Free Republic

Bartender Attacked For Serving Alcohol During Ramadan A female Muslim bartender based in Nice, France, has been attacked by two men for serving alcohol during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. “I was all alone in the bar when two passersby stormed in,” the woman told French newspaper Nouvel Obs, as translated by RT. “They pointed at the alcohol bottles at the counter, and one of them told me in Arabic, ‘You should be ashamed of serving alcohol during Ramadan’.” One then threatened: “If I was God, I would have you hanged.” The men left, but one later returned and hit...

Bartending Tips From Days of Old What's old is new again, and nowhere is that more true than in the cocktail world. New twists on classic cocktails are popping up everywhere, but most of us haven't even figured out how to make them sans twists yet. Luckily, the bartenders of yore have reached forward in time to give us invaluable advice on mixing these drinks of yesteryear. And publishers looking to capitalize on the cocktail craze have reached back to the of bartenders at the turn of last century to reprint some of the most storied mixology guides. Long before...

"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel," Ernest Hemingway has Jake Barnes say to Brett Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises." They are sipping nice icy Martinis at the bar of the Palace Hotel in Madrid and marveling at the elegant professionalism of bartenders. "Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more," Brett says, and Jake agrees: "No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." If only that were still true. Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with...