The Ramen Project

On my first trip to the Manila Oriental Market in Excelsior last year, I discovered something wonderful-- an entire store aisle devoted to instant noodles. The store offered an impenetrably diverse array of ramens, with flavors I'd never run across, like "cuttlefish" and "pickled cabbage fish". Sarah and I first just tried the ones that sounded best to us and tried to keep mental track of our favorites. It wasn't until I was on my own that I decided to take a more systematic approach to dealing with the intimidating breadth of options. By then it had become apparent that memory alone would not be sufficient to map out the best and worst of instant noodles. At the suggestion of a coworker (Laura Ray), The Ramen Project was born. This post is its ultimate fruit. I bought one of each of about two-thirds of the aisle's offered instant noodle varieties (the poor girl at the checkout looked ready to kill me) and began to work my way through the pile one lunch at a time at work, saving the packaging with brief post-it reviews affixed. After months of careful study, the results are in.

The survey covers 39 flavors of instant noodles, all single-serving with one exception. Prices mostly ranged from 39 cents to 79 cents, with a couple of standouts costing over a dollar. Ramen noodles are generally fried in saturated vegetable fat like palm oil and the broth typically includes flavor-enhancers MSG, Disodium 5'-Inosylate, and Disodium 5'-Guanylate (which is actually a component of DNA/RNA, interestingly). The artificial meat flavor is non-vegetarian, which means it includes animal products and isn't fully "artificial" in the classic sense, but only a couple of brands included such luxuries as straight-up crab meat or beef extract and forwent synthetic flavor enhancers. There's nothing really dangerous or unhealthy about synthetic flavor enhancers, but as a rule I tried not to consume ramen more than once per 48-hour period, as the calories are pretty genuinely empty and it would have made me feel "off". Noodle packages typically included 2-3 packets inside them in addition to the bare noodles, usually powdered broth, garlic or soy-infused palm oil, and freeze dried garnish. The survey includes "glass" noodles, rice noodles and noodles intended to be served without broth, in addition to the more classic ramen noodles.

I've condensed this to the "discoveries" or "best-of", but you can find the complete unedited reviews here. Below are the highlights:

Both Thai brands (ZoZo/Wai Wai and MAMA) were consistently excellent, and the general sour/tom yum genre is pretty solid.
-ZoZo/Wai Wai Sour Soup Flavour Instant Noodles- Good. Spicy, delicious and simple.
-MAMA Shrimp Creamy Tom Yum Flavour- Creamy, delicious, appropriately spicy, and with good texture. This is probably my favorite Tom Yum of the lot. Note that my coworker Jeri's favorite ramen is the non-creamy variant, but I prefered this by a slight margin.

Vietnamese company Vina Acecook has a few brand name titles, including Hao Hao, which was uniformly mediocre, and Daily, which had its moments (see below). Vietnamese brand Vifon was ok, but I wasn't especially fond of the mealy texture of their rice noodles and they didn't quite rise above "good" anyways.
-Daily Beef Ball Flavour- Surprisingly delicious, with complex spicy herbal seasoning.

Both soup type ramens from Filipino brand Lucky Me! were excellent, but the chow meins (served without broth) tended to be rancid for whatever reason. It wasn't the only brand for which I ran across a rancid one, but these were pretty consistently rancid. Otherwise the chow meins were quite good, but I'm only featuring the soups.
-Lucky Me! La Paz Batchoy (La Paz Style)- Fancy! Four packets, including one with little balls of textured soy protein. Rich and garlicky broth.
-Lucky Me! Bulalo (Bone Marrow Soup)- Smells fantastically savory. Great flavor, salty.

Indonesian brand IndoMie's chow meins were excellent and it is the brand I'd recommend for the chow mein style. The process of straining the water from them was a bit tricky to do at work with nothing but a microwave, a fork, and long sweater sleeves to insulate my hands, but the results were great. Note that these and the Lucky Me! chow meins are Sarah's favorite instant noodles.
-Mi Goreng BBQ Chicken- Absolutely delicious.
-Mi Goreng- Excellent, sweet and peppery.
-Soto Mie Flavour- Sesame and chili flavor. Delicious as always.

