Flickr/ Mauguve

Pulqueria in Mexico City

Lately the thought of pulque, a fermented beverage of Mexico made from sap of the maguey cactus, has been haunting my dreams.

It wasn't too long ago that a friend introduced me to a vendor selling jugs filled with pulque for a few dollars a pop at one of those Eastside street fairs that crop up on weekends. The fizzy milky beverage isn't something you find every day -- I didn't even realize that anything except the nasty bottled versions existed in L.A. -- but apparently a few enterprising farmers found a patch of agave plants to tap in the high desert mountains of Victorville.

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D. Solomon

strawberry magic milk straw

Just when you thought nothing could be as simple and plain (or boring) as unflavored milk, Magic Milk Straws come along. While the magic is debatable, we can imagine that the straws enchant calcium-conscious parents and their kids. Stuffed with tiny candy-like pieces in pink, brown and white, the straws look cool and almost futuristic. (Imagine Dippin' Dots, but smaller, and encased in a narrow tube.) The flavors -- strawberry, cocoa, vanilla, banana, orange cream, berry, cookies-and-cream plus others -- ease milk's ho-hum quality. The point isn't to flavor the entire glass, only your sips through the straw. As you drink, the little pieces gradually dissolve into the milk, until the straw's empty.

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Dry Soda via Facebook

Soda + Pastry Pairing

It's not often that rounding the corner at a chain supermarket leads to New Year's drinking resolutions, but such was the case when we spotted new additions to our local Ralph's soda shelves: DRY Soda. Last we checked in with Sharelle Klaus, the Seattle-based company's founder, her line of lightly sweetened sodas in flavors like lemongrass, kumquat and juniper berry were available in limited L.A. outlets (primarily specialty wine retail shops and the occasional Whole Foods). That the company has expanded into Coca-Cola chain grocer territory is a telling sip of our growing corn syrup intolerance (DRY sodas are cane sugar based).

More interesting is why the non-alcoholic drinks were originally found in wine retail shops.

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Located a few blocks past LACMA, just off Wilshire, Yuko Kitchen does a brisk lunch business slinging burrito-sized sushi rolls and massive salads with a Japanese bent. The servers are friendly and fashionable. On a recent visit, ours was wearing a giant stiff-brimmed black Yankees hat and white furry boots. However, the real treat, particularly if you're sweating through your business casual togs or trying to freshen up after a mid-day jog, is the frozen mint lemonade ($3.40 for a medium).

First, there's the way it looks. If Kermit the Frog lost an arm in a freak banjo-strumming accident, this stuff would come spurting out of his poor little stump. It's just that green -- as verdant and fluffy as a golf course. Secondly, it tastes as if a whole Ralph's-worth of springy mint bunches have been smashed into oblivion and squeezed into the plastic cup, as if Menthos have been dissolved like Alka-Seltzer tablets into ice-riddled vats of churning lemonade -- but in a good way. It's just a quarter-cup of white rum away from being the best poolside slurpie money can buy, which might, by extension, make it the best afternoon money can buy.

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As the story goes, it was sometime in the 1960s and golf master Arnold Palmer was thirsty after a day of designing a golf course in Palm Springs. As The King himself tells it, he asked the clubhouse bartender to make him a drink he often made at home: iced tea with lemonade. Someone -- a woman -- overheard his order, and either because she found the idea of the drink interesting, or because she was a foot soldier in Arnie's Army, asked her server if she could have what he was having. And so the Arnold Palmer drink was born.

The proportions of the drink vary; Palmer himself appears to have liked a three to one ratio of iced tea to lemonade, though equal parts of each ingredient seem to be the most popular rendition of his drink. In any case, a great Arnold Palmer maximizes the strengths of its parts: the iced tea cuts a bit of the lemonade's tartness, and the lemonade gives the iced tea that bit of sugar and lemon many of us would ordinarily add to our plain iced tea anyway. For this edition of drink fight, hot dog stand Skooby's tees off against tony bakery Clementine to see which spot makes the better Arnold Palmer. And yes, you can expect more golfing puns.

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Eugene Ahn of Forage in Silver Lake

Aprium. Strawberry and Blackberry, and Lemonade Agua Frescas at Forage

Mexican agua frescas, French and Italian syrups, and British sherbet powders are all derived from North African and Middle Eastern sharbats: sweetened drinks flavored with fruit, ground nuts, grains, seeds or flower petals. Sorbet and sorbetto are also descendents of sharbats. Orangina is actually a type of sharbat, in fact, it was first commercially produced and marketed in French colonial Algeria.

