​This week, I stopped into Royal Oak to chat with Brant, a.k.a. "The Marshall." Inspired by some Civil War documentaries he had been watching a few weeks ago, Brant cultivated a mustache and chops, adorned his vest with a badge, and got behind the bar. He said that as the night wore on, folks started yelling "get shots from the Marshall," and it just sort of stuck. "Plus," he said, "for some reason, people have a hard time with Brant. B-R-A-N-T. It's just one letter off from a more common name, but I guess 'The Marshall' is just easier."

I got to know a little bit about Royal Oak and The Marshall while sipping one of his signature drinks, the Ginger Slap.

Where are you from?
Dallas-Fort Worth. I moved to Houston in '06.

How long have you been bartending at Royal Oak?
I started a few weeks after it opened, in December of 2010.

What are some other jobs you've had besides bartending?
I spent about a decade in telecom. I really had a passion for wireless because it's always changing. The nerd in me really loved that part.

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Photos by Groovehouse

Lindsay Heffron moved like a blur during the knockout rounds of competition, eventually securing herself second place in the Speed Rack challenge.

​An arc of Plymouth gin shot briefly through the air at Gallery M Squared on Sunday night, leaping out of the bottle like liquid sparks as bartender Lindsey Heffron battled her way through a roster of drinks at the Houston leg of the Speed Rack bartending competition.

Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" blared from the speakers as Heffron moved like a blur through the bottles in her well. In only two minutes and ten seconds, the Liberty Station bartender had made a dry martini, an agave Old Fashioned, a Great Surprise (a Lillet-based cocktail) and a Cosmopolitan.

After finishing all four drinks ahead of her competitor, Ellaine Cullom of Double Trouble, Heffron began cheering on Cullom as loudly as the rest of the crowd. After all, although Speed Rack is a serious bartending competition, it's also about supporting the industry's few but ferocious female bartenders and raising money for a worthy cause: breast cancer research. Speed Rack has already raised $12,000 this year with stops in cities like Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with the ultimate goal of raising $75,000 in time for the national finals in New York City this May.

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Photo by Jonathan Cohen

​For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the winner had hefty competition from other Houston bars and restaurants.

There's something about the kind of place that specializes in a good martini -- a true martini, I might add, and not one made with vodka -- that typically lends itself to a certain clientele.

Customers ordering legit martinis are not the same people you'll find ordering appletinis at Midtown clubs or vodka martinis at River Oaks hot spots. Martini drinkers are, on the whole, a more mature set -- not necessarily in age, but in attitude -- and therefore more appreciative of liquor's taste, choosing not to mask it with sugary syrups or juices.

Many bars that specialize in the classic cocktail also have a darker side to them, too. Marfreless is a good example of the dirtier side of martini bars, and there's a reason that people have nicknamed the bar on Sandman "The Davensnort."

Keep your nose clean, though, and a true martini bar can be a thing of beauty.

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Kinda like this but not at all.

​Sure, most rock stars are probably happy with any bottle that happens to be within reach. Some rock stars, however, prefer to refine and perfect their booze intake, settling on a signature cocktail that suits their outsized personalities and consequence-free lifestyles. Rocks Off salutes these excessive musical titans with the following examination of rock and roll's greatest drinkers -- and the drinks they made famous.

Sammy Hagar's Waborita

​Outside of music, the Red Rocker is best known for two things: his alarming inability to drive under 56 mph, and his incredible love of tequila. Sammy turned his passion into a cash cow in 1999, when he began distributing the tequila served in his Cabo-San Lucas cantina. Turns out, it was a pretty good move -- in 2007, Hagar sold his majority interest in Cabo Wabo Tequila for a cool $80 million. The guy could probably buy Van Halen at this point, but it's possible that he's simply too wasted off of his signature Waboritas to bother. Sam likes the drink so much, in fact, that he named his backing band after it.

Ingredients:
3 ounces of Cabo Wabo tequila
1 ounce of fresh lime juice
1 ounce of Cointreau
1 splash of Grand Marnier

Directions:
Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake vigorously in headbanging motion, then strain and pour into a salt-rimmed margarita glass. Richly ignore those claiming David Lee Roth's cocktail tasted fresher.

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Photo by Brooke Viggiano

The Ultimate Sunday Funday Showdown

​After an entire season of Sunday Fundays enjoyed watching football (and cursing loudly as Sanchez throws yet another interception), I am ready to report back on my findings. Each Sunday, you can find me and a group of rowdy friends either occupying a large booth at Pub Fiction or huddled around the bar at Blackfinn American Grille.

