Drew Lazor
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Freelance writer and beleaguered Baltimore sports fan based in Philadelphia // andrewlazor@gmail.com
Articles by Drew Lazor
The 15 best tattoo shops in Philadelphia to get inked right now
Photograph: Shutterstock Photograph: Shutterstock Looking for fresh ink? Get a quality piece at Philly's best tattoo shops. Wednesday January 22 2025 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email WhatsApp Written by: Drew Lazor Advertising It only makes sense that the mural capital of the world would also have an epic tattoo scene. For ages, South Street was the place to go for creative ink, but in recent years, quality shops have popped up in up-and-coming Fishtown and even on the city's outskirts.
We've Missed Hanging Out With Strangers at Their Neighborhood Bars
Opinion Being treated as though you’re invisible almost always sucks, but this is an exception. By Drew Lazor· 9/25/2021, 9:00 p.m. Devoted foodies and restaurant newbies love Foobooz. Sign up now for our twice weekly newsletter. There’s something great about pulling up a chair in one of Philly’s neighborhood bars and disappearing into the crowd. Photograph by Ian Shiver I’ve decided to spend a midsummer afternoon with four old men who want absolutely nothing to do with me.
Have You Missed Bars During COVID As Much As We Have?
Opinion We’re done taking our bars for granted. So we wrote some love letters to them to prove it. By Nikki Volpicelli, Patrick Rapa, Denise Clay-Murray, Drew Lazor, Allie Volpe, and Alex Tewfik· 9/25/2021, 9:00 p.m. Devoted foodies and restaurant newbies love Foobooz. Sign up now for our twice weekly newsletter. Citywides at El Bar in Kensington. Photograph by Ted Nghiem Their tall stools. Their sticky wooden tops.
Philly real talk: Wawa’s hoagies are just not that good
As a longtime resident of a city renowned (and reviled) for its frankness, I’m still occasionally surprised about what qualifies as a controversial statement in 21st-century Philadelphia. Here is one that has gotten me embroiled in more than a few scrapes over the years: Wawa’s food is not that good. Before The Purge-style hordes in Dave Schultz jerseys begin pelting my South Philly rowhome with day-old Sizzlis, let’s all take a beat and have a real come-to-Gritty conversation here.
Bring Back the Pancho Villa
Marlo Gamora reimagines the forgotten Filipino classic as a rum-forward tropical cooler. For a cocktail named after a couple of combative men, the Pancho Villa is surprisingly gentle. “This is a sweet one and must be very cold,” advises Charles H. Baker in The Gentleman’s Companion, the itinerant writer’s booze-infused travelogue. He came across the mixture of gold rum, dry gin, two fruit brandies and pineapple juice on a 1926 excursion through the Philippines.
Bring Back the Yolanda
LyAnna Sanabria revives the 1930s “candied Martini.” We’re often told that simple is best when it comes to drinks, but LyAnna Sanabria isn’t one for unwritten rules. “With modern cocktails, it’s so easy to get overly complicated,” she says. “I love overly complicated.
YouTuber JL Jupiter Is Boosting Philly’s Under-the-Radar Restaurants, One Viral Video at a Time
Longform How a dad from Jersey turned his love of hip-hop videos and his passion for food into a six-figure following that can change the fortunes of small, independent eateries. By Drew Lazor· 4/24/2021, 9:00 p.m. Devoted foodies and restaurant newbies love Foobooz. Sign up now for our twice weekly newsletter. JL Jupiter, rapper turned videographer turned prolific vlogger. Photo illustration by Kam Dela On the Wednesday before Super Bowl LV, JL Jupiter uploaded a new video to YouTube.
Bring Back the Creole-Rum Sazerac
Drew Pompa makes a case for the NOLA classic’s wayward relative, which calls on two types of rum, lemon juice and hot sauce. When it comes to rejiggering classic cocktails, it’s possible to deviate so severely from the original that the “riff” ends up bearing little resemblance to the recipe that inspired it. That’s the dynamic at play in the curious case of the Creole-Rum Sazerac, a Disco-era concoction with dubious connections to New Orleans’ most famous drink.
Bring Back the Chauncey
Frank Caiafa makes a case for the hard-hitting, equal-parts combo of whiskey, gin, brandy and sweet vermouth. There are more than 800 cocktail recipes in The Waldorf Astoria Bar Book, and Frank Caiafa tasted and tweaked every last one. For a drink to stand out in this formidable crowd, it had to be very good or very odd—or both, as is the case with the Chauncey.
Bring Back the Yellow Parrot
William Elliott turns the oddball, equal-parts combo of absinthe, yellow Chartreuse and apricot liqueur into an unexpected crowd-pleaser. While most backbars typically house just a single bottle of absinthe—tapped mainly for Sazeracs and Corpse Revivers—Brooklyn’s Maison Premiere prefers to carry between 30 and 40 varieties at any given time.
Coquito is a seasonal toast to Puerto Rico
The cashier, an employee of a certain Swedish purveyor of stylish yet affordable home furnishings, took one look at the items I placed on his conveyor belt - six glass bottles with stopper tops - and perked up. "Nice. You making coquito?" Right now, as we bear down on Christmas, we're in the thick of peak coquito season, when Puerto Ricans swarm their kitchens to blend up big batches of their island's answer to eggnog.
