In 2003, I took a 2-week vacation to New Zealand. During that trip, I bungee-jumped, jetboated through river-canyons, took my first helicopter ride (over a rain-forest, onto a glacier), table-danced to AC/DC, and otherwise had the time of my life. The most daring thing I did on the trip? Drink with Australian men.
My last night in NZ, I partied with some Aussies who were in Queensland for a friend’s triathlon. They introduced me to what I thought was the most evil mixed drink ever: the Flatliner. For nearly a decade, I hadn’t come across a worse idea for a drink. When I finally did, it came from an Australian.
In edition 108 of Monocle’s weekly podcast, Australian food writer Jill Dupleix talked about Sydney’s restaurant, bar and coffee scenes. She had a neat observation about the way the 1996 summer Olympics induced an entire generation of youth to drop out of school and go into the hospitality industry. “It was like the national service,” she said. “Like they’d been conscripted.”
And then she mentioned what has to be The Worst Drink Ever: the Lagerita. “A massive amount of beer, ice, tequila and lime juice in a great big glass tankard,” as she described it. I’m sure there are more terrible ingredients in the mix.
My point — and I can’t stress this enough — is never drink with Australians.
Glad those drinks never caught on, but the advice about drinking with Australians definitely still stands. How things have changed since that trip – I thought I was being virtuous and taking things easy because I was only getting smashed every second night!