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Spirited: Sex and the City is Over

  • Writer: boxton9
    boxton9
  • Dec 23, 2022
  • 1 min read

Drop that Martini (Become a Gibson Girl Instead)


By Julia Sexton



Westchester Magazine, August 2014


Spirited was a monthly column that I wrote for several years that covered the bev scene—brewers, distillers, cocktails, wine lists. If it was drinkable, I covered it. Some examples of this column are still online at westchestermagazine.com, but the titles have been changed from the print version for SEO.

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Martinis seem to have gone the way of Sex and The City, which—after its glamorous, curse-filled run on HBO—was eventually relegated to commercial-studded syndication on basic cable stations, all of its joyous dirtiness edited to make room for Activia ads. Which is fine, because those Cosmos and Martinis started to look about as dated as those teetering Jimmy Choos and bake sale cupcakes sold at $5 per.


Happily, Martini drinkers have a new option to which none of that faded Sex and City glamor still clings: it’s the Gibson, a gin martini garnished with pearly white pickled onions. Look for an excellent Gibson made with Hendricks Gin, Florentino Extra-Dry Vermouth, and cocktail onions at Verplanck newcomer, Ralph and Dave’s (914-930-1708).

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About Me

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I Was Supposed to Go to Grad School

Growing up in a large, loud family of 7, they use to call me “Pass Me The, Pass Me The” for the way that I’d try to doctor my dinner with whatever condiments were on hand. At about 8 or 9, I gave up on condiments and took control of dinner entirely, cooking out of a beat-up copy of The New York Times Cookbook that I still own, my little penciled-in annotations intact. I cooked for 7 people nightly, all throughout high school. By the time I was winding up college, I’d become a damn fine cook.

 

My father was a professor of American History. I figured I’d follow in those footsteps, teaching Dickens to 18-year-olds who were not at all interested. I gathered applications to doctorate programs, meanwhile, I took a job as a waiter in a busy catering company. The kitchen where I worked was perpetually understaffed—my cooking skills were quickly identified and I was press-ganged onto their crew. I LOVED it—the excitement, the creativity, the freedom, the trench humor, learning professional cooking techniques. There I stayed for several years while my graduate school applications gathered dust.

 

Cue me, later, a refugee from a crash-and-burn restaurant opening where I was not only the sous-chef, but also the loan application writer and babysitter for a chef/owner who had gone spectacularly off the rails. By then, I had a couple of herniated discs and no desire to stay in restaurants. I moved back to the world of words, and I’ve never looked back. 

 

Since then, I’ve been a restaurant critic, a national award-winning blogger, a food journalist, a travel writer, a columnist, a cookbook author, and the editor-in-chief of four Edible titles. I can’t wait to see what's next.

 

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