Subscribers can scroll past the paywall to access a comprehensive guide to Flyers Cocktails — along with reviews of some big new lobster dishes!
Demo in the West Village wasn’t on my radar.
I’m not sure how that’s possible. It occupies a light-filled space smack in the middle of Carmine Street. It’s run by alums of Wildair and Contra. And fellow critics like Robert Sietsema seem to like this…wine bar.
So be it. There are lots of great new restaurants out there, and perhaps the human brain only has so much capacity for recognizing yet another wine bar.
In the end, it was a buddy’s Insta story that caught my attention. My old Eater colleague Dan Geneen ‘grammed a pic of Demo’s lobster au poivre the other week.
Good shellfish usually gets my attention. As does creamy peppercorn sauce.
A few days later, I dropped by Demo and ordered that lobster. At the front bar, pretty folks finished off their buttery flounder meuniere. At the L-shaped back counter, the air smelled of pasta sauce and blowtorched bananas. And servers roamed the room, pouring cloudy orange wines into nice stems.
Everyone here was eating full meals, which means this isn’t really a wine bar, at least not in the strict European sense. Then again, stateside restaurateurs use that term so loosely that we’re probably only a few years away from The Smith rebranding itself as a wine bar on account of the fact that it probably has someone on staff who googled “vendange.”
In Paris — and I’ll admit Matthew Schneier beat me to this argument — the local bar à vins is where you can drop by after your 35-hour work week (lol) and eat some white beans, standing up, with a little pour of natural wine. This won’t cost a lot. In New York, by contrast, wine bars are what we call restaurants that don’t serve a lot of martinis. They’re places where you make a reservation and spend $150 on a light dinner for one. And you can probably order a martini anyway.
That said, Demo, by chef Quang “Q” Nguyen and beverage director Jacob Nass, ranks with Claud as one of our wine bars of the moment.
Crab casino doesn’t taste anything like clams casino, a classic pairing of bivalves, bacon, and peppers. No matter, because the crustacean here is pretty close to perfect, a pillow of sweet blue crab under a nest of shaved pecorino sardo. And that lobster au poivre? The meat is grilled over coals and the sauce is spiked with roe. The fries don’t come with mayo, so you drag them through the au poivre instead. I’m so glad I viewed my buddy’s Instagram story about Demo, even though my two-course dinner ran $180 after tax and tip, lol. That’s New York!
It’s Sunday, 15 September 2024, and False Fall has ended with these 80 degree temps. So we’re going to celebrate with a guide to Flyers, a Brooklyn-based company that ships tasty cannabis cocktails across the country! We’re also publishing a few words on the year’s top big lobster dishes: the au poivre at Demo, the herby lobster at Penny, and the aromatic ceviche at Quique Crudo.
The summer of shellfish continues!!!
The delicious boom in cannabis cocktails!
I was researching a marijuana drinks story for The Information a few months ago when I made a tragic mistake: I clicked on an Instagram ad.
For the next week, just about every cannabis company in the known universe flooded my social media feeds.
There were tonics, seltzers, ciders, and waters. I discovered tinctures you apply with eyedroppers, elixirs you jigger out like booze, and mists that you spray underneath your tongue — a little breath freshener for your mind.
Just about every ad promised zero hangovers.
In Colorado, I tracked down “enhanced” riffs on Dr. Pepper (sadly, sold out). In New York, I ordered smooth nitro cold brew laced with marijuana and 225 mg of caffeine. How was the coffee? It was like popping a Xanax before hopping into the cockpit of a Boeing 737 and flying it through extreme turbulence.
Perhaps you remember when White Claw was peaking. Well, you’ll soon see these everywhere too. How do I know this? Because yearly sales of these drinks clock in at half a billion dollars. And because legalization is continuing apace; you can already get hemp cocktails like Flyers and Cann shipped to prohibition states like Texas and Florida. Heck, daily marijuana users already outnumber daily drinkers, according to one survey — a trend driven in part by a younger generation looking to cut back on alcohol.
And guess what? Most of what I’ve sampled in the THC beverage space has been quite delicious. In fact, the “zero proof” Apéro spritz I tried from Flyers was even better than the real thing — with stronger side effects!!
We’ll all be seeing more of these cocktails on our Insta feeds quite soon.
After the Paywall: Everything to know about Flyers THC Cocktails
Why the Flyers Apéro Spritz and Ol’ Fashioned are so good!
Where to get Flyers and how much they cost.
Review: the $84 lobster au poivre at Demo
Review: the big lobster at Penny and the lobster ceviche at Quique
Your Cheat Sheet guide to Flyers!!!
Before we get too far into the weeds, let me just tell you why I love these zero-proof cocktails, maybe even more so than their boozier analogues….
