The Taylor Swift Of Cocktails, And A Bar Called schmuck.
The schmuck. Martini, in progress. (Photo by me)
My career as a spirits writer really began when my daughter was born in 2010, and going out to bars and writing about cocktails and bartenders and things of that ilk suddenly gave way to round-the-clock child care and naps whenever I could snag them. To keep my nascent writing career, such as it was, alive, I had to start having bottles sent to my home so I could taste them and write them up whenever I wasn’t busy changing diapers or trying to spoon mashed sweet potatoes into my daughter’s mouth or taking her out to Central Park in her stroller and… excuse me for a second, I think I have some dust in my eye <sniff>.
Where was I? Right, spirits writing. My gambit seemed to pay off pretty well, and I started writing about spirits almost exclusively, at least in my editorial writing. Well, my daughter is 14 now, and while parenting is still far more time-consuming than I would have imagined at this point, I’ve long been able to go out for cocktails and booze events on a regular basis — sometimes more often than I’d like, but it comes with the job. And thanks to the fine publications for whom I write, I’m starting to branch out again, not just writing about booze, but, um, booze adjacent things!
Such as Vivian Hsiung, aka the Taylor Swift of cocktails. I don’t know if I’m the first person to call her that, but it’s what I immediately thought when I first encountered her Instagram. She’s a hoot — like Tay-Tay, she puts it all out there when it comes to her love life, but unlike Taylor she does it through the medium of cocktails. I’d tell you her Instagram handle/website URL, but why would I do that when you could click on the link and read the article I wrote about her for Forbes and find out that way? It’s a fun read, worth your time, I swear. Link is -> HERE <-.
Vivian Hsiung, aka the Taylor Swift of cocktails. (photo by Dina Litovsky)
And then I wrote up a bar — as in a detailed writeup of a single bar, not a round-up of multiple bars — for the first time in I can’t remember how long. 10 years, maybe? And it did not come naturally to me, at this point. But the powers that be at Food & Wine saw fit to run it, so it must have been at least passable. I’ll let you be the judge. And regardless of the quality of my writing, you should read about schmuck., the hottest (and coolest) new bar in the East Village. Run by two ex-pats from Barcelona’s legendary Two Schmucks, they’ve halved the Schmuck quotient but the quality of the food, cocktails, even the furniture is still extraordinary. Why? You’ll just have to read the article and find out! Link is -> HERE <-.