Friday, May 30, 2008

Spanish in Hong Kong

Today is a pretty rainy day in Hong Kong. Fortunately for me, there's quite a bit of sexy indoor spots to spend my time in this city.

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1/5 Nuevo is in the Wanchai area of HK

We were at Pacific Place in Wanchai doing a bit of shopping and basically wandering around indoors while the humidity outside remained constant and the skies threatened to open up and swallow the beautiful city in a torrential downpour. Bonnie told me that a cool Spanish place was right around the corner, so I said, "Let's go!" And that we did, managing to avoid any drops from the teasing rain clouds.



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1/5's brightly colored and flavored Strawberry Batida

Now to be completely honest and blunt, the Sangria at 1/5 Nuevo, especially for a Spanish place, is pretty bad. It's a standard red wine sangria, with the usual bits of soaking fruit, but a world away from the good stuff you find in Barcelona. On the other hand, the barkeep put together a cachaça drink for me that was quite something worth writing about. It's called a Strawberry Batida. Now a Batida is a Brazilian drink made with the ever-popular Brazilian sugar-cane spirit. Despite my limited knowledge of foreign languages, I do know that "badita" is Portuguese for "shaken" or "a shaken drink". It's really basically a caipariña (cachaça, lime, and sugar) with fruit juice. The labels "badita" and "caipariña" are actually, although not accurately, used interchangeably.



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A guy on a phone passed to him by a piece of wood

The Strawberry Badita at 1/5 is a pretty nice drink. It's messy and soupy, packed with fresh strawberries, fresh limes, and fresh mint. Kind of a hybrid of a caipariña, a mojito, with a strawberry touch. Quite a lot of stuff going on, but not bad.



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Nuevo bottle display at 1/5 Nuevo



Thanks for reading the blog, guys. Wherever you are, have fun. But to really enjoy, sip slowly.


—Joseph

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About this blog:

This weblog is intended for responsible legal drinkers of legal drinking age and older.   It's about cocktails.  It's about spirits. It's about mixing things up, pouring them into a martini glass or over the rocks, and taking a sip.  Sipping slowly.  If you're under the drinking age of your locale or simply not interested in consuming alcohol, please take a look at my non-alcoholic blog: sip.  In the meantime, please be rational when it comes to drinking.  It's simple, really.  Just sip slowly.