Azuki is your average sushi restaurant, nestled in between the much better Sushi Samba and Haru.  To step up the competition, they added alcohol to the equation.  Apparently they used to have unlimited house white wine and sake with every meal, but now they’ve cracked down on the rules, and it’s much more confusing than that.  It’s something like, if you spend $15, you get a serving of sake but no wine, or if you spend $20 you get wine, but only two glasses, or sake, but only one, but maybe they’ll give you two, but maybe not, or if you ask for another glass of wine they might charge you, but if you complain they might take it off the bill, but maybe not, and really who knows…drunken sushi is too true and pure an ideal to be tarnished with all these rules and regulations!  In the future I’m sticking with the shitshow-wonderland-drunken-sushi-palace that is New Ashiya.

I’ve been insanely busy producing BJ: A MUSICAL ROMP and haven’t had time to go out to eat, let alone write about it!  But I promise, I will be back in July with some amazing all-you-can-eat specials.  But in the meantime, I am hosting a fundraise for BJ and the Organic Consumer’s Association:

Thursday, June 9
Open Bar, 8pm-11pm
Pat O’Briens
1701 2nd Ave (at 88th)

We’ve rented out the back room of Pat O’Brien’s, and will have our own private bar and 3 beer-pong tables.  $35 will get you 3 hours of unlimited draft beer, well drinks and as much beer pong as you can play!  Bring friends and come on time to maximize your drinking and support a good cause

Sincerely, Peter

Spring is here!  And with it come flip-flops, a freakshow aka the Easter Parade (nothing like the Judy Garland movie/ rather tourists taking pictures of homeless people dressed up as bunnies), and drunches!   So on the first nice weekend of the year, I headed down to the Sixth Ward for a boozie brunch to enjoy the weather in their outdoor garden.  In Manhattan, anything outdoor constitutes a garden, but this was definitely more alley than garden, with only a slightly less chance of being assaulted.  I ordered an omelet with mushrooms and cheese that came with a meager portion of home fries.  The mimosas were nothing to write home about, but since this is my blog, I’ll write all about it!  I had an exclusive interview with the house mixologist, and was able to get the (previously unreleased) recipe, which I will share with you!

6^th Ward Secret Mimosa Recipe*
1 gallon orange juice
1 bottle cheap champagne
1.5-2 gallons dishwater

*Mix at least 2 days in advance, and let it sit out so champagne has sufficient time to flatten.

And with that, my quest for the best NYC drunch plows onward.  So, this weekend, when you are drinking as many watered-down mimosas as possible before your server cuts you off, look up at the sun, and know that I am looking up at that same sun, drinking the same mimosa, and thinking of you

I have had a few crushing disappointments in my life; once a friend pulled the tag off Humprey, my camel Beanie Baby, making it virtuously worthless, and another time Marissa Cooper got in a car accident and died on The O.C., only to return once or twice in ghost/flashback-form.  My experience at Wicker Park is right up there with those horrible defeats.  After hearing about Wicker’s all-you-can-drink dinner, I was fully expecting to have a great hump day, dish out four or five hotdogs, and share an amazing special with my loyal readers.  However, things were rocky from the beginning.  The menu was very limited and the waitress refused to make any substitutions for me and my vegetarian date (even refusing to replace a steak with a side salad…)  On top of that, service was slow, we had to wait over twenty minutes in between wine refills.  In AYCD situations, I’m not picky about mediocre food, lack of ambience, or the abundance of fratty douchebags.  I’m there to drink as much as possible in the allotted time and fully capitalize on my $25.   But after three of four glasses (we hadn’t even finished our entrees yet), our server told us that we had been there too long, and wouldn’t give us any more wine.  The NERVE.   It occurred to me that this restaurant shares its’ name with that God-awful Josh Hartnett movie.  In both cases, I would forego Wicker Park, stay in with a bottle of Trader Joe’s wine and watch 40 Days and 40 Nights.

Spaghetti and sangria: two things that don’t really go together, like a Mac and Cheese burger.  But that doesn’t stop it from being awesome!  Right off the bat at this hip LES restaurant, they bring you a large glass of crisp, sweet sangria.  And then out comes a hearty bowl of spaghetti and meatballs that would even make The Situation miss his mama.  The pasta fills you up quickly; I was able to get down a bowl and a half before raising the white flag.  I have no idea how many glasses of sangria were served to me, as the waiter came by and filled us up every time our glasses were half-full.  We wined and dined for over two hours before the waiter cut us off, and believe me, that was plenty.  This made me wonder, what other amazing things have yet to be combined?  Guacamole and cheesecake?  Tequila shots and lobster bisque?  The world may never know…Tre also offers a Sunday-Thursday 3-course prix fixe and a bottomless mimosa brunch, blog for $19, so a ReBlog or two could definitely be in order.

