Fiola drinks

This marvelous restaurant, which is unfussy about its food, does make a little bit too much of its bar and the craft cocktails by mixologist Jeff Faile. The drinks were fine, but not fabulous and when you've got wonderful food and wine why make a big deal about the cocktails?

Mine was actually the best of the three I tasted. It was called the Deshler and contained Templeton rye, Cocchi americano rosa, Cointreau and Peychaud's bitter. It was served neat in a rocks glass like a Sazerac and was a very nice Manhattan-like drink with great balance and flavor.

Andrea's drink -- cryptically and pretentiously called It's Expected, I'm Gone -- was not good at all. It contained Green Hat gin, grapefruit juice, honey syrup and Burlesque bitters. There was an odd taste either from the gin or the bitters and the citrus was too sour.

Another drink, misleadingly called a Negroni classico, was quite nice, but the classico refers not to it being the classic Negroni mix of gin, Campari and vermouth, but to containing a bitter called Gran Classico, which I gathered from an explanation by the manager was one of the original products from Campari in an earlier incarnation. Whatever, it was sweeter than the "classic" Negroni, and clearer than with regular Campari, though a third ingredient was listed as Dolin rouge, but an altogether pleasant drink.

Negroni, it seems, has become so trendy that a full page of the bar menu was devoted to various bastardized forms of Negroni, so that it is the new Martini. However, just as a Martini is just gin and vermouth, so a Negroni is really just the three original ingredients and they should just find other names for the variations.

I think it's great that there is a resurgence in cocktails, and craft cocktails are fine, but let's rein it in a bit on the hype.