Scotch Night

The Balvenie Signature, a 50th birthday gift

Last fall, when the most recent NHL regular season was still young, my friend Alex Lofthouse and his buddy Iain Stewart got into a discussion about their respective favourite hockey teams, the Senators (boo!!) for Alex and the Leafs (yay!!) for Iain. This was a public conversation (and by conversation, I mean the "your team sucks!" "oh yeah? says you!" kind) on a thread on Alex' Facebook timeline and it ended up in a bet. If the Leafs finished ahead of the Sens, Alex would buy Iain a scotch. If the unthinkable alternative situation occurred (the Sens were picked by many to finish last in the East this year), then Iain would buy Alex a scotch. Not one to miss a chance to have a free scotch, I asked to be included in this bet and was readily accepted. Of course, as we all know, the Leafs went on to the Cup finals and the Sens finished with the worst record ever.

And today is Opposite Day.

Allen's on the Danforth

No, what actually happened was the Sens made it into the playoffs, catching a lot of people off guard, and the Leafs sucked, which surprised nobody. So Iain and I found ourselves on the hook for a glass of scotch each for Alex. The best part of a bet like this, of course, is nobody loses. At the end of the day, we're all going to have scotch in the company of friends. What's not to love about that?

So tonight we three lads are (finally!) heading down to Allen's on the Danforth near Broadview because they have just about the best scotch menu I have ever seen in Toronto - and their beer list is even longer. I've become Facebook friends with Iain in the meantime, but have not actually come face-to-face with him yet. Sarah knows him from life in Kitchener-Waterloo (which is where she met Alex and it's through her that I have come to be great friends with him) so he should be a great guy to know. It ought to be a hell of a night. If those heavy-looking clouds move out of here we might even get some patio time in.

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Fast-forward 6 hours and here are the pictures of the evening. We thought about sitting on the patio, but Allen's is a funny place and they really wanted us to order food if we sat out there. No worries, because we found an incredibly cozy place right at the very front of the bar and tucked ourselves in there for the duration. This led to a pretty cool thing that has never happened to me before: when the bartender brought us our scotch orders, he left us the bottles. Just like we were in an old movie. It was pretty freaking cool, let me tell you. Photographic evidence follows:

The Balvenie 15, Dalwhinnie 15, Glenfiddich 18

Alex, Iain and Grumpy P settling a bet in fine form

I had The Balvenie, Iain's choice was the Dalwhinnie and Alex settled on the Glenfiddich. All inspired selections and all very much enjoyed. Alex and I paired ours with a couple of pints of Mill Street Organic beer. Delicious. I cannot wait until we do it again - it almost made it worth missing the playoffs for.

Cheers and happy Friday!