Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.
Today’s blog post is all about a very random but fun evening I had on Thursday.
Last week, I was kindly invited to a cocktail masterclass event with Adventure Connections, which was held at a Revolution Bar in London.
As I mentioned in my Valentines Day blog post, Revolution’s in London are way, way grander and more sophisticated than the notorious Brighton ‘Revs’. Really, if you’re from Brighton, Revs is the place to go to feel like you’re being classy by ordering a Pornstar Martini, when in reality you just get hammered off the cheap homemade vodka shots and end up leaving feeling violently ill and grabbing a Cheeky Chicken afterwards, which will probably induce more illness. (If you’re from Brighton, you will know.)
But, thank goodness, the Revolution Bar in American Square, East London, was nothing like the above description. I think the photo’s speak for themselves.
A well lit, atmospheric, clean and modern bar. (However, it really didn’t stay very clean for long.)
So, on to the masterclass. Firstly (and very importantly) we were greeted with complimentary drinks, which is never a bad sign, is it? We were given Bubblegum Daiquiris, which I’d never tried before, but let’s be honest, sound bloody amazing.
Baring in mind I currently work in a bar, I should be pretty good at making cocktails, right? Wrong. Honestly, learning all the recipes, ingredients, measurements and methods confuses me and whenever I see someone browsing the cocktail menu I pretend I’ve conveniently developed a horrific thirst and must rush off to grab a glass of water.
We were taught how to make 3 different cocktails, and they were all taste-tested, of course.
Firstly, we made an exclusive Revolution cocktail, cleverly named the Blank Canvas. This starts off as a typical Collins cocktail, with a choice of flavoured vodka to finish it off.
Moving on, we made some Mojitos (probably my no.1 favourite cocktail!) There is just something so dangerously refreshing about Mojitos that means you can glug the minty/limey concoctions all day long and not really realise the amount of alcohol you have consumed. Love it.
Lastly, we made a very popular cocktail I surprisingly haven’t tried before – a Cosmopolitan.
Apologies for the half empty/slightly splashed glass photo – I think several people may have dipped into the glass for a sip before I got a decent picture (obviously not me, though.) Oh well, at least it shows how deeelish and appreciated it was.
They also brought out some avocado toast, which was delicious… it’s like they knew I was coming, and craving the stuff.
Now, for the games; unfortunately I haven’t really got any photo’s from this part as I was busy shaking away (and sampling away.) But, I can briefly explain what they consisted of: making cocktails with one hand (a LOT harder than it sounds), having a race in teams to see who could make 4 Long Island Ice Teas first and then drink them, and consequently downing copious amounts of the lethal sauce.
Yes, you read right. We were actually encouraged to down as much drink as we could. If you don’t know what a Long Island Ice Tea is, it consists of 4 spirits: vodka, rum, gin and tequila. Therefore, it is rather deadly. Having to have a relay race to see which team could make and drink FOUR first was quite a task, and unfortunately… my team lost. We were consoled with nothing but a chilli shot of vodka, and yes, it is as gross as it sounds.
I honestly thought it would go disastrously, but it really did work perfectly. Then, at the end of the evening, guess what we got more of? Fooooood!
There were huge bowls of garlic fries, burger sliders, calamari, pizza… you name it, it was there. I reckon they brought it all out because they realised how much we had drank, and felt like sobering us all up was necessary to avoid any puke on their nice floor. Just a guess though.
All in all, I’m sure you can tell it was a great evening – I had so much fun and got to meet some lovely folks!
And of course, what would the evening be, leaving without some sort of alcohol-based gift?
I hope you all enjoyed reading about what I got up to on Thursday night! Speak soon.
Love, Dayna x
– The photographs used in this blog post were taken by myself and the fab team at Adventure Connections.