A Girl's Summer
Girl summer! What do Taylor, Barbie, & The World Cup have in common? Politics of home-cooking, A new generation of lesbian bars, A return of supper clubs, The bars we fall in love with & more!
Hello from Basque Country!
Welcome back to another drink seco newsletter! I’m happy to tell you that we’re still in San Sebastian! I celebrated my 32nd birthday, dramatically changed my drinking habits, and have been really leaning into the change of pace since closing Himitsu 4 years ago.
If you’re new here, my fiancé Kate and I, split our year between the US (currently Denver, sometimes PA) and San Sebastian, (my spiritual/food home).
Donostia (San Sebastián) has proven once again to be the keeper of my heart. It’s funny. We’ve had a few friends visit, and I always find myself trying to ‘sell’ the city to them, but my love for this city is so hard to explain. It’s not quite that it always has the friendliest people or the best food on every corner (although sometimes it does) - it’s just like any other place in the whole world. It’s hit and miss, sometimes restaurants execute well, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we meet super rude people because you know… they’re people. The wines of origin aren’t complicated, they are simple, low-ABV, and typically not on the top lists of many somms. I suppose for me, it’s the energy of the city collective. It’s the community, the nature, the sea next to the mountains, the farms just out of the city. It’s how proud the locals are of their incredibly unique cuisine and products of origin. It’s the produce, the weather, the sun. It’s personal, and the more people I try to convince of its wonder, the more I realize just how personal it is.
Thankfully, Kate feels it too. She shares the same unexplainable love that I have for this place, which ultimately is all that I could ever dream of. I find myself more and more longing to disconnect from the anxiety-ridden pace of life that I once adored. The competitive nature that filled my cup for so many years is starting to drain me. Do I want a farm? Perhaps I should make cheese? Is that just age? For now, I’m dreaming, but I do feel myself creeping more and more into the slower-paced life filled more with whole foods from a garden that we tend to and butter made from the scraped cream off the top of the freshly milked cows. But alas, enough rambling from me for now…
In other news, it seems the world is having a girl summer, which we love to see, so much feminine, joyful, supportive energy!
Let’s get into it!
Girl Summer
The Domestic Goddess
The first bar I fell in love with
The next generation of lesbian bars
What makes a national dish
Return of the supper club
Cocktail Recipes!
Girl Summer:
This summer we have seen the celebration of so many powerful women and the reclamation of bright, pink, joyful, femininity. I’m talking about Taylor Swift’s Era’s tour where audiences create accepting, fun, colorful, loving spaces, dressing up in bedazzled costumes and trading friendship bracelets. Not to mention the enormity, and cultural significance of the tour- the highest-grossing musical tour in history. We’ve had Barbie (I wrote about Barbie food last week) celebrating womanhood which brought droves of people to the cinema in record-breaking numbers (Greta Gerwig the first female director to make $1 billion a the box office) not only that, many in the audience went wearing pink! We’ve had Beyonce’s Renaissance tour, boldly celebrating queerness which again (incredible costumes). We’ve had record-breaking numbers of people watching and celebrating the Women’s World Cup and underdogs reaching new heights.
Further, the audiences at these events aren’t exclusive, in Australia, Barbie ticket sales dip whenever their national soccer team The Matildas play in the World Cup. These monocultural events, let alone an intersection of them are so rare today, where culture is hyper-individualised in microcosms.
And while Taylor Swift and Barbie ultimately represent a very white, neoliberal, capitalist, ‘girlboss’ feminism, they are driving a mass cultural phenomenon that isn’t to be overlooked. There is also something to be said for the reclamation of hyper ‘feminine’ things, something which feminism has tried to distance itself from. Michelle Goldberg from the New York Times wrote:
An obvious lesson from the gargantuan success of both “Barbie” and the Eras Tour is that there is a huge, underserved market for entertainment that takes the feelings of girls and women seriously. After years of Covid isolation, reactionary politics and a mental health crisis that has hit girls and young women particularly hard, there’s a palpable longing for both communal delight and catharsis.
The Domestic Goddess:
Talking about reclaiming the traditionally defined ‘feminine’ traits, last year Alicia Kennedy (whose substack I’m always recommending) wrote an article in Refinery called 'I Became The Domestic Goddess I Used To Hate’. Writing:
“My mother always told me I should never learn how to cook. “You’ll just end up making every meal for a man for the rest of your life,” she said to me. It was a feminist statement, one that had precedent and about which much has already been written.”
Countless essays and books have been written about the unpaid domestic labor women carry. Further, the way we raise children places the responsibility and burden on girls to learn how to cook and perform domestic tasks while boys are raised knowing they probably will never have to learn how to cook because someone will do it for them. Chefs in restaurants are thought of as important artists while the ‘home cook’ is unimpressive and a sign of domesticity. It’s the difference between gods and 'domestic goddesses’.
However, Alicia explores a new radical potential of loving, and reclaiming the home kitchen “The domestic can be a choice now, and some of us need notes because we were given the freedom to reject it”.
I understand why for so long feminists have pushed back against the stereotypes and expectations of loving domesticity, cooking, motherhood, fashion, pink, and romance. However, many women really enjoy ‘girlie things’ (see Barbie, Taylor Swift, Home cooking etc.), and pretending you don’t or labeling it ‘anti-feminist’ is actually feeding into the patriarchy.
The bottom line is that feminism is all about the freedom to choose what you do with your life and how you live it. It’s nice to see the realization and celebration of this, in all its forms.