Fruit and citrus based agua frescas and sharbats couldn't be easier to make: mix juice or mashed pulp with water (flat or sparkling) and add sugar, simple syrup or agave nectar to taste. Food historian Rachel Laudan has fifty-two agua fresca recipes in her blog. But we'll give you a few pointers and tips anyway. And yes, North African and Mexican limonada have become as American as apple pie.

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Pieminister

Kate and Wills pie

The British do so many things better than us: Table manners, diction, the drug-addled teens-gone-wild television series, Skins. One thing we can beat them at hands down? Pop culture exploitation. Here, something as minor as Charlie Sheen losing his mind happens and suddenly all you see are Tiger Blood t-shirts, bumper stickers that announce I'm Not Bipolar, I'm Bi-Winning, and the Edison starts featuring the His Extremely Highball cocktail. (Full disclosure: bartender Joseph Brooke invented this head-spinning combination of Whistlepig, Cointreau, Ginger syrup and fresh-squeezed lemon juice at the request of Caroline on Crack for Squid Ink. But, as reported in the post, they were already serving Adonis DNA. and Tiger's Blood drinks in New York and Chicago.)

American dominance at crass gravy train-jumping commercialism was never made so clear as during our recent visit to London. There, Royal Wedding fever seemed primly contained to tabloid headlines and kiosks in Convent Garden whose racks held a meek offering of Wills and Kate emblazoned mugs, a couple of commemorative plates, a tiny ceramic bell with Prince William's coat of arms stamped on it. Pie? Turn the page.

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B. Mesirow

We are well aware that yesterday's Gold Standard was all about the food, even in the week of the cocktail. However, those of you who overlooked the various adult beverages offered at the event missed a rare and awesome opportunity to drink large quantities of high class, top quality libations from tiny disposable cups. Though the selection was perhaps on the small side, those who did bring booze brought it big, and the drinks they poured lingered in our minds well into the evening, and lingered in our heads somewhat less well into this morning.

The most obvious standout was right near the entrance, where the bartenders of Cole's, newly minted kings of the Old-Fashioned, mixed the bourbon, bitters, orange peel, and cherry in a real glass with a fat block of hand-carved ice. Because the pours were strong and the presentation was so great, and because it takes time to mix quality drinks, the booth was crowded all day and the wait was sometimes quite long. The bartenders, busy as they were, were able to make the downtime totally bearable with their banter and their willingness to answer questions, and watching the ice being shaped with a giant knife provided plenty of entertainment as well.

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At Mas Malo, the best seat in the house hides behind a 400-pound steel door. In the back of the two-story beaux arts dining room, down a narrow, still undecorated hallway lies the Tequila Vault, a literal and metaphorical storehouse for the amber liquor that has become Mas Malo's signature. "It's almost like a chef's table even though it's not in the kitchen," says bar manager Fred Warner.

Sure, people come for the ground-beef-and-pickle tacos, the vegan menudo, the "Boyle Heights picnic." But the Tequila Vault, which only opened a couple weeks ago, is where connoisseurs hold private dinners and specialty tastings.

Dating back to 1921, the vault of what was once the Brock & Company jewelry store -- complete with its original vault door -- has been revamped into a charming nook. Brick walls, oversized decorative light bulbs, glass-encased shelves displaying colorful bottles. The room is maybe 8' x 6' and can seat 10 people for a full dinner or 14 for a tasting. With nearly 240 tequilas and over 30 mescals, they have plenty to choose from. That includes $60-a-shot Partida Elegante Extra Anejo, aged for five years in whiskey barrels of American oak until it tastes almost like Scotch.

Warner recommends Fortaleza Reposado, which sells for a comparatively modest $16 a shot. "It's a great sipping tequila with nice butterscotch notes," Warner says, "and it has a great history. Guillermo Sauza is a 5th generation tequila maker."

[Pictures of Mas Malo's Tequila Vault after the jump.]

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WHO/The Economist

The World Health Organization might want to consider a licensing agreement with the company manufacturing those alcohol monitoring ankle bracelets, since the WHO seems to be doing a better job of monitoring alcohol consumption than some other people. On February 11, the WHO published their global alcohol status report, which showed, among many other things, that the world consumed the equivalent of 6.1 litres per person of pure alcohol in 2005. As you can see by the color-coded map, the highest consumption was in Europe and the former Soviet Union. Moldavians drank the most, followed by Czechs. How did we rank?

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