Let’s Dish – My Dance With the Green Fairy

I love to check out new restaurants. I am a person who reads cookbooks for fun, a foodie, if you must, and with so many fabulous chefs in Atlanta there is always a new hot place turning out amazing food. With limited time and money (not to mention the impact it has on my double chin), there are only so many restaurants I get to while they’re still super hot. Which is why I jumped at the chance to visit Kimball House on Friday night.

Recently named #1 on Southern Living’s “100 Best Restaurants in the South” and the talk of the town, even where I live in the ‘burbs’, a visit to Kimball House seemed like the perfect way to kick off a fabulous evening. Did I mention that Kimball House has an oyster happy hour on Fridays? Kimball House, you had me at hello. And on their cocktail menu, something I have wanted to try since before it was legal in the United States, absinthe.

A friend and I had tickets to see Joyce Carol Oates kick off the Decatur Book Festival. And, in keeping with the literary theme of the evening we decided to kick off the night in the classic style of writers like Hemingway and F. Scott who were said to have imbibed in absinthe or danced with ‘la fee verte’ (the green fairy), hallucinated, and wrote. While the hallucinating part has since been debunked, the feeling of mystery about the drink remains, at least in my mind.

Absinthe 101

I did some research. After all, I knew practically nothing about absinthe (except the hallucination part like everyone else), and I figured I ought to have some idea what I was getting into with Kimball House absinthe. Here are a few things I learned:

It was banned in the early 20th century because of its supposed hallucinatory quality, but most people agree that that was all a bunch of hokum and nobody really hallucinated from absinthe

Absinthe has a very high alcohol content and is served most commonly by diluting the absinthe with water

It is sometimes served in an elaborate presentation, where a sugar cube is balanced over the glass on a slotted absinthe spoon (yes, there’s a spoon just for this purpose), and water is poured through it to dilute and sweeten the drink. This results in an amazingly cool visual of water swirling through the spirit and turning the whole drink into a milky white (called the louche)

There are different kinds of absinthe. Some are completely clear and others are varying shades of green. There is no point to drinking the clear kind, ’cause what’s cool about that? (just my takeaway)

There are numerous people online who seem to enjoy drinking and discussing absinthe. Many consider themselves aficionados and like to discuss absinthe at length

I was going to love it

And though Wikipedia told me I wouldn’t hallucinate, I wasn’t convinced. I made sure to secure a ride.

My first absinthe

Kimball House was packed. Based on my research, I assumed that we would drink absinthe belly up to the bar. We would spend some time with the bartender discussing the bouquet and the color of the spirit and then we would watch the louche together, studying the way the white swirled in and mixed with the green to eventually become a milky white. I assumed we would build a relationship based on our shared experience with the spirit and then text each other to say ‘hey’ every once in awhile. But the place was busy and we couldn’t even get a seat at the bar but only in that ‘other bar’ across from the real bar, the place where people sit when they’ve gotten there too late for a good seat, but early enough to get a seat at all.

So, we were not to be belly up to the bar, and it was unlikely I’d be texting with anyone about Kimball House absinthe in the near future. But we could eat and drink and get service. We chatted for a bit with our server and told him we wanted to order absinthe and that it would be our first time. For us newbies, he recommended La Muse Verte and suggested that we have it served over crushed ice, which is how many people enjoy it in the summertime.

As it was served over ice, it was already diluted, and you can see that it was not color of peridot. It did not require a formal louche. It was not at all how I had pictured it, and I’ll admit that I felt a bit let down. And then I took a sip. About the taste I will simply say that it is not to my liking (spoiler alert: it tastes like black licorice, which I abhor).

In fairness, it was served beautifully, with silver straws to keep the cocktail chilled all the way to our mouths, the traditional absinthe spoon, and really good crushed ice. And the oysters were amazing! So many varieties and all of them tasting like the sea itself, at least the good part of the sea, and not like when you accidentally swallow a bunch of seaweed in Destin after a storm. Delicious.

So, I gave up on the Kimball House absinthe and I ordered a Pinot Noir. I like the ones from Oregon. My Stoller Family Estate pinot was a predictable drink. I hadn’t researched it on the internet, but I knew what color it would be when it arrived. I knew what it would smell like and how it would taste. My glass of wine wasn’t trendy or ‘mysterious’. It wasn’t a dance with the green fairy. But it was delicious.

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