The last time I had an alcoholic beverage was a few years ago, at Thanksgiving, when someone gave me a glass of port. One glass and I felt pretty drunk, which tells you something about my current tolerance for alcohol. Since I’ve been pretty dry for years now, it always amazes me to see how much alcohol people can consume during the holidays. Those are empty calories! Save that space for turkey and ham! It’s even stranger that people are, like, drinking full-on cocktails. I understand having some wine to go with your meal, but why would you drink two or three martinis before your Thanksgiving dinner? Apparently, chef Bobby Flay feels the same way. He revealed the one thing he refuses to serve at his Thanksgiving dinners: cranberry martinis. The reason is that people get sh-tfaced and they’re walking into walls before dinner is even served. Yep.
Despite cooking year-round on television and in restaurant kitchens, Bobby Flay still insists on prepping Thanksgiving dinner every year, normally welcoming 40 to 50 guests into his Tribeca home. After years of hosting, Flay has learned a thing or two about throwing a successful Thanksgiving dinner, and one of his hardest-learned lessons has been this: Don’t serve cranberry martinis.
“I used to make cranberry martinis, but I don’t anymore because people get f**ked up on those,” the chef says. “It’s basically just red vodka. It’s a bad idea. By 6:30 p.m. people are like, walking into walls.”
Flay, who cooked at the Savor Borgata Food and Wine Festival this past weekend, has a different plan for drinks this year. He’s making coquito, a rum-based cocktail with cinnamon and coconut milk, to go along with his Puerto Rican-themed dinner.
“It might sound corny, but I always try to do something as a conversation piece, giving thanks and taking a moment to talk about something that occurred over the year,” Flay says, noting he did a New Orleans-inspired Thanksgiving feast after Hurricane Katrina hit. “This year there were way too many things to choose from, but it just seems to me, especially growing up in New York, that Puerto Rico is a thing that needs to continue to be talked about, so I’m going to cook a couple of Puerto Rican dishes alongside my Thanksgiving. Some people say grace at the table, and we just talk for a couple of minutes about people who are in a less good place than we are at that very moment. Then eating ensues.”
Flay is making sure to have other drinks on hand. He assigns out most of them, specifying who should bring white wine and who should bring red so they don’t end up having 25 bottles of one thing. Another thing he makes his guests bring? Dessert.
“I don’t want to make dessert; it’s just too hard with everything else going on,” he says. “When you’re the chef, the pressure is always on.”
I’m a big believer in “the person who prepares Thanksgiving dinner is not the same person responsible for dessert.” That’s the rule as far I’m concerned. If my mom is making the dinner (she is this year, yay!), then I’m in charge of dessert. This year the dessert is an ice cream cake, sorry not sorry. As for what Bobby says about cranberry martinis…those are just a variation on Cosmos, right? Again, why would you load up on Cosmos or martinis before Thanksgiving dinner? People have no sense of saving themselves for the food.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Don’t drink and drive, and don’t get loaded before dinner. This is your Celebitchy PSA.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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