Unif is a pretty gigantic brand out of Taiwan, with a lot of different packaging configurations. It's offerings range from outright "meh" to quite good.
-Unif Tung-I Chah Chiang Flavor- I believe this is seaweed flavor. Dark, savory and surprisingly unsalty (relatively speaking) soy sauce-derived broth. Would pair well with Californian hops, esp Simcoe or Citra.
-Unif Tung-I Instant Bean Vermicelli Mushroom Flavor (Bean Thread)- Good, interesting nutty mushroom flavor.

As I am sure will surprise no one, the Japanese brands were the most expensive, nutritionally substantial and reliably delicious. I decided that udon took a bit too long to cook to be practical for work.
-Tonkotsu Artificial Pork Flavor- The "nondaily creamer" milk solids make it pretty chill. Nice and garlicky and sesame-y.
-Shin Ramyun Noodle Soup "Gourmet Spicy"- Totally excellent in flavor and texture. Pleasantly spicy, but otherwise fairly normal.

Honestly, the most promising (and as-yet unexplored) frontier in ramen at this point for me is the multi-serving packages. These tend be on the higher end of the price range per serving, include some of the most unusual flavors and the quality has so far been remarkable. Only one multi-serving noodle was included in this survey, and it certainly makes the list. The brand is unclear but it was manufactured by Sichuan Baijia Food Co., Ltd.
-Artificial Pickled Cabbage Fish Flavor Instant Sweet Potato Thread- Unique and utterly delicious. Cabbage and beans and sour and spicy oh my! Note this is vegan and rather oily, with chewy clear noodles

Below is the full array of recommended noodles. Hopefully this will prove useful to everyone who has access to an asian grocery store. It's a great way to keep your lunches at work cheap and interesting.

The Mr. Toad

My roommate's wonderful girlfriend gave me a bottle of Fernet Branca, because she realized she couldn't stand it. I set about to find a use for it other than the classic Fernet and Coke (which, incidentally, is huge in Argentina).

1/8th shot Fernet Branca (or thereabouts)
1 shot rye whiskey
shaken with ice
garnish with a twist of lime peel

It smells like a musky man's man just brushed his teeth and put on deodorant. The whiskey fills out the flavor, softening it with oak and warm grain flavors while the sharp, complex, herbal Fernet plays off of the spicy rye notes and, importantly, off the aroma of the lime peel. The woody incense qualities in Fernet's taste play nicely with the oak. This drink is not for the faint of heart, as Fernet is pretty intense and there's no real sweetness in there and peppery rye is a heck of a grounding ingredient, but I frankly think it's the best Fernet drink I've ever had, and Fernet is pretty fascinating.

Sarah suggested the name, as a shortening of the Disneyland feature "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride", because *faces camera with a plastic grin* "It's a wild ride!" So, oddly enough, credits go to the Excelsior House Tasting Team, even if I left Excelsior a year ago. I dedicate this drink to Aileen and her hatred of Fernet.

San Franciscan Morality

Since before the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco has been reviled by conservative Christians as a place of hedonism. Back then it was nicknamed Frisky City, and not a few religious figures of the time interpreted the great fires that burned the city to the ground as God's retribution against the city's sinfulness, likening it to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Not a whole lot has changed. There continues to be some truth to the characterization of San Franciscans as hedonistic-- we believe in enjoying ourselves and we do. The best word I've found to describe San Franciscans is gay-- in the classic sense (in addition, of course, to the newer sense). On sunny weekend days, San Franciscans dress lightly, fashionably, and in bright colors. They eat brunch with mimosas or seek out the best bakery in town for pastries. They bring their dogs to the park or picnic with friends. San Francisco is truly a gay, happy city. It's also, truly, the most moral city I've ever called home.

San Francisco is a bastion of "radical humanism", as my friend so aptly put it. That lends itself to investing in social programs, ethically produced food and bike lanes. More personally, San Franciscans believe in doing what they enjoy and encouraging others to do the same, whether that be drinking blow-your-mind-good coffee or wearing red pants and a brilliant paisley scarf or having gay sex or smoking weed in the park or getting a sex change or... I think you get the idea.