The next generation of Lesbian Bars:
Speaking of reclaiming things, a few newsletters ago I wrote about the disappearance of Lesbian Bars (from 206 to 27 in the US) and The Lesbian Bar Project. This week I was very excited to read an article in Punch Drink titled “The Next Generation of “Lesbian Bars” Is Here. What Should We Call Them?”. Writer Rax Will went to the opening of the new Ruby Fruit in Los Angeles, a “strip mall wine bar for the Sapphically inclined”, this opening was followed by a string of female-owned queer bars. Will writes “For many owners and patrons, the term “lesbian bar” is fraught, irrevocably tied to an unsavory history of racial quotas and turning trans patrons away at the door… Although the term “queer bar” has filled the void as a gender- and sexuality-inclusive term, to some people from older generations, the word “queer” still evokes a history of violence”.
The Ruby Fruit’s co-owners have settled on “sapphic” to describe their bar but it does raise the debate of what the next generation of queer spaces should be called. In some ways you could argue that the name of the space is less important than the purpose it serves, this is indeed the approach of Angela Barnes and Renauda Riddle founders of Nobody’s Darling who have avoided specific language on its website or media, Riddle claims “by looking at Instagram, you will see exactly what our mission is,” (referring to the identity of the bar on social media and its many events aimed at the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community). Labels and meanings, like people, are always evolving. It’s exciting to see the arrival of a new generation of bars that strives for inclusivity.
The first bar I fell in love with:
The most recent edition of the gorgeous Swill Magazine explored the ultimate coming-of-age love stories that are the bars we fall in love with. Everyone has a story, a specific bar that marks a significant time in their life. The first bar that felt like ‘theirs’, the first bar they went to, the bar that marked a new chapter. We all have them. Traversing across the world, Swill shares people’s stories of those bars.
For me, the original Passenger Bar is the first to come to mind. For (food and beverage) industry folks who lived in DC in the 2010s, this would come as no surprise, but for everyone else, The Passenger was a bar where we (the industry folks) would meet after work, many nights a week. Much like Cheers, everyone knew your name, and it became the watering hole for the late-night cooks, servers, and bartenders of DC. They knew your drink and served the best smash burger around. Mind you- this was before the smash burger became a household name!
It made me realize what the real point of a bar is. It’s community. Nothing more, nothing less. While working at Minibar by Jose Andres and running Himitsu, I never forgot that. The food, drinks, and service are important, of course, but nothing will ever outweigh the primary purpose of a bar or restaurant, which is to bring people together.
What makes a national dish?
You might have seen this clip of Tom Holland asking an interviewer “What would you classify as ‘American’ food?”. The interviewer responds “french fries” and Holland’s face says it all. Anyway, it’s gotten me thinking, what is in a national dish and what does that mean today? Many of the ‘national dishes’ countries cling to, are really the result of years of immigrants and the sharing of flavors and ingredients.
Cooking and national dishes are a source of national pride, but as Anya von Bremzen discusses in her new book ‘NATIONAL DISH: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home’ they often have more to do with “myth and marketing than with historical fact”.
Von Bremzen’s new book travels across cities, kitchens, libraries, and homes to understand why certain books have become symbols of their countries. She is skeptical about the stories nations tell to create unified identities and the role food plays in this as a political tool. Definitely worth checking out!
Btw if you want to listen to a podcast of Von Bremzem talking about her book, click here.
Return of the supper club:
Supper clubs have been around since the 1930s, in the past few years they’ve been becoming increasingly popular. A dinner party with strangers.
In part, their revival speaks to the need for meaningful connection many people felt during the COVID lockdowns. However, the desire for more inviting, structured places to meet people and make friends is indicative of a broader cultural problem of loneliness and our increasingly chronically online lives. It could also be seen as a pushback against the fine dining industry (a shift I’ve spoken about in previous newsletters) in favor of local, community businesses.
Not to mention that they’re gorgeous, my instagram is constantly filled with beautiful photos of strangers laughing at a long table with mismatched vintage crockery and glassware, eating mouth-watering pasta dishes, and peach salads. The term ‘Supper club’ on tiktok has 73.8 million views.
Most of these supper clubs are female-run (although the diners aren’t exclusively women) continuing the community-loving Girl Summer! Many of them seek to introduce like-minded people and create community, bonding over food and wine. The older you get the fewer opportunities there seem to be to make new friends. Supper clubs hope to help facilitate this.
They’re popping up everywhere, so I’d keep an eye out.
Or, if you’re thinking of hosting a supper club, here are some simple yet classy, cocktail recipes I’d recommend:
French 75:
0.5 oz lemon
0.5 oz simple syrup
1 oz gin
3 oz sparkling wine
Pour the lemon juice, simple syrup, and gin into a shaker, strain into a flute and top with sparkling wine and garnish with a strip of lemon zest.
Dry Martini:
2 dashes orange bitters
0.5 oz dry vermouth
2.5 oz gin
In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine gin and vermouth. Stir well, then strain into martini glass. Garnish with olive or lemon twist.
Chin Up:
2 slices cucumber
0.5 oz cynar
0.5 oz dry vermouth
2 oz gin
Muddle one slice of cucumber with the salt in a mixing glass or small pitcher. Add the gin, Cynar and vermouth, and fill the mixing glass partially with ice. Stir briskly until the mixture is well-chilled. Strain into a chilled stemmed cocktail glass and float a cucumber slice on top.
And for the ultimate crowd-pleaser:
Aperol Spritz:
2 oz Aperol
2 oz Sparkling Wine
2 oz Sparkling Water
That’s all for this week! Hope you’re enjoying the rest of summer, the song of the month is definitely Cruel Summer, and I’ll be singing that bridge on repeat.
Stay tuned for some San Sebastian updates! Check out my instagram @kissanddrink for more regular pics of Kate and me, and all the delicious things we’re eating.
Carlie xx
