This past week, we decided to head to Loews Hotel and hang out with a lot of traveling folks from all over the world at Bar eleven.  Of the places we have been and the hotel bars we have experienced – this isn’t the most impressive.  Head over to Drink Shop at the Wif you want a true craft cocktail.  This place is fine if you are there on business and need a full-color cocktail menu with pictures of happy people sipping drinks a la Chili’s to help you decide.  That dig aside, this bar had its own separate feature cocktail list that was not all that bad and the people serving them were all good looking – especially Quinton, our bartender.

He suggested the Elderflower Martini and their specialty at Bar eleven, the Lavender Drop Martini.  Now, being a bit afraid of lavender drinks on the whole, we were both a little hesitant to try it.  Sometimes lavender drinks can and do taste like nice smelling bath water.  But, this one did not.

We will start with the Elderflower Martini which is a drink that we often make (Hendricks gin, St. Germain, lime juice) – but this one has a splash of Blue Curacao.  Interesssttting.  And Tasty.  And Blue. Here is Alison’s take…

Don’t forget our ratings scale is between 1 and 5 Olives.  One Olive = waste of my blogging time;  5 Olives = oh my goodness/yummmmmm

Presentation: 2 olives – Electric blue in any cocktail gives me flashbacks to the “jet fuel” shot I once did in college at Willy’s in New Orleans.  I am too old for electric blue cocktails

Creativity:  2.5 olives – The addition to the blue stuff makes this more creative than the standard version of this drink, but the rest of the ingredients are straight from the St. Germaine’s website.  Heck, that one may be as well.

Taste: 4 olives – yummy electric blue goodness

Overall: 3 olives – tasty but too blue for me.

Now, my drink, the Lavender Drop Martini, was superb and even came with a piece of lavender on top.  Consisting of Ciroc vodka, muddled lavender, lemon juice and simple syrup, this drink was truly excellent and I would go back to Bar eleven to get it.  (I would not however go back and order food as their drinks were much better than the grub.) But I digress.

Presentation: 4 olives – With a bit of fresh lavender floating on top, this was one pretty drink.

Creativity: 3.5 olives – I usually hate lavender in a drink, but muddled lavender with the lemon juice and simple syrup – it excelled.  Who thought of this?

Taste: 5 olives -  I mean, seriously. Yum Yum Yum go get you some.

Overall: 4 olives.  Again, I’d go back for this one and sit at the bar learning about geothermal heat systems from Mike (who we met at the bar in town from St. Simon.)

Both drinks were $11.00 each so if you are in the Midtown area, you could spend an early evening there for a cocktail before heading to a nice restaurant elsewhere.

We mustered up the energy this week to head to Buckhead’s Holeman & Finch.  We ate-up yummy house-cured meat and cheese, fried pickles, mussels, deviled eggs, and dessert, plus all sorts of other things.  Had we known Seam and Jennifer were going to pick up the tab, we would have exercised more restraint.  I swear we ate half the menu.

Oh, and the drinks!  We loved this bar.  All of the cocktails are served in hand-washed glasses by bar tenders wearing vests and ties.  We are suckers for bars with bartenders who dress up.  (Evan looked especially handsome as you can see.) The cocktail menu was seasonal and featured lots of nice bourbon drinks mixed with just the right balance of citrus flavors.  We really enjoyed the staff here – especially Dawn Marie (Misty Dawn…) – who gave us excellent recommendations for drinks and nibbles.

I opted for the Pig-Pik Sour consisting of Bulleit bourbon, Marie Brizard apry, Regan’s orange bitters, tamarind, lemon, and smoked egg white.  It also had a home-made bacon salt rim.  De-li-cious.  I felt confident that anything on this cocktail menu would have been yum. My ratings:

Presentation: 4 of 5 Olives.  All drinks are served in appropriately sized crystal clear glasses.  This one came is a tiny little rocks/low ball glass.  The bacon-salt rim was a nice touch and the custom ice-maker allows for perfectly square cubes that look home-made.  A little egg-white on top – but nothing too crazy.  No need to add an umbrella to this baby.

Taste : 4.5 of 5 Olives.  I’ve said it before – I don’t drink much Bourbon, but a finely crafted bourbon cocktail with a nice balance of sweet and citrus can’t be beat.  This was a nice one – an orange citrus balance to the bourbon that was not too strong and smoothed out with the smoked egg white.

Creativity 5 of 5 Olives: Unless the Pig Pik is some sort of southern classic that I missed because I rarely drank bourbon before this journey, I thought this was a unique combination if goodness.

Overall – 4 of 5 Olives:  Get it.  Drink It.  You will like it.

Jennifer (pictured below toasting all of our readers) chose the La Huevadora which consisted of Cazadores Blanco tequila, Frangelico, grapefruit, lemon and egg white.  Her rating is below:

“Presentation:  4 olives.  La Huevadora comes in a petite sculpted tulip-shaped wine glass.  Creamy butter yellow at the bottom and white frothy foam on top.  Bellisima!

Creativity:  4 olives.  It was my first drink made with egg white, so I’m very impressed with the creativity.  The drink also had the right balance — I smelled tequila and I sort of tasted the tequila like Goldilox, in just the right amount.

Taste:  3.5 olives.  I’m torn over this rating.  I thought it tasted great, but in addition to smelling tequila, I could also smell egg.  I don’t know if that was the drink or if I smelled it from food around me, but I associated it, perhaps unfairly, with the drink.  The citrus was a nice touch to the drink, but it also wasn’t overly acidic like I would have expected it to be.

Overall: 4 olives.  I would drink this drink again.  It was smooth, it was pretty, it was Huevos.”

Certainly we will be back and if you have not tried this place, GO NOW.

We need some help, people.  We need for you to think of some places we should visit for our 52 Weeks of Drinks.  Anywhere in the METRO Atlanta area is fine by us.  So, send us some feedback, comment below, whatever.  We want to know where to go for drinks this second half of 2010!  If you need to know where we have been, click on the link 52 Weeks of Drinks to the side of this post and scroll down our list.

Any help is greatly appreciated.   Thanks, Ashley and Alison