Go Ahead, Have a Shot
The Maserati, Ferrari and Hard Start are just a few of the composed shots that deserve a spot at the home bar. December 1, 2020 Erick Castro has mixed hundreds of thousands of cocktails throughout his nearly 20-year bartending career. He hasn’t committed all of them to memory, of course, but there are a few calls—holdovers from a darker, stranger era of drinking—that have taken up permanent residence in his head. “Composed shots, back when I first started bartending, weren’t designed to be good.
Can the Restaurant Review Survive in a Post-Coronavirus World?
Every business in America has taken a beating this year, but COVID-19 saved the most sadistic licks for our restaurants and bars. In March and April alone, nearly half of the 12.2 million people employed in the Food Services and Drinking Places subsector lost their jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Those numbers have been trending back up since May, but the layoffs, closures, and associated hardships wrought by the pandemic have had an irrevocable effect on the industry.
WWII spy film ‘A Call to Spy’ with Haverford’s Sarah Megan Thomas comes to the Navy Yard drive-in
Virginia Hall’s story is unbelievable, even by Hollywood standards. But as cinematic as the covert American agent’s life was, she’d never been portrayed on film until Sarah Megan Thomas came along. A Call to Spy, the new feature from the Main Line-born writer/producer/actress, interweaves the adventures of Hall and other intrepid women whose talents and sacrifices were crucial to Allied espionage efforts during World War II.
Justin Timberlake plays the hits (and ‘The Fresh Prince’ theme) at the Wells Fargo Center
Ancient concert-going etiquette dictates that you should never attend a musician's show wearing that musician's gear. If there's one person who can get away with this, it's Justin Timberlake, who spent a good part of his Saturday night in South Philly rocking a denim jacket embroidered with his own logo.
Janet Jackson, 21 months late for her date with Philadelphia, was worth the wait
Janet Jackson was a good 21 months late for her date with Philadelphia. Good thing the only thing that changed while we were waiting was the world. The reclusive legend, 51, was originally scheduled to play here in February 2016 in support of Unbreakable, her most recent full-length album. The show was pushed to August of that year so the singer could undergo throat surgery then was postponed indefinitely after Jackson announced plans to have a child with her now-estranged husband, Wissam Al Mana.
Fishtown pizza truck, cruising the neighborhood for 50 years, rings a bell to draw customers
North of Northern Liberties, the intermittent clanging of a tinny firehouse bell is a sound familiar to many. But it doesn't signal a blaze requiring immediate attention. There, the ring means one thing: The pizza truck is coming your way. A roving staple of the River Wards for more than 50 years, this boxy, boisterous slice-dispensing truck is an institution in this part of town, an outlier untouched by the pull of the new-wave mobile-food culture.
Philly brothers score buzzy punk-horror 'Green Room'
There's an early scene in Jeremy Saulnier's arresting new thriller Green Room that's so punk rock it hurts. The Ain't Rights, a young, noisy band touring the Pacific Northwest, are sitting for an interview with a mohawked music journalist. He leads by asking why the group is so hard to track down online. "The music is shared live," Pat (Anton Yelchin), the bass player, replies with a slight holier-than-thou edge. "It's time and aggression, and then it's over.
Speck's chicken is the 'Broast' of Collegeville
The second I spotted a mess of curly blond hair pop up from nowhere like a meerkat that's heard a clatter, I knew my new friend was up to something. Rising above the ketchup-and-mustard-colored counter at the Collegeville chicken shack Speck's, the lookie-loo revealed herself: a toddler wearing a big, goofy grin.
South Philly's best-kept secret gets a new owner
YOU DON'T look like you're from around here. Michael Pakradooni keeps getting that, and he finds it kinda funny. The observation comes, casually sprinkled in amid requests for chicken cutlets or eggs over easy, from the customers at Vincenzo's, the 9th Street luncheonette that Pakradooni recently purchased. It's true he's not Italian - though his surname ends in a vowel, it's Armenian in origin - but it's not like the guy appears to hail from the opposite side of the planet.
Everybody crosses the road for James Leggett's jerk chicken stand in NoLibs
PEOPLE ARE WILLING to wait for James Leggett's jerk chicken. But that doesn't mean they're willing to be patient. Being seduced by the Caribbean plumes pumping out of Leggett's drum smoker and not having immediate access to what's inside, after all, is its own brand of sensory punishment. But Leggett has managed to turn his delivery of the bad news - "It ain't ready" - into a special brand of song and dance that's part stand-up act, part stalling tactic and part subtle, scent-aided sales pitch.
Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet on Midwestern Holidays
Decorate Like Clark Griswold “I’m pulling out all the stops this year. It will be tastefully and tactfully done, but I still want people passing over in airplanes to see it.” No Bailing “Weather is a unifying factor in the Midwest. There might be a blizzard, we might be snowed in, but by gosh, we’re coming anyway.” Cook for Yourself, Not the Relatives “Don’t we all think picky eaters are a pain in the rear end?
Best Filipino Food and Restaurants in Jersey City, New Jersey
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Beer Money
The Philadelphia Daily News described it as “stunning.” An attorney specializing in liquor law lauded it as “revolutionary.” “This is the biggest thing to happen to beer since 1933,” a Pittsburgh beer distributor told the Associated Press. What are these Pennsylvanians