It was the single worst cocktail experience of my life. We tried to exchange our glasses of spew for a different drink and the bartender was unapologetic and rude. Don’t do it people! Not for pina coladas. And probably not for anything else either, except maybe if you get a hankering for a seedy old man.

Food Alley, Albert St
I’ve long been a fan of the $2 cask wine at Food Alley. Imagine my excitement when I noticed their incredibly naff cocktail menu. Pina colada! Singapore Sling! Pink Panther! It’s all there, you should check it out. And all only $7! If you’re downstairs that is… upstairs they’re only $6.50! I ordered one upstairs and it arrived bedecked in an adorably naff glace cherry. Yay! It was a very utilitarian drink. Requisite pineapple and coconut flavours present but not a lot of alcohol detected and that glorious alchemy that occurred in the Sky City cocktail bar apparently hadn’t eventuated here. However, it was tasty, refreshing, and less than half the usual price.

These are my first tentative forays into pina colada connoisseurship. There will be many more. What I’m really looking for is somewhere that will serve me a pina colada in a coconut shell. When that happens I may well dance a hula of joy. I’ll keep you posted.



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