Hawaiian Pineapple Cosmopolitan at Seasons 52, Our Drink of the Week!

South Coast Plaza's Seasons 52 still posts the calorie counts on the menu as it's always done. But because it does, it recently dawned on me that the restaurant seems to have abandoned its self-imposed rule that all its entrees not exceed 475 calories per serving. These days, the restaurant offers more than a few dishes, such as the short rib, that tick at nearly 800 calories.

But it didn't matter much to me whether the entrees were 100 calories or 10,000. First of all, food critics are less apt to count calories as window washers are to keep track of how many floors they're dangling above the ground. Secondly, for its Happy Hour (which lasts from 4-6:30 p.m. on weekdays) all of Seasons 52's small plates were offered for only $5 a pop and thus were already bite-sized. But most importantly, I was there to try the Hawaiian Pineapple Cosmopolitan, which sold for $8 when it would normally cost $13 during normal business hours.

And when you consider that the drink is almost all alcohol (made with pineapple vodka and Patrón Citrónge) and they give you the shaker in which the bartender shook the thing with shards of ice, it's a bargain no matter how you, er, shake it. I consumed what ended up being two and a half martini glasses of the fruity elixir. And since it's particularly potent, it lasted the whole meal.

Oh, just in case you're curious: the drink is listed at 290 calories…or maybe it's 725 depending on whether the person who wrote the menu only counted that first glass. Either way, do you care? No? Yeah, me neither.