That may sound dangerously unbounded to people from more religious parts of the country, but it is actually very simply and rigidly bounded by a second principle: not infringing on or diminishing others' happiness. The minute the crazy homeless guy shoves someone is the moment when tolerance turns to intolerance. The minute a public discussion invokes racial epithets is when the eyes of every bystander's eyes darken.

As extensive as San Franciscan acceptance is, the rules of humanism follow right along. Humanism is, after all, a moral tradition at least as venerable as Christianity, predating it by a fair margin. There is no slippery slope here. For example, orgies do happen in San Francisco. They're not commonplace but everyone knows someone who's been to an orgy. However, there is none of the Bacchanalian destructive abandon associated with Roman orgies. Real San Franciscan orgies, by every account I have heard so far, are extremely structured environments. That everyone be safe and comfortable is of primary importance. The implicit assumption is that such a thing is not worth doing if it causes harm. San Franciscan morality is outlined in black and white, just along different lines than conservative Christian morality.

San Francisco's combination of hedonism and moralism is also embodied by the kink community. The Society of Janus describes itself on its website thusly: "SOJ is a not-for-profit, all volunteer, San Francisco-based education and support organization devoted to the art of safe, consensual and non-exploitative BDSM." The society's mission is to teach people about BDSM, to share what they enjoy and likely have enjoyed for a long time. My experience reading dating profiles of people so inclined reinforces the impression that people in the kink community treat BDSM with strict sobriety and a careful eye for ethical pitfalls. Bestiality (which conservatives are so fond of mentioning in the same breath as homosexuality) is not remotely ethical, because an animal cannot give consent.

The BDSM community is only a small part of the city, but that emphasis on ethical behavior characterizes San Franciscans more broadly. Since I have moved here, many things that I have done thoughtlessly have been questioned by people around me, and discussed reasonably. The extreme moral conscientiousness of this city is remarkable, and the only people I've met of comparable moral conscientiousness are truly devout Christians. The difference is that instead of citing verses to explain why doing a given thing is wrong, San Franciscans will tell you exactly how it hurts people (or animals). Frankly, I find the moral intensity of both church groups and San Franciscans to sometimes be oppressive, but I appreciate the commitment.

San Franciscans are very familiar with how difficult it is to come out of the closet as gay. Every gay person has to deal with a feeling of non-acceptance from society at large, even those who were born and raised by accepting parents in the city itself. Being gay is far more difficult and alienating if someone comes from a conservative Christian family. Gay sons or daughters coming out of the closet to a conservative family risk disownment, but the reality for most gays is more subtle. There will be a certain distance created by the revelation and a certain sustained discomfort for both parties, because neither side can truly accept the other's viewpoint without giving up their own. Religious families are inclined to attempt to persuade their wayward sheep away from "the gay lifestyle". Even if a family resists this impulse, a certain level of frustration is an inevitable product of the rub between religious convictions and gay realities. It is a softer estrangement, but it still leaves lingering damage, damage that any gay person can tell you about (if they're comfortable doing so). Gays who grew up with strong religious convictions are forced into a crisis of faith, as they try to reconcile the teachings etched into them with their own nature, and must grapple with religiously-derived guilt. Gays, and San Franciscans more broadly, see firsthand the damage that religion can and does cause. This damage piques our San Franciscan sense of morality. When it comes to gays versus conservative Christianity, there is no question with which side this morality sides.

I think there's an unvoiced sentiment among conservative Christians that true love can only exist in a heterosexual relationship, or that romantic love in a heterosexual relationship is somehow different from romantic love in a gay relationship. We here in Frisky City know differently from experience. Of course, it's not rocket science. For every vocally happy recovering gay who has returned to the fold, there are a million vocally happy practicing gays. San Franciscans know that decisions have consequences, and further they know what decisions have what consequences, because they've tried out the options in true rational humanist fashion. We know that the only way for a gay person to find true romantic love is in a gay relationship, and that finding such love is among the most gratifying and fulfilling things in life. From the perspective of humanism, the truly immoral thing is trying to dissuade people from finding that love.

