I really liked the new film incarnation of Miami Vice. That is, except for the first bit of dialog in the movie–a shameless plug for Bacardi rum. “A Bacardi Mojito (tm!)” sayeth Crockett. (No doubt hurting the feelings of our friends at Last Call, who are said to be devoted fans of the Aristocrat mojito.)

So yeah, mojitos are so hot right now. And to think, for the longest time, I didn’t even like mojitos. And that, I learned, is because hardly anybody makes them correctly. Which is a tad bit ironic, because mojitos are positively simple to make. The mojito is the Cuban farmer’s drink. It originated sometime between 1850, when the Cuban rum industry really modernized, and the early 20th century, when things like ice and charged water became widely available to the working class. It’s so gosh darn proletarian that it is often called “the Budweiser of Cuba.”

But you wouldn’t know it from reading articles like this one from the Miami Herald:

“Not a lot of consumers are going to make the effort and take the time to make an authentic mojito,'’ said Paul Nardone, chief executive of Stirrings, a Massachusetts company that makes the mojito mix for Williams-Sonoma, Delta Airlines and its own label. “It’s a very intimidating drink. We solve the problem for a lot of people.”

Yeah. Intimidating problems like fogging a mirror or counting to 3. Keep reading.

The mojito, like many classic cocktails, is a handmade drink. Like all things handmade, you cannot cut corners without seeing quality drop exponentially. But if you’re in the business of buying liquor for pennies and selling it for dollars, you probably won’t be willing to take time for something as quaint as muddling fresh lime juice and mint. And hey, it’s Charleston, so no one would probably notice anyway.

How to make an authentic mojito:

If you’ve never made a “real” mixed drink in your life, this is a wonderful place to start. You will not laugh. You will not cry. You will learn by the numbers. I will teach you.

A shaker.
The juice of 1/2 lime.
Cut an entire lime into quarters, use 2 of them. That thing that looks like a medieval pair of pliers is a lime press–I got mine at Kroger. Not required, but helpful. Squeeze out as much juice as you can into a shaker.

2 ounces of rum.
Measure. Get a jigger and know how to use it.

1 ounce of simple syrup.
This is important. It’s also simple. It’s called simple syrup for a reason. Ready? Take an empty bottle with a lid on it–an empty plastic soda bottle for example–and put equal parts sugar and water in it. Put the lid back on and shake it. It’ll cloud up, but when it settles, shake it again. When the sugar is dissolved it’s ready to use. Simple.

A sprig of fresh mint.
Here’s where the muddling comes in–throw the mint in the shaker with the booze and juice, and crush it up with the end of a large wooden spoon. Or a souvenir baseball bat. Seriously.

Shake this with ice, and pour into a glass. Top it off with cold club soda, and give it a stir.

You could garnish it with more another sprig of mint, but it really doesn’t matter. This simple combination of flavors you are about to enjoy is one of the most wonderful creations ever devised by humans.

Bonus: Rum gives me a hell of a headache. (A headache in every sip, I always say.) If you suffer the same affliction, you may substitute vodka for a different, but equally sublime beverage.

Double bonus: Now that leftover simple syrup, know that you have one of the 2 major ingredients (the other being lemon or lime juice) of thousands of classic cocktails in your refrigerator.

OK, OK — I know that picture looks really tasty, but I’ve got something serious to say here: I think the food at Rio Grande on Court Street has gone downhill in the past year or so. I mean, after sometimes eating there as often as four nights a week, you tend notice these things. Specifically, I’m talking about the chicken they use in their dishes.

Once upon a time, I remember the chicken being — well, chicken-like. But for months now, the chicken has been very rubbery in texture, like it’s been cooked in a microwave. And worse, it seems like every little bite of chicken (like the chicken in the otherwise yummy plate of chori pollo pictured above) has a piece of nasty chicken gristle attached to it. I’m not particularly squeamish, but after a while, that just gets gross. As a general rule, I don’t like my food to squeak between my teeth.

So to the fine folks at Rio, if you’re reading this, could you please stop using what seems to be the lowest grade of poultry that comes off the Sysco truck? Or at least adjust your chicken-to-tendon ratio.

Oh, but who am I kidding? I’ll always keep going for the Margaritas.

