Post #91560 by Quince_at_Dannys on Mon, May 17, 2004 10:38 AM

I've had my share of bad drinks at Chino Latino in Minneapolis, a see-and-be-seen restaurant and night spot for the "in" crowd in Uptown. They are actually revered for their drinks, having just won the City Pages Best Cocktails award, and they price their drinks accordingly-$8-12 apiece. Unfortunately, most drinks I've ordered there have had to be sent back for one reason or another. In fairness, there are a couple of decent cocktails on their menu--the Wu Ting Cran, for one, but good luck ordering it because they are perpetually out of the Grapefruit Vodka that the recipe calls for. But for all the rave reviews the place gets it should be a helluva lot better. Food's decent, but the same price/value criticism applies, especially since these types of places are by no means upscale or gourmet in the strictest sense and the people who approach them as such are fooling themselves into a false sense of sophistication.

One particularly memorable occasion was when I ordered a Mai Tai. What showed up was a warm, syrupy nearly boozeless concoction that could best be described as drinking Trader Vic's Mai Tai Mix straight from the bottle. What they had right was that it was almondy and seemed to contain orange curacao. What was wrong was that it had very little rum--and it was probably light rum by the way, but there's no way to be sure because I could barely taste it. It also had WAY too much sweet and absolutely NO lime juice. I coerced the self-absorbed metrosexual waiter into bringing me more ice and some lime wedges several times until finally, about 9 lime wedges and half a pound of ice later, I had something that tasted pretty much like a Mai Tai.