Elitarny Event @ Zamieszanie

I’m going to write this one while still under the magic spell of all of those potions that came in tiny cute bottles last night. So please disregard any incoherence or oddities.
Last party, Between the Buns stuffed us so full of food that I had to waddle home like a patte goose. This time, the cocktail bar twin of Cud na Kiju, which Google tells me is called «Confusion» in English, drowned us in so much alcohol that Confusion is definitely what I woke up to this morning.
My four free cocktails:
1. The Manhatten: bourbon, orange zest, and bitters. The bartender really made this drink impressive. It came in a very small round perfume bottle with a cork and a little brown paper label with its name and ingredients. Honestly it would have looked very much at home in Wonderland, with the tag reading «Drink Me». Others double checked with the bartender that we weren’t being served Chanel No. 5 in our frosted glasses. The bartender garnished the drink with orange zest which she crushed and rubbed on the rim of the glass and the scent of oranges filled the air. It was really well done. Bravo. I walked away with my drink feeling like Peggy from Mad Men.
2. The Long Island Ice Tea: alcohol, more alcohol and cola. The Manhatten was nice but it was a tiny drink. Time for a big girl drink, and with only three more to go, may as well get serious. Everyone at this point was ordering Long Islands so I decided to conform. Not extremely tasty (considering it has like five liquors in it + cola and that’s supposed to make it taste like ice tea but it tastes like what it is — alcohol), but there was no fuss and show with this one — bottle glass straw drink go. Everyone was staggering by the end of round two, but the bartenders were gallant enough to fetch pizza from next door.
3. The Gin Basil: gin, basil, and lemon. I told the bartender that I wanted something refreshing at this point. A pick me up. He let me sample several things before I settled on the Gin Basil (This one was the tastiest so far). — Here is a nice concept. I am the indecisive type, and situations where I must order one thing from a long list of lots of things is always discouraging. I like having lots of choices, but only when I can sample. That’s why I love buffets, potlucks, and perfume shops. Giving bar patrons free sample sips of your cocktails is a great way to introduce them to a drink list that may be as long as the list of alcohols that actually go into a Long Island Ice Tea, and when they finally order something they are getting exactly what they want.
4. The Apple Something-​or-​Other: ice, alcohol, apple flavor. I’m not sure how I got this drink, but it was yummy. It tasted seasonal, like apples and autumn. And for some reason it made me extremely happy.
I talked to the bartenders, and I was told that all of the drinks are made in the morning. They premix them in the bar, and then put them in all of the cute potion bottles and store them later for the evening. So even if you are getting premixed drinks, you are still getting cocktails made in-​house. Perhaps this is why the bartenders have time for customizing your drinks — i.e. giving you samples of the different cocktails — they have time to talk with you, and they have time to spend on the presentation of your drinks. So in the end you have exactly what you want, served to you by a friendly, smiley person who just let you sip five different things, who is putting on small show with the crushing and the wafting and the icing and you feel pretty fancy and nice after that. Besides the fact that you are literally inside a glass box that looks pretty cool. It will be nice when the construction barriers are down and there is something of a view there.
In conclusion, I’d like to mention that again, everyone was very happy and had a good time. I made new friends and met new people. So far we haven’t had one Unilocal event with a duplicated concept. We’ve had a picnic, a full dinner, a casual dinner, and now a cocktail party. All of the venues are wonderful places that I may not have ventured by myself, and they are all places I was curious about before anyway. In the case of Zamieszanie, I was curious because I always walked by this place on my way to Cud na Kiju, and would look in the window and think — ‘Is this Cud? No. I have to walk further. This is the weird doppleganger Cud that has no beer and no people in it… ever. I can’t figure out what this giant fish tank for people is doing here’. Well now I know. The Confusion is over.