Zane Lamprey’s booze-fueled pit stop premieres on February 8.
Posted by: Christopher Werner on Jan 24, 2012 at 09:31AM3 Comments
A Seattle episode of Drinking Made Easy with Zane Lamprey airs February 8. Photo: ZameLamprey.com
February 6 is the start of Seattle On TV Week, apparently. That night, Andrew Zimmern’s Seattle-centric Bizarre Foods episode airs. Two evenings later the local drinky scene gets its turn with Drinking Made Easy, HDNet’s cross-country bar crawl.
Host Zane Lamprey shot here in August. Locals offered him plenty of suggestions as to where he should visit. Though Lamprey didn’t fit them all in, the episode does incorporate quite a few local characters. Among them: Charles Finkel of Pike Brewing Company; Cale Green of Sun Liquor Distillery (no Erik Chapman?); Keith Waldbauer at Liberty (where, it must be said, Seattle Met gets a plug); and Anu Aptu of Rob Roy, who takes the opportunity to flex her mad ice carving skills.
Not surprisingly, Zig Zag garners considerable screen time, and Chris Nishiwaki, omnipresent votary of the local food and drink scene, scores a cameo. That said, the episode doesn’t offer anything entirely new for Seattle boozers, but if nothing else it’s a fun reminder we live in a damn fine drinking city.
Drinking Made Easy is scheduled to air on HDNet on February 8 at 8pm ET.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Aug 10, 2011 at 01:00PM1 Comments
Drinking Made Easy host Zane Lamprey makes the rounds.
Photo: Drinking Made Easy
A rep for Drinking Made Easy just sent me the full list of places where the show plans to shoot while in town.
Last night Zane Lambrey and friends headed to Rob Roy, of course, and earlier today they were at Sun Liquor on Pike [update: you may see some familiar faces among the extras at Sun. Seattle Weekly contributor Julien Perry, for instance.] At 1pm the cast and crew stumbled over to Liberty bar on 15th Avenue E.
Other sites on the schedule: The Space Needle, Zig Zag Cafe, Pike Brewing, and Top Pot Doughnuts. (Family fun fact: Sun Liquor is owned by Michael Klebeck, who co-founded Top Pot with brother Mark.)
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Aug 10, 2011 at 09:33AM0 Comments
Zane Lamprey and the crew of Drinking Made Easy shoot around Seattle.
Photo: Drinking Made Easy
UPDATE: Rob Roy owner Anu Apte describes Tuesday night’s shoot: Zane Lamprey and his crew set up quickly and he jumped right in. He was very nice and professional but as soon as the cameras started rolling the silliness began. He made an Orchard Fizz, a drink containing egg white and yogurt that is on our menu. He carved an ice ball and [the producer] had Bryn [that’s Rob Roy bartender Bryn Lumsden] carve one in under 55 seconds.
Apte continues: Woodinville whiskey was in the house too. I have had some of their white dog [unaged whiskey] aging in a barrel since March, so we had tastes of that. Steve [McKenna], Zane’s sidekick, took some shots of it—at 120 proof. Yikes!
A few weeks back I mentioned that the nation-spanning bar crawl Drinking Made Easy would soon be shooting in Seattle. Sauced commenters engaged in a fun round of “what bars should it feature?” And the producers of Drinking Made Easy apparently agreed with one of their picks, Rob Roy in Belltown.
The show shot a segment Tuesday night at the Belltown bar, according to a reliable tipster.
DME continues taping today, Wednesday. I’m currently trying to confirm one of today’s locations, if you want to share any info or sightings feel free to email me at sauced@seattlemet.com or leave a comment here. Together, we can do this!
Update: Oops! Missed this. Jay Friedman has more details on the visit on The Sunbreak (via Eater).
Travel Channel personality Andrew Zimmern and Sebastian Simsch: together at last.
The Bizarre Foods host will be in Seattle this Friday, July 29 to talk to Simsch, owner of Seattle Coffee Works, about the Columbia Cup of Excellence, a $100-per-pound coffee. Seattle Coffee Works is the only Seattle retailer to offer this highly coveted java, according to a company press release.
If 100 bones doesn’t strike you as all that bizarre an amount to pay for really good coffee, it’s possible you’ve been in Seattle too long.
I was impressed the first time I happened upon Drinking Made Easy, the alcohol-fueled travelogue that currently airs on HDNet. I expected it to be a show about dudes in backwards baseball caps, the kind who never outgrew their fraternity days, traveling around from city to city getting wasted on stupid drinks.
There is some of that—inveterate cable TV host Zane Lamprey is definitely in possession of the dude vibe, albeit in a sweet way—but what is remarkable about the show is the borderline-nerdy sense of curiosity with which it approaches cocktail-making, brewing, distilling, and so forth. Drinking Made Easy and Three Sheets, its international counterpart, have some truly legit moments in between the chugging and the French fry-eating contests and the general stumbling about. (I don’t have a problem with such activities, some might even say I have a proclivity for them. But I don’t love watching strangers engage in them on TV. Unless we’re talking Jersey Shore. But that’s a totally different thing. Apples and oranges.)
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens when Lamprey and crew come to Seattle in August to shoot an episode of the show. Last I heard locations were still being locked in—I have checked in with a rep and will let you know when there are details to share. (Also: if you have any suggestions, pop them in the comments and I’ll send them to her.)
While in town, Lamprey will be performing songs from his forthcoming album at Showbox at the Market on Saturday, August 6 from 9pm to 1am. (Tickets are available on his website). “Drinking Made Easy” shoots the following week.
Below, a taste: Drinking Made Easy visits Anchor Brewing in San Francisco.
Editors Allecia Vermillion and Christopher Werner and a crew of contributing barflies report on the latest in openings, happy hours, bartender shuffles, and local liquors.
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