While I enjoy what both Midtown bars/restaurants have to offer, only one can win this game. Broken down by quarter, with points for game day atmosphere, drinks, food, and overall service, here's how the game went:

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Silar

​As Houston Press's resident goth, back-cracker, and hydroponist, we remain the expert on all things dark and spooky. Also, as a writer we can assure you that we know a thing or three about drinking. They say that the answer isn't in the bottom of a bottle, but we have a sneaking suspicion that that little bon meh comes from people who just weren't looking hard enough.

Each sub-culture has its own particular drinking patterns. The hipsters swig PBR, the rockabilly set has their martinis, and the Mormons eat a salad consisting of carrots and raisins because their God is weird. Should you find yourself out on the town with the goths, or perhaps at a house party, here's what you can expect when it comes to alcoholic selection.

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Photo by Nicholas L. Hall

Damn, Son!

​A few weeks ago, on one of our now sadly rare evenings at Anvil, I turned to bartender Matt Tanner for some suggestions. I'd been searching for a new tipple for this column, and recent trips to Spec's hadn't really turned up much that really jumped out at me. Without hesitation, Matt grabbed a bottle of Averell Damson Gin Liqueur from the back bar, and held it out for inspection. "This," he said, unceremoniously. With such simple certainty on display, I knew I'd be buying a bottle.

I seem to have been on a liqueur kick, lately, and that's just fine with me. Liqueurs, with their punchy flavor and significant dose of sweetness, are a great ingredient for teaching balance. A heavy hand will result in a drink more akin to your grandmother's perfume mixed with cotton candy than to a classic in the making, with either the flavor or the sweetness, or both, dominating the drink. With its sweetness complemented by considerable tartness, this one's fun to play with.

From what I can gather, Damson Gin is somewhat popular in Great Britain, where ripe damson plums are left to macerate with gin, in a very similar process to sloe gin, whose sloe berries are related to the plum family. Averell does things a bit differently, combining gin with the freshly pressed juice of the plums, directly. I can't speak to the difference this makes in comparison to other damson gins, but I can tell you that this liqueur has a ringingly clear plum flavor, tart and bright.

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Chuck Cook Photography

​A few years ago, I tried being vegan. Then, I swapped to a vegetarian diet, and finally, pescetarian. I found it extremely educational. (For example, I learned that I don't want to live the rest of my life without cheeseburgers.) It also sent me on a quest to find restaurants that could accommodate my diet.

Part of this quest included trying to find the best vegetable plates in town. I discovered that Hugo's had an awesome one, and in time, my sweetheart and I wanted to see what was available at its sibling restaurant, Backstreet Café. Theirs was even more impressive; a long, white plate that included seven items that changed with the seasons.

Then, on one fateful day, an inattentive waiter who was much more interested in his cell phone than our needs cooled my enthusiasm like a Minnesota winter. The food just didn't seem as good we remembered, either. Then again, I've found that poor service makes food less appealing. We never returned; at least, not until recently.

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Photo by DannyTamman on Flickr

​I first learned about bottle service my freshman year in college. I was new to the Big City and all of its glamorous social practices and an acquaintance of my roommate had been "lucky" enough to be treated to the experience by her much older, i-banking boyfriend.

I initially thought she was talking about some sort of elite recycling agency that sent people to your house to separate the light from the dark-colored glass.

"HAH, no!" she replied. "It's when you go to a club and you have a private table with your own bottle of alcohol. And juice and stuff. You mix your own drinks. It's very expensive, like $150."*

Mix my own drinks. "Hmm," I thought, "I get that luxury for free at dorm parties." Call me old-fashioned, but (at least at the time) I correlated a high-cost drinking experience with high level of service.

*Historical note: At that time, bottle service did not necessarily include your own waiter/waitress to concoct libations.

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Photo by Nicholas L. Hall

Epazote Bitters Mise en Place.

​No, these are not commercially available. No, you can't go down to your local drinkery and get a sample, mixed into a cocktail or dashed sparingly into a glass of soda water. No, I didn't win them in some crazy online bitters auction, to be stored away like some sort or weird alcoholic fetish or waxed-mustache-set status symbol. Yes, you can have some. You just have to make them, first.

I've been interested in bitters for about as long as I've been interested in the craft of cocktails. The cook in me knows that, just as salt is integral to the success of nearly every food preparation generally considered delicious, so are bitters the key to nuanced, balanced cocktails. Sure, you can make delicious cocktails without them, but nothing can bring quite the same sense of finesse and finality as a dash or two of judiciously selected bitters. They enhance some flavors, tame others, and bring their own sometimes subtle, sometimes pronounced character to bear in a drink, rounding things out and bringing them more fully together. Bitters are like cocktail magic.

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