I am very, very angry about Rockford’s inability to serve a decent Gibson.
Over the Christmas break, I attempted to order this cocktail in not one, not two, not three, but four different restaurants in the greater Rockford metropolitan area. Every time I did so I was given an interesting and different response, but what I was not given was a Gibson.
These weren’t corner PBR bars dives where I know better than to order anything not in the cooler. These were places where your drink is brought to you in a tumbler and shaken at your table. One place even proudly featured a “make your own Bloody Mary” bar, where patrons could shake hot sauce and select their own celery sprig—another monstrous idea if you want my opinion. I don’t care for this, just as I don’t want to stand across the counter from a sandwich or burrito maker and point out the things I would like put in my food like some sort of wide-eyed child being granted a wish. But this is an outrage for a different time.
After gasping or asking what a Gibson was, most of the bartenders would suggest I drink a dirty martini instead, which only goes to show you how far we’ve sunk as a society. Now the dirty martini is fine as far as it goes (and I don’t mean to offend the radical martini set), but even when the martini is filthy and the olives have blue cheesed stuffed in them, it can not be compared to the sublimnity of hitting that sodden pickled onion on the bottom of your glass.
Get your act together Ogle and Winnebago counties; you can get pickled onions at the grocery store. They sell them in jars.
I’m Dan Libman, I’m coming by for a drink, and this is my perspective.
