"I don't know" is an acceptable response

Tonight at the Conrad Tokyo, I dined at Cerise, a French restaurant. Cerise is a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, and had the same extensive wine list (at least a dozen pages) and, surprisingly, served the same desert as part of the 6-course tasting menu as Ramsey did. As a side note, up until this vacation in Japan I had ordered a 5+ course tasting menu perhaps twice in my life. This vacation, I've had the Ramsey "Prestige" dinner (7 courses), the China Blue "Michelin Celebration" 7-course meal, and today's Cerise "Taste of Summer" menu. The Ramsey menu was by far the best.

But I digress. After having a Chateauneuf du Pape at Ramsey and an excellent Rhone in the Executive Lounge for the past three nights, I wanted a cocktail. I ordered an Old-Fashioned. The old-fashioned has been my "test drink" for every new bar I've visited. It's a classic cocktail, but few bartenders seem to know the recipe by heart. My preferred old fashioned is a fresh slice of orange muddled with about a teaspoon of sugar and three or four shakes of Angostura bitters, topped off with Bakers or Bookers (or even Knob Creek for a very sweet drink) and served on the rocks in a lowball glass.

Tonight I was served something that looked like the result of an unholy union between some kind of island cocktail and English tea. At the bottom of a lowball glass of scotch on the rocks (at least they got that part right) sat an undissolved sugar cube. Garnishing the glass was one slice of orange, one slice of lemon, and one slice of lime. Conspicuously missing from the mixture was the muddled orange and bitters.

Saying "I don't know how to make an Old-Fashioned" is acceptable. Serving a proper old-fashioned is acceptable. Trying to pass off a half-assed version of a classic cocktail is not in any way acceptable.

I wish you could see this

Ah, Jesus! I wish you could see this. The light's coming up. I've never seen a painting that captures the beauty of the ocean at a moment like this. I'm gonna make you rich, Bud Fox. Yeah. Rich enough that you can afford a girl like Darien. This is your wake-up call, pal. Go to work.

I'm sitting in the lounge of the Conrad Tokyo, looking out onto the Tokyo harbor, sipping an iced tea lightly sweetened with simple syrup. Twenty-six floors below me, slightly to the right, is a shrine in the middle of a small pond that's fed by the harbor waters. Two bridges connect the shrine to the surrounding grounds. Its roof is the pale green of matcha tea in a white cup. Out in the harbor, vessels ranging from small yachts to giant shipping boats trundle through the harbor waters or sit docked with the waves rippling around them like the combed sand of the rock garden at Ryoan-ji.

The boats and shrine provide a sharp temporal contrast to the skyscrapers behind them, which in turn echo the slanted roof of the shrine in their architectural curves of steel and glass. Farther out, red and white-striped cranes, their details slightly fuzzed by the humidity, construct the next generation of homes and workplaces.

I promise myself that next time I visit, I will bring a camera.