smugglers cove:

puka punch – rum and a lot of other stuff
three dots and a dash – rum and a lot of other stuff

so i have now had three drinks from there and though they were all really great, i don’t think i could distinguish one from another. they all read similarly on the menu, so i guess that was to be expected.

sebo sushi:

wasn’t cheap, but possibly the best fish i have had anywhere. and i got a bunch of things i’d never heard of before, much less tasted. new things to me: katsuo (bonito), kohada (gizzard shad), ainame (greenling), kuromutsu (bluefish), shirauo (ice fish), hotaru ika (firefly squid).

then i decided to check out range since they’ve got a new menu since i was last there. i tried to get there by bus, failed. resorted to a cab.

ran into my brother at range which was pretty cool and lucky, since neither of us are in sf very often.

range:

the b-line – bourbon, lillet, bergamot, honey, bitters. this was superb. a bourbon sour variant made silky smooth with the lillet.

‘cocktail of the day’ – i missed the name and also what was in it, except lime, guava, and sparkling rose. delicious, but maybe on the dry side for me.

kamilia – basically a margarita with guava. excellent. guava and tequila are perfect complements.

2 oz lillet
0.75 oz grapefruit vodka (i put half the peel and flesh of a grapefruit in a pint mason jar, filled with vodka, sat for two days)

this is a good proportion for me. man-drinkers might reverse the proportions (the standard proportion for a martini/manhattan style drink). but would a man-drinker be caught drinking grapefruit vodka in the first place?

variant: a tiny snip of vanilla bean, muddled. the flavor is good, but the beans get thru even the fine mesh strainer and look like cigarette ash. maybe you can get away with that in a cloudy drink.

[edit: will call this drink 'busdriver' as it is a variant of 'greyhound' and also as an homage to the only rapper i like]

then i mixed about 1 part grapefruit vodka to 3 or 4 parts lillet. excellenter.