Blog in Your Soup would like to thank our intrepid editor for ghost posting in our absence. While Doug was enjoying some of the best sushi Charleston has to offer, I was teaching art to incredibly enthusuastic teenagers in Huntington–and “living” on cafeteria food. Yum. Anyway, I share with you some of my thoughts from the road:

1. Cafeteria food still sucks. Marshall University has an impressive new cafeteria, courtesy of none other than coal and timber baron Buck Harless. It has a large open kitchen, overflowing with top-of-the-line equipment: commercial stoves, grills, ovens, mixers, even a salamander. Yet they turn out the same ol’ high fat, high starch crap most every day. I’m being serious–they often served the same meal two days in a row. Now, from time to time the mashed potatoes and chicken gravy were tasty–but as the lunch ladies brought out each load of hot buttered starch in $200 All-Clad pans, I couldn’t help but think about how the food could be so much better. And ya’ know, cafeteria food just does something to the gastrointestinal tract that science can’t explain. Readjusting to home-cooked food wasn’t easy, either. But after some serious time on the thunder bucket, I’m back to normal.

2. Chinese food in Chinatown is mind-blowingly wonderful. Yeah, I know this sounds really obvious, but I wasn’t prepared for how good the food at Wo-Hop (a 24-hour basement Chinese restaurant) was going to be. I had a Hunan pork dish, crispy fried and candy coated for the enjoyment of all. (Curiously, the walls were covered with signed headshots of D-list celebrities. The only one I really recognized was MSNBC’s Rita Cosby.)

3. It nearly hurts to say this, but as much as I love Sitar of India here in Charleston, Nawab in Huntington is a little bit better. The sauces have more flavor, color (and ghee) to them, and the garlic naan was too beautiful to eat. (The basmati rice at Sitar is superior, though.) Regardless, it’s remarkable that we have two Indian restaurants of such quality in this area.

4. I usually don’t get too fussy about things like hair in food, because it’s usually my own. But at a Taco Bell in Allentown, Pennsylvania, I found a long black hair in my chicken burrito that clearly wasn’t my own. I pride myself on not being overly squeamish, but the thought of it still grosses me out a little bit. But hey, at least it wasn’t short and curly, I keep reminding myself…

Photo and text by Douglas Imbrogno

It’s a choice every person has to make who is on the prowl for a decent lunch in Charleston: Do I want baked sushi today? Well, honestly, I’d never heard of baked sushi. Yet there it was, chalked on the ’specials of the day’ board at Fuji’s across from the Town Center Mall entrance last week. What is basked sushi, I queried various waitresses (it’s always good to triangulate responses about a new dish from several waitstaff.) ‘It’s like sushi pizza,’ they said. This concept is not necessarily an attractive one. But instead of my tried-and-true Fuji’s regimen of California roll and radish roll, I sprung for the thing: salmon layered on rice, layered on seaweed, topped with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses and tomatoes. I know, it doesn’t sound like something human beings should eat — cats, maybe. But it was quite edible and I’d get it again. And therein lies a tale about the future of Fuji’s. Read on below.

Photo and text by Douglas Imbrogno

So, there I was, delving through my baked sushi (see post above), when the sushi man caught me snapping a photo of the dish for this blog. He held a rather large knife. “You from newspaper?” he says. Caught red-handed (and I wasn’t even using a flash). “Are you Fuji?”? I asked. No! Fuji, he said, was gone to some retail business on the West Side. He was named Yoshi and he has been running Fuji’s Japanese Cuisine and Sushi Bar for a year now. That’s what everyone knows the place by so he was leery of changing the name too soon. But in two or three months, look for the new name: ‘Kaifu.’ It means somethig like ‘beach house,’ in Japanese, said Yoshi.

GAZZEDITOR’S NOTE: While we await the return of our itinerant foodbloggers from their out-of-town sojourns, we serve up some food porn photos. Photo by Douglas Imbrogno

It’s always a source of debate what’s the fanciest/tastiest restaurant around. But certainly the Blackhawk Grille in tiny downtown Barboursville (about 5 minutes from the Huntington Mall at Barboursville) is a contender. Expect to pay dearly for what you eat — the crab-stuffed lobster tail was set at a market price of $50, which is definitely not your median meal around these parts. But it was a meal to celebrate the 85th birthday of a father-in-law and he was the one who ordered it. And, really, how many more such meals like this will he get? But what you see here is perhaps the best buffalo mozzarella salad in the regional biosphere (and trust us, any time, it’s served we order it). You could keep your costs down by ordering this and a glass of cabernet while seated at the tiny, but cozy bar.

If You Go: 646 Central Ave.., Barboursville, W.Va. PHONE: (304) 736-9494. Reservations recommended. Open Tues. through Saturday 5 to 10 p.m., Sunday and Monday by appointment. Custom catering available.

~ By Douglas Imbrogno

Your intrepid food bloggers are enjoying a little summer respite, so the food blog will be out to lunch for about a week. I’ve got my digital camera with me, so hopefully this blog will finally explore the food world outside of Kanawha County for a change. We’ve really been enjoying the conversation in the comment section (which perhaps makes us masochists), so don’t worry, we’ll be back soon enough. We hope you’ll stick around too.