You're in The Woods. A bar among many in Downtown Fullerton. And when you settle in onto your bar stool, your eyes already mesmerized by the flat screens that now surround you, your dietary inhibitions start to loosen. The Buffalo wings, the jalapeno poppers, the fried sticks of cheese, the tater tots, all of it, is going to sound really, really good. Go ahead. Do it. Heck, even the ice cream here is fried, so no one can really blame you. And the beverage to wash away all that Fryolator grease is what everyone else is drinking: beer. Lots of it.
]
But then, you finish. The wife is waiting at home. You think you could use something sweet, but you don't want to fill up because she's made a casserole. Skip the fried Nutella wontons (they sound better than they actually are). Shun the regular root beer float. Get instead the Adult Root Beer Float, which has no ice cream to speak of, but plenty of Absolut Vanilla Vodka poured over ice and mixed with bottled root beer. It's served in a mason jar, because well, it's more fun. It's topped with a cloud of whipped cream and a cherry.
You stir it all up with your straw, distributing the cream so that it dissolves in the alcohol and soda. Then you sip. By golly if it doesn't taste like an actual root beer float, albeit in a deconstructed kind of way. It's fizzy, sweet, and creamy at the start, with the burn of vodka wiping it all away at the end. You presume it's a much more calorically responsible way to consume cream and sugar. Now go home. Eat some casserole and tell her you love her.
Follow Stick a Fork In It on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook! And don't forget to download our free Best Of App here!
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.