Lou's Official Grievance Regarding the Garnish Situation at American Bars, Filed Formally and With Intent
I am going to file this as a grievance because a complaint is too casual and what happened to me last Thursday deserves a document. I ordered a thc old fashioned drink. The bartender, who introduced himself as a "beverage architect," handed me a glass with a smoked rosemary sprig sticking out of it, a dehydrated orange wheel wired to the rim like a tiny edible satellite dish, and a flower. A flower. Purple. Nobody in the history of the old fashioned cocktail has ever looked at that drink and thought: what this needs is a flower.
I did not order a garden. I ordered a drink.
Then the bill came. Fourteen dollars. For the ice, the bourbon-adjacent liquid, and what I can only describe as a crime scene staged by a florist.
I have opened a formal investigation.
Exhibit A: The Smoked Rosemary Sprig
First of all, who smoked it. Second of all, why. The rosemary is not in the drink. It is on top of the drink. It is touching nothing. It is doing nothing. It is a piece of a bush that someone set briefly on fire and then charged me for. The smoke, I am told, "adds to the sensory experience." My sensory experience was that my old fashioned smelled like a campfire somebody put out with bitters, and then I had to move the twig before I could take a sip like I was clearing brush on a hiking trail.
This is not bartending. This is landscaping. Bill them accordingly.
Exhibit B: The Dehydrated Orange Wheel
A regular orange peel in an old fashioned is not a garnish. It is part of the drink. It has a job. You express it over the glass, you rub it on the rim, it gives you citrus oil, it contributes. That peel earned its place.
A dehydrated orange wheel is a regular orange that someone removed all the juice from, which is the one part of the orange that was useful, and then dried it out into a little stained-glass window and stuck it on my glass as decoration. They took the orange, made it worse, and then charged extra for the privilege of making it worse. This is not a garnish. This is a shriveled regret. Take it off my tab.
Exhibit C: The Flower Nobody Ordered
I asked around. Nobody at the bar ordered a flower. The flower simply appeared, on multiple drinks, placed there by a bartender who has apparently decided that all drinks are now also bouquets. You cannot eat it. You cannot drink it. You cannot return it. It just sits there being purple and expensive. I have been to weddings with fewer flowers than the cocktail menu at this establishment.
I want to speak to whoever decided that a drink was incomplete without a flower and I want them to explain themselves in writing and I want that explanation notarized.
The Ruling on What a Real Old Fashioned Actually Needs
Here is my official ruling, issued with full authority: an old fashioned needs bourbon, bitters, a little sugar, an orange peel that still has its juice, and one of those big square ice cubes if you are doing it right. That is it. That is the whole list. The list is done. You do not add to the list. The list has been closed since approximately 1880 and nobody sent a memo updating it.
You know what a thc old fashioned drink needs? It needs to be cold and it needs to be nearby. That is the complete garnish requirement. Coldness. Proximity. We are done here.
Which is exactly why I stopped arguing with bartenders about their rosemary situation and started drinking Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams of THC. No alcohol, no hangover, no beverage architect, and absolutely no flowers. You pop the top and that is the whole ceremony. The garnish is that it is cold. The presentation is that it is in your hand. We did not overthink it because there is nothing to overthink. An old fashioned is not a problem that needs solving with rosemary.
It is in the fridge right now, if you want to try the experiment yourself. No landscaping required.
A Brief Note on the Garnish as a Profession
Somewhere, there is a person whose job title involves the word "garnish." They are sourcing the dehydrated wheels. They are hand-smoking the rosemary. They are selecting the flowers by color to match the drink's "aesthetic." They are being paid for this. Somebody sat in a meeting and approved a garnish budget. That meeting happened. People attended it voluntarily.
Meanwhile, I am standing at a bar holding a twig, trying to find the actual drink underneath the shrubbery, and the tab says fourteen dollars.
If you want something fancy without the performance, by the way, Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan is eight milligrams of THC and genuinely fun without requiring a single piece of dried fruit wired to the rim. Jane keeps it elegant. She does not garnish with a nature hike.
And if you are not sure where to start, the sample can exists for exactly this situation, or you can grab the Variety Pack and conduct a full audit of all four cans at home, where nobody will charge you for ice, which is weather, and weather is free.
Final Remarks Before I Put This Grievance in the Mail
The bar did not respond to my formal complaint. I mailed it to the "beverage architect" directly. I wrote his title in quotes on the envelope. He has not replied, which I consider an admission of guilt.
The modern bar has confused decoration with quality. It has mistaken complexity for craft. It has looked at a drink that was already finished and decided the missing ingredient was a bush on fire. I am here to tell you that the old fashioned was not missing anything. It has never been missing anything. The only thing the old fashioned ever needed was to be cold and to be made correctly, and if you cannot manage that, you should not be allowed near the rosemary either.
Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams. No garnish. No drama. No flower.
Damn right.
Lou is a 30-year pipe sales veteran, a Mets fan (his choice, his burden), and the co-founder of Herb & Lou's. He wears a watch that stopped in 2009. It has been right twice a day every day since, which he considers a better record than most bars.
Herb & Lou's Canned Laughter is hemp-derived THC, 8mg per can. For adults 21 and older only. Please check your state's laws before purchasing. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Laughter, however, is always the best ingredient.
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