San Franciscans also know quite well what innocent fun is. This brings me, finally, to Hunky Jesus. The Hunky Jesus Competition, put on by the in-drag charity organization Nuns of Perpetual Indulgence, is innocent fun. The competition may be irreverent, but in San Francisco this is an integral part of its moral appeal. There is a need, particularly in gay San Francisco, to dance on Jesus' grave a little bit, to poke fun, to make light of the force of conservative Christianity, clearly discernible despite the distance (media carries it to us), that presses in on our little bastion of humanism with at best disapproval and at worst unabashed hostility.

That irreverence is entirely harmless unless, say, some idiot would deliberately troll and upset his conservative Catholic uncle by sending him an article about the event. Like I said, I'm not entirely in agreement with San Francisco's intense moralism, but I think I at least understand it. I hope you understand it better now too. San Francisco is a very different world from middle America, but despite both regions' best intentions, they are still one America.

If you visit me on a sunny weekend, I will suggest we get brunch in the Castro and order mimosas and eggs benedict. We can watch people go by, living their lives gaily. I promise you will enjoy it.

Fleeting Contact

Well, it finally happened. I saw her. My train was crossing the intersection of Church and Duboce and I saw her on the corner decide to wait for it to pass. For a second I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. She's dead, my mind said, she no longer exists.

But she did exist, standing on the corner, looking at my train. I thought, she's going to see me for sure, then she looked a different direction. I started waving a slow, plaintive wave, for what seemed like a long time, but was only a few seconds-- maybe a half-dozen waves. I stopped waving. She continued surveying the street. Her head stopped when it came to me, long enough that I was certain. I started waving again. She hesitated for a pregnant moment, then waved back. My train finished crossing the intersection and came to stop in front of my-- our-- old apartment, and then it was over. She crossed behind the train with the rest of the people on the corner, and I turned away from the window and sat back down in my seat.

I looked around the train to see if anyone noticed. I could feel myself breathing hard, feel my brain buzzing with exclamation points. I certainly felt like people should be looking at me, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I tried to take deep breaths. Then I changed my music player to something cathartic. My phone buzzed with a received text and my heart leapt. It was from a friend about meeting later in the evening. Sigh.

When I saw her, I saw a shadow future pass before my eyes. Things that would not be. In those few seconds any fragile illusions that I was over the worst of this, that it would be as easy as I naively hoped a week and a half ago, drained like water from a suddenly cracked plastic bucket. It isn't over. It's not even halfway yet. In a way it was a relief. I will not feel like a sociopath or a bloodless traveler. My love is real and will be real in the future. I was never faking anything.

Things have gotten decidedly harder since Bri left on Sunday. My roommate is gone for a couple weeks and I still haven't cleaned up from Bri's visit. My apartment looks like I am. I am a mess. Music doesn't sparkle the way it did the first and second weeks, but I am at least as emotionally unbalanced. Or maybe my emotions are just more on-target. I miss Sarah and think about missing her on a regular basis now. Each time my mind grabs onto something specific about her, it's sad like sand oozing out between my fingers. I know I'm never going to remember it with that same clarity. If I ever remember it again, it will be an old memory. Alas, such is loss and such is the tragedy of time's passage.

One Week After

Well, it didn't feel how I expected it to. I guess I anticipated too much. The last week was wreathed in the vague numbness of depression. We finished up our bucket list of things we wanted to do together-- visit the Flower Conservatory, eat at a favorite restaurant, visit a certain soju bar in Japantown, try a classic diner on Market, have a last quiet night in. Except for the part where we fit an entire full-size mattress into the back of Jack's Camry by folding it in half and shoving it in unison, the move Saturday was uneventful. The goodbye Sunday morning was poignant and tear-filled, in spite of my persistent sense of unreality. I spent the rest of Sunday watching TV, trying not to think about anything. The weekend gave way to a strange trip of a week.

