Bottoms Up

Down the hill from Whitley Heights, at the joint where Robert Mitchum and W.C. Fields used to knock ‘em back, I sat on a sticky pleather barstool and confidently ordered the lowest-sounding drink I could think of: a Depth Charge.

“We don’t have that, honey,” Leta Lucy, the bartender at Boardner’s, told me, “We don’t have coffee.”

“Wait,” I said, “Isn’t the Depth Charge a grenadine-and-brandy cocktail?”

No, interrupted George, who used to tend bar at Boardner’s and now drinks there. “A Depth Charge is a shot of whiskey in beer,” he said, demonstrating with his hands how a real depth charge shoots through water. Wrong, countered another patron: “It’s Irish whiskey and Guinness.”

The Internet was no help. Schnapps and beer. Apple brandy and lemon juice. Jagermeister and Red Bull. They all sounded dangerous.

I was beginning to think a Depth Charge was as elusive as a hallucinogenic worm at the bottom of a mescal bottle. I was depressed. Worse, I was thirsty.

So the lovely Leta created a drink just for me: a Courvoisier and Grand Marnier martini with a lemon twist. It was my own personal Depth Charge, perfect for a dive like this.