nosh nook #55 - friday, may 29, 2009

free bar snacks get tastier (link)
05.28.09 - digital city - by jon franklin

there's a lot of drinking going on in nyc & the drunken are just like everyone else--they need to eat too. it's basically why all there are a million pizza joints blanketing the city. as any experienced lush knows, eating food along the way is one of the easiest ways to extend your night of drinking & lower the chances that you end up passed out in a pile of garbage by the end of the night. there's no quicker way to get drunk off your ass than drinking on an empty stomach, but if you can pair your poison with some food along the way, there's an outside chance that you'll slow down the effects of the alcohol. it's even better if you don't have to pay for it. one thing that helps immensely in this quest...bar snacks.

as jon franklin explains in his article, bars are upping the ante when it comes to bar snacks. we ain't talking about your grandpappy's beer nut & pretzel variety bar snacks either. we're talking munchies of the fancy persuasion, stuff made with exotic or exotic-sounding ingredients. franklin notes that bar owners have picked up on the fact that "seeing a quarter-per-handful peanut vending machine in the corner of a bar shows how much they give a shit about your drinking experience" and have risen to the challenge.

as you can probably tell, i enjoy having a snack with my drink. one of the benefits of living in nyc is that it basically rules when it comes to bars offering patrons something to munch on while they drink. personally, i've taken advantage of the "free pizza with every drink" special offered by 14th street's crocodile lounge & its brooklyn sister bar, the alligator lounge, more times than i can count.  i haven't been back in a while, but there's a bar in DUMBO--68 jay--that sets out bowls of cheddar goldfish...love that.

now that i've seen this article, i can expand my horizons a bit with places that serve curried popcorn, piquant popcorn & duck fat popcorn.  apparently, there are also non-popcorn bar snacks & the places that serve them aren't all in nyc.  in l.a., there's a bar that serves prunes wrapped in bacon.  in atlanta, there's a place that offers up chocolate goat-cheese-stuffed dates, which sound tasty enough to eat drunk or sober...not the prunes wrapped in bacon though.  they sound intriguingly tasty, but i think i'd need to have a few in me before i started popping them into my mouth.