I've done something extremely social every day since saying goodbye. I played ultimate frisbee Sunday night and chatted afterwards until late. I visited my coworker Matt in Oakland to watch Breaking Bad and had a great time talking with him and his people. On Tuesday, I had a proper "roommate dinner" with my new roommate Carolyn and we talked for much of the evening. On Wednesday, Cory Logan picked me up in his motorcycle to hang out. I ended up making a new friend, spending the night and being late/hungover for the next morning's staff meeting at work. We played another game of ultimate on Thursday night. Friday, my whole workplace bussed off to go-cart as a team building exercise. I'm still sore from the go-carting, which was incredibly fun and instigated me to talk with many different people at work.

I've spent a decent part of each day in a plain rotten mood, angry at the world for any reason I can find. I've also had some very intense experiences listening to music. Yet, there was never a moment when I was as crushingly sad as I remember from my last breakup. I've felt bizarrely unfazed. I even feel a little guilty for it. A friend of mine was enough of an asshole to suggest maybe I didn't love Sarah as much. I don't think so. I do think this may be an easier breakup; because it's not my first, because our relationship lacked the self-conscious co-dependency of Jill and I's, and because I'm more mature.

So the week has pretty much been an even split between intense music listening experiences, hating everything and positively ecstatic social experiences. Like I said, it has been a strange week. Today is the first day I've really been alone, which is probably good.

I still take the N line to work every day and every time I pass the apartment I crane my neck to look for Sarah, or even Mary smoking or the crazy dancing chinese hat man-- anything to prove it wasn't all just a dream. I keep seeing girls who bear resemblance to Sarah. I had this thought that maybe Sarah had just split into shards of people and dissolved into the tapestry of San Francisco. I keep rating girls' attractiveness and keep being disgusted by how many are ugly. I look at couples with envy. I haven't had any really terrible dreams. This week has taken so long to pass. It's a sort of purgatory. I don't know if I want this all to be over with or if there's anything to be over with or if I like it this way. Maybe this is life, now. It will be for awhile, anyways.

A few people texted me in the middle of the week, "How are you holding up?" I figured they could wait until this blog post. My mom gets the award for calling me the day we'd broken up and taking the opportunity to suggest I become a patent attorney or at least think about my financial future. After being confused by my hostility, she promised to never bring up finances again. I tried to explain to her, "No, Mom, by all means talk to me about my career future occasionally, but please think about your timing. You're kicking me when I'm down." The thing is, Mom specifically broached the subject because she thought it was an ideal time since I'm now unattached. You're a gem, Mom.

I have Bri visiting to look forward to. And I've decided I'm going to make absinthe. Not with European ingredients or according to a recipe, but with my own invented recipe using native Californian coastal sagebrush (a close relative of wormwood), other native or naturalized herbs, and green cardamom and Thai basil, which I plan to pick up tomorrow in Little Saigon. I'll tell you how it turns out.

It's hard to aggressively make friends when you have someone amazing to come home to, so I am approaching my new singledom as an opportunity to make friends here in San Francisco and strengthen existing friendships. Judging by my first week, I am off to a good start.

One Week Before

In one week I will be moving. I've really enjoyed living here in Church/Duboce Triangle/Lower Haight; baby, TV, crazy people and all. Unfortunately, it is time to move.

I am moving because the lease is up and, more pertinently, because I am breaking up with Sarah. After loving the hell out of her for over a year and a half and some time living with her, we are parting mutually, amiably, plannedly and on the conclusion of a lease. I am moving into a room in a place I found on Craigslist with a roommate I just met and my closest friend in the city is moving away. Those of you who've been reading for a couple years may be wondering if this is deja vu. Unfortunately, it is not.

Brandon asked if it was awkward living with someone you know you're breaking up with. I said to him that once you're living with someone, a mutual, planned breakup is about the most graceful way to go out. Of course, the direct answer to his question is yes, though "weird" is a more accurate descriptor. The last few weeks have been emotionally all-over-the-map and I don't expect that to abate any time soon.

That said, I'm glad I moved in with Sarah last year. It made it a lot easier to leave Davis and move to a major city, something I really needed to do. I've had a great time sharing a room with her, exploring the city together and having someone to support and be supported by.

For many reasons, I really wanted to marry her. She's intelligent, beautiful, self-assured, fascinating, shares my values, has excellent taste, takes turns wearing the pants and makes me feel beautiful, both physically and mentally. She will bear beautiful, intelligent children and she will raise them well. I'm already envious of the guy who will have the privilege of fathering those children. Obviously, I've offered my services if she ends up marrying a girl.

