Next week is for reading between the limes
Bars create literary-inspired drinks to assist book festival
If you’ve ever wanted to curl up with a good book and a great cocktail, you’re not alone. The tradition of literary immersion accompanied by choice spirits is probably as old as Herodotus. Today, though, we enjoy much more skilled prose. And certainly better hooch.
Next week, you can ponder the union of terrific writing and stiff drinks when the Texas Book Festival celebrates Literary Libations Week, Aug. 15-19, at bars and restaurants in Austin, San Antonio and Houston. The participating bars have all created a signature, literary-inspired cocktail that will be offered for the week. A percentage of proceeds from each drink will be donated to the book festival’s annual Lit Crawl set for Nov. 5.
Locally, participating bars include Étoile Cuisine et Bar (which will be creating a drink called The Pineapple and the Pendulum, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe); Mongoose Versus Cobra (creating a riff on a cocktail found in Ernest Hemingway’s “Islands in the Stream”); and Love & Squalor bar at Weights + Measures (offering Les Fleurs de Mal, garnished with flower petals, a drink you can get lost in, “just like a Baudelaire poem”).
Other Texas bars participating include Backbeat, Freedmen’s, Nightcap, Searsucker, Small Victory, the Dogwood, the Wheel, VOX Table and Weather Up (Austin); and Botika, Paramour, Sternewirth and TBA (San Antonio).
Cheers to a good book and an equally engrossing cocktail.