Distillations: Asking the Hard Questions About Ice at Serpentine 

"I probably shouldn't say this," Michael tells me at Serpentine, a converted industrial space in Dogpatch. "Because it's a conversation so dangerous that to have it might get us kicked out of this restaurant, and then out of San Francisco altogether."

"Wow," I say. "Well, if you gotta go, that's how I want to."

We all have a trigger. In Michael's case, it's the city: He's debating whether he really should have moved here.

My trigger tonight is ice. You heard me.

I'd ordered a Bitter Beginning (bourbon, gran classic, Cynar, barrel-aged bitters) and it's a great drink. Just delicious. Superb, in fact.

But it came with two of those perfectly cut ice cubes that are the latest thing in alcohol-delivery technology, and it just wasn't working for me.

Not because the whole concept of artisanal ice is over the top — though it is. I know the arguments. Precisely cut ice has less surface area, and therefore melts less quickly, therefore providing the maximum cooling of your drink with the least excess water. It's highly purified and filtered, so that what does melt into your glass is a better quality water ... I get all that.

And look (I said, as Michael held off on a conversation so controversial that it could get us kicked out of San Francisco, because dammit, I've had it up to here with specialty ice), water is a key ingredient of any alcoholic beverage. I remember just over a decade ago there was a Canadian brewery that made a lager using ice taken from the core of a glacier, so it was tens of thousands of years old and completely unpolluted, and it was a great beer. I loved it.

But we're tinkering around the margins here, you know? As long as your water meets a certain minimum standard, it is not going to make the difference between a mediocre cocktail and a good one, or a good one and a great one. It's a neat trick, but it also shows that you're paying attention to the wrong damn things. So much of the craft cocktail movement has become hipsters paying attention to the wrong damn things!

The need to have a gimmick is where hipsterism meets capitalism. Glasses with nonprescription lenses in them are the equivalent of stunt ice: absolutely pointless gestures that signify more about the identity you're willing to pay for than they improve your vision or your drink. Gimmicks, of course, are the opposite of creativity, the opposite of individuality. Past a certain point they're not even best practice — they're just one more way for people to make money by selling an aspiration (perfect ice in your drinks!) that anyone with real taste can see right through as though it was nothing but clear water.

But okay, you want specialty ice? Fine.

Except that the carefully cubed ice in my Bitter Beginning was full of air bubbles. Which doesn't sound so bad until you realize that it means they half-assed the specialty ice.

The ice in my great drink ... and in Michael's great drink (a Piña de Fuego — tequila, pineapple jalapeño shrub, agave, lime, chili salt) was also cloudy.

Now I was unreasonably angry, because if you're going to have specialty ice in the first place, go the damn distance! If you're going to jump on the damn bandwagon, jump all the way on! If your selling point is pretension, live it!

Or am I paying attention to the wrong thing? It's not my fault: I'm terrified that if my ice isn't perfectly clear and geometrically shaped that someone might judge my lifestyle and find me, personally, to be less than clear and geometrically shaped.

"Rrrrrrrrright," said Michael, starting over. "So, you know that video of the woman walking through New York City getting harassed?"

"Sure."

"Well, I think that's like the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

My jaw dropped. "Goddamn ... you really are jumping into controversy with both feet, aren't you?"

He nodded.

I ordered another drink, a Horseless Headsman (brandy, Nocino, pumpkin shrub, lemon, egg whites). It was bloody perfect, and had no ice. Aside from this ice thing, Serpentine was killing it.

The point Michael was making is that some things are instantly politicized to the point where no reasonable public discussion of them is possible. Because these things get hijacked by larger political issues that they inadvertently come to represent.

Serpentine is a superb restaurant whose bar serves extraordinary, almost-reasonably-priced cocktails. My tantrum about ice wasn't really about them. You figured that out, right?