This past Saturday was absolutely frigid.  I left my chick at home, and endured weather of -79.6 degrees, fighting off leopard seals along the way all in the name of “Peter Night” at Antarctica.  Translation: I got unlimited free drinks until 1:00 AM.  I started off around 8 o’clock with a Michelob Light, for which I received a lot of grief from my friends.  So I stepped it up to whiskey and Coke that arrived in a pint-sized glass and was my downfall.  All I know is I woke up wearing my shoes, and using a pizza box for a pillow.  Check out the name night calendars at Antarctica and No Idea Bar, and if you don’t see your name any time soon, you can always request it. For all you Dileeps out there, you better get ready because your name night is coming up this February 23!  If you’re lucky, Morgan Freeman might even narrate your night for you!

Atlantic City Hilton Casino and Resort
3400 Pacific Avenue
Atlantic City, NJ

We stayed in the Atlantic City Hilton, which came with it’s own casino, so our fortunes were only an elevator ride and a few steps away from our room.  I scoped out the food situation, and unfortunately there was a Patsy’s Pizzeria in the hotel with a $35 prefix (gag).  I didn’t spend two and a half hours on a bus full of gambling-addicts to be overcharged for underwhelming pizza that I could get in my neighborhood.  But on the bright side, at the casino there were unlimited FREE drinks.  Wowza!  It’s perfect! You just have to be sitting at a table (or appear to be sitting at a table) when the server walks by.  And its really easy, all you have to do is win, and then you’ll actually get paid to drink to your heart’s content.  But alas, for many, it isn’t that idyllic.  As one of my friends (Codename: Racecar) sobbed in agony at the end of the night, “I just dropped $700 on eight beers!”

Sbarros
1000 Boardwalk
Atlantic City, NJ

The next morning, our bellies were as emptied as our bank accounts. But apart from casinos, the Atlantic City only seemed to have ‘Cash for Gold’ stores, and the occasional sketchy deli complete bullet holes in the window.  We reluctantly ate at Sbarros located within the Taj Mahal.  For $3.95 I had a small cup of pasta salad, the only item that didn’t appear to be doused in grease.  I had a dandy time in Atlantic City, but next time I will definitely bring my own food, and maybe I’ll switch to Codename: Top Hat, in hopes that I’ll come out on top.

With six locations, unlimited drinks, unlimited chips and salsa, all for the same price as a movie ticket, this is my go-to drunch in NYC (drunk + brunch = drunch).  The adorable little stuffed monkey decorations throughout the restaurant somehow makes it okay that you are getting sloshed on Sunday and it’s not even noon.  Good news: Blockheads also has a lunch special during the week  (Chips, Soda, and entrée for $9).  Better news: $3 frozen margaritas ALL DAY EVERY DAY.  They don’t take reservations, but despite the amazing-ness of this special, I have never had to wait for a table.  The waiters here are really nice too; they even came up with a nickname for my table, “los borrachos.”  I’m not sure what it means, but I like the way they roll the ‘R’s!’  The weekend is approaching, I suggest you hop on Google Maps and figure out the Blockheads that is closest to your apartment (or the apartment of your co-worker who is pretty hot, but really annoying, but you’ll probably hook up with anyway after the Holiday Party).

For over 3,000 years, the Silk Road was an essential system of trade across three continents.  Today, the Silk Road Palace is an essential system for transporting cheap booze straight to your liver on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As soon as you sit at your table, a server brings you a carafe of white wine, which is obsessively refilled every three minutes throughout your meal.  If you come during prime dining hours and there is a wait, then they give you endless refills of wine as you are waiting.  Just to be clear, I don’t mean actual wine, I’m talking about white Franzia straight from the cardboard box, a dream-come-true for Maggie Griffin and the freshman-year version of myself. But as impeccable the wine service was, it is nearly impossible to get a glass of water in this joint…maybe they don’t have a sink?  The food was edible, I had steamed vegetable dumplings to start, and shrimp sha-cha for my entrée.  The whole experience was definitely frat-tastic, with an abundance of college sweatshirts and “Chug! Chug! Chug!” being chanted at the table next to ours.  Regardless, a little bit of your dignity for a great time and a cheap-wine headache seems like a fair trade to me!

Crikey!  I’ve already blogged about the wonders of Sunburnt Cow’s Sunday counter meal, but yesterday I took a trip down under for the first time to their weekend brunch.  You get a main course off a menu of brunch standards, including omelettes, bush benedict, hamburger, buttermilk banana pancakes, etc.  And you get unlimited Moomosas and MooMarys (those are mimosas and bloody marys, if you aren’t that punny), Fosters beer, screwdrivers and greyhounds (grapefruit juice and vodka).  They also brought us free shots at the end of our meal along with our bill.  Because it was crowded/popular, they asked us for the table after about an hour and a half, but we were welcome to stay and continue to drink for free at the bar (See: Above)

URGENT:  Sunburnt Cow also has an amazing $20 deal.  You can drink unlimited drinks for two hours any time night or day!