Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Believe it or not, George isn't at home, please leave a message at the beep

Here's a question for the audience: Is there a complete Trader Vic's drink menu anywhere online? I've found bits and pieces, but not a whole one, scanned in. I'm trying to verify a drink name and recipe for an article, and am having trouble. The drink we're in love with is the one that's overpriced (I know, which drink isn't?) and served in a ceramic coconut (again...). It has a very hard-to-pronounce name, and the menu gives only a vague recipe.

Did I tell you all about our recent trip to Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills, by the way? It was jammed on a Friday night, so Rob, Todd, Todd's friend Elena, and I all ended up packed in the only space we could find which was, um, slightly uncomfortably close to the men's room. At least I thought it was slightly uncomfortable until the boys had abandoned us to retrieve drinks and a tall, white-haired gent ducked past us into the loo. Elena mumbled something. All I caught was "...'Seinfeld' "

"What?"

"That was the creator of 'Seinfeld'."

Jerry Seinfeld? Where? I asked again: "What did you say?"

"That was Larry David, the creator of 'Seinfeld.' He just went into the men's room."

And so it was, as I discovered when he stepped back out a while later. Seinfeld is clearly Seinfeld, so it became easy for me to picture Larry David as George Costanza, especially when you're running into him in a most-Costanza-esque situation...crushed up against the men's room.

A while later, we saw Larry David leaving, but apparently being the co-creator of possibly the funniest sitcom ever wasn't quite enough star power. He was with two other men, you may have heard of them: Tom Hanks, and Martin Short. Apparently Trader Vic's has yet to lose its cool, despite what the cognoscenti may say.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The magazine "Saveur" recently did a cover piece on Trader Vic's. There were a couple of drink recipes in there-- might be worth checking out back issues at the library.

Stephanie said...

I have a Trader Vic's cookbook, and they're a lot of drinks recipes in it. If you let me know which one you're looking for (even a decent description), I'll see if it's in there.

Anonymous said...

I have a UK Trader Vics cocktail menu from 1978