So, a shoe salesman walks into a bar… Sounds like the set up for a joke, but it’s actually the beginning of a beautiful friendship. A fan of the deep whiskey list that Justin Park (two-time “World’s Best Mai Tai” champion; 2014 “Shake It Up!” Cocktail Competition winner; USA representative, IBA... Read More

Last week, The Manifest held one of their Tasting Session seminars with bar manager Justin Park. This one focused on whiskies from the Japanese distillery Nikka. I happened to see a posting on Instagram (if you want to find out about future tasting sessions, you should definitely be following them)... Read More

We’ve been fans of Manulele Distillers’ Kō Hana agricole rum ever since barman Kyle Reutner at The Pig & The Lady introduced us to it last year. At the time, P&L was the only place serving it—a perk of Kyle’s apprenticeship at the distillery. Now, it’s popping up in several... Read More

This summer, Shake contributed to a Kickstarter project for Hella Bitter: a do-it-yourself bitters making kit. A fellow bitters-loving friend, Malia of Shoyu Sugar, brought it to his attention—a funny coincidence because just a few weeks prior, we’d been on vacation in Arizona and came across a cute set of... Read More

This past weekend, the Hawaii Chapter of the United States Bartenders’ Guild held a fundraiser for the Hawaiian Humane Society: Punch for Pooches. Brilliant! Shake and I love punch and are very sad that it’s not more popular here. Fix that, people. I mean, how can you resist something like... Read More

Pimm’s has been a previous Sugar + Shake Current Obsession, and when I wrote about it back then I mentioned that there was a vodka-based blackberry and elderflower flavor of the “fruit cup” liqueur that I one day hoped to get my hands on. Well, last month we were browsing... Read More

I’m not ashamed to say it: I love dessert drinks. They’re often made with über-sweet artificially flavored vodkas, though. And while I won’t deny (OK, with some modicum of shame) that I enjoy some of them, the world is suffering from a plague of flavored vodka. This drink is a... Read More

This spring, we were invited to a tasting of Campo de Encanto Pisco at The Manifest in Chinatown. Neither Shake nor I knew much about pisco—I’d only ever had it mixed into cocktails, and not very frequently—and we were intrigued about learning more. Honestly, before the tasting, I couldn’t have... Read More