I'm not going to get into why all those wonderful things weren't enough for either of us. Suffice it to say that we did our best.

I will be moving in a week to a room in *Upper* Haight, just a few blocks from the famous intersection of Haight and Ashbury. I will have a whole room to myself in a decidedly uncrowded two bedroom apartment. The apartment has plenty of natural light and a view of trees. On the other side, the building opens up onto the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. It is remarkably quiet inside and so far I really like my roommate-to-be. For the first time since I moved to San Francisco, I don't think I'll feel like I'm living as a temporary guest of the primary leaseholder. My commute will be a little longer and I will pay a little more in rent, but Upper Haight is a beautiful and fascinating part of the city.

So wish me well. Send me your love. Call me. There's a good chance I'll be calling you. Bri is coming up to visit me in a couple of weeks. I've been through this before, so I think I'll be okay. I'm putting my tray table up and my seat back in the full upright position.

Living in San Francisco for Real

It's nice to now have a job (and an income). I've moved from Excelsior (the outer reaches of San Francisco) to a place in Lower Haight. We've got a smaller room in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in a more dangerous neighborhood with a dog, a girl, her newborn baby and her mom and for that I'm paying substantially more in rent. The room Sarah and I had in Excelsior was 1100/month and this one is 1400. My apartment building is on top of a light rail stop, which, because it's loud and draws crazies, keeps housing prices... within reach. Of course, my commute takes half the time and I live right in the middle of a lot of SF's most famous neighborhoods.

I live a block off of Market Street (the source of the neighborhood's seedyness) and on the edge of the Castro District, so there're HIV medication billboards in my metro station (actually, one that explained why Uncle Jacques and a handful of middle aged men I see walking on the street look so skinny), couples of every gender combination holding hands (m-f couples being only marginally more common than m-m), crazy homeless people out my window yelling at nobody in particular and/or panhandling. Also, smoking pot in broad daylight, while walking down the street, while eating on a cafe patio, whatever, is normal and completely unremarkable (public smoking is maybe 4:1 tobacco:pot and attended with equally mild scorn). I saw a guy leaning over to light up a bowl as he walked down the street, in fact, with nary the raised eyebrow among passerbys.

A block or two the other direction from my house, closer to Haight Street proper, the Victorian paint jobs get really nice and people wear NorthFace and drive Priuses, Audis and multi-thousand-dollar bicycles, which I find a little obnoxious, though it does provide a nice counterbalance to Market Street.

People here tend to be smart and interesting, as pointed out by my flatmate Mary (the mother, who's from Kansas-via-Vegas). Unfortunately there's also a distinctly Northern Californian niceness here that has a passive aggressive side to it. Ask for directions, and you will have no trouble getting help. In spite of that sometimes-extreme niceness, because of the Chinese cultural influence people are more likely to push their way past you without a "pardon me". That bothers Mary, but not me. This is generally true of all San Franciscans but old Chinese ladies, of course, are the worst and will bowl you over at the drop of a hat with about twice as much force as their tiny 80lb frames should seem to be capable of.

Sarah and I, with our five figure incomes, can now afford to try out local restaurants. Restaurants here, it turns out, aren't any more expensive than anywhere else. They aren't necessarily any better, either, but the incredible selection means that with some skill and research you can do pretty well for your typical restaurant price.

Classically "cheap food" is not actually cheap in San Francisco. Burritos, burgers etc, are always a couple bucks more here than elsewhere, both starting around $8 (though the burgers are worth it). Food trucks, known elsewhere in California for providing ridiculously cheap and delicious tacos, are their own bizarre art form here. Sarah and I went to an "Off the Grid", which is the weekly SF food truck festival, held in a remote parking lot. Japanese, American gourmet, Filipino, Indian, Malaysian, Yucatan, you-name-it cuisine has representation and all errs towards imaginative fusion. Good luck finding lunch for under $9, but it will be fascinating and delicious.

There *is* cheap food in San Francisco, just in unexpected or elsewhere-obscure genres and select neighborhoods. In Excelsior, which has a big Salvadorean population, there was an awesome Salvadorean bakery on the way to the bus stop that was super cheap (breakfast for $1.50!). Dim Sum and Chinese bakery are similarly super cheap and super delicious, where they can be found, which is pretty much anywhere in the city not riddled with nice Victorian paint jobs and multi-thousand-dollar bicycles. Oh, also, Vietnamese is perennially under-priced (also lunch diners in nontouristy China town). Don't look for a ton of meat, but an entree in a decent-looking Vietnamese restaurant may run you $7 and an excellent meal for two with tip $20.

The extreme niceness, the crazy people panhandling and the extreme affluence/environmental consciousnes may irritate me, but somewhere in living here is also the soul of what makes California great. A lot of it is people not caring what other people do or what other people think of them (even the niceness is not out of social obligation, but some bizzare internal compulsion).

It's kind of surreal to visit the suburbs now, with all their trimmed grass, cleanliness and trees. It comes across as shocking that there should ever be more than a hand's breadth between buildings.

The Red Fox

I received a ridiculously thoughtful gift this year for Valentine's day. Sarah had remembered me talking wistfully about Italian liqueurs and bought me a bottle of Campari. Add to that Sarah's new favorite soda called Sarsi (a Filipino sarsaparilla) and it was actually a pretty obvious highball:

1/2 shot Campari
1 shot Gin
Top with Sarsaparilla

This is a very dry, herbal drink considering that it's mostly soda. Other sarsaparillas should be just as good as Sarsi, but I'm not so sure root beer is going to work for this. The dryness that distinguishes sarsaparilla from root beer is essential to complement the bitter and oh-so-dry Campari. The name came pretty naturally. It's not totally clear whether Sarah or I invented this one since we both found the combination so obvious, but I'm going to credit her since using gin in a rich, sweet drink would definitely have not occurred to me before meeting her.

Sarah calls the gin-less version of this drink a "Camparsi".

Calamari Punch

Sarah and I checked out a Filipino food festival called Kulinarya where, among other things, we discovered a delicious limeade made from the Filipino calamansi lime, whose unique taste can be described as a cross between a lime and a kumquat. This is probably what goaded us into finally visiting Manila Oriental Market down the street. We loaded up on exotic ramens (they had an entire aisle devoted to ramen) and various beverages including a ton of calamansi-ade. The following highball is named after the combination of calamansi and Kraken rum upon which it is based. Kraken has been my go-to spiced black rum since Matt Wingert introduced it to me, and makes a great dark and stormy, though Sarah will insist that a true "Dark 'n' Stormy" is only made with Gosling's.

1 shot Kraken (or other black spiced rum)
 2 dashes Angostura bitters 
3+ parts Calamansi-ade

There's not a whole lot to be said about this drink. It's just good punch, with warm spices and featuring a neat Filipino beverage. Anyone who wants to try to recreate this without an insanely hard-to-find specialty ingredient should substitute limeade with a splash of orange juice (or, if you have it, kumquat juice). Like any good punch, this scales up. My thanks to the Excelsior House Tasting Team (aka Sarah).

The Cherry Excelsior

This is the first cocktail developed at the Excelsior House and invention credit goes overwhelmingly to Sarah. Around Christmas we bought a two-liter of Schweppes Black Cherry Flavored Ginger Ale to try out. The soda itself is overly sweet and kind of weird, but we came up with an excellent use for it that burned through an impressive amount of Tanqueray in the process. My apologies for how obscure the soda is. Find it, however, and you're in for a treat.

1 shot Gin
2 parts Black Cherry Ginger Ale
juice squeezed from half a lime
garnish with a maraschino cherry

Serve over ice. In the absence of said rather specific soda, you could improvise with regular black cherry soda and a small piece of fresh ginger muddled into the gin.

The punch of the alcohol and acidity of the lime balances out the soda's cloying sweetness. The combination of juniper, ginger and citrus play out a deft support role underneath the prominent black cherry flavor. The drink is balanced and complex without being overstated. Truth be told, it's kind of addictive.