The search for a great cocktail continues

Once again, praise be to [deity of your choice] to the Fiance of the Blog for sending me to bartending school. The best mixed drinks I have had here, I have made myself. And my skills are much-appreciated among the always-thirsty expat set.

On Friday night I went to this place and had a few drinks. Bar No. 1 was a polished, clubby experience packed with (mostly male) expats wielding umbrella drinks. I had a decent, but not awesome, manhattan.

The bar is through those second-floor windows in front of you.

The best part of the experience, besides the company, was that the glass-walled side of the bar looked out over the channel between the mainland and Abu Dhabi island, and more important, onto the Grand Mosque.

Ain't it grand?

Yes, I appreciate the irony of enjoying a drink while viewing a mosque. Let alone a grand one.

Bar No. 2 was the lobby of the hotel. Apparently where the Emiratis hang out. And ignoring the fact that they brought us fries (that's right, Brits--George Washington and I said FRIES), the drinks were awful. My martini had lemon juice in it. I don't know what to add to that.

As my Scottish landlord suggested, the bar decor is a diamond-encrusted man-o-war.

I'll bottom-line it for you: Apparently even 20 dirhams (on top of a Dh100 cover charge, thanks to that Y chromosome) won't buy you a good drink in this town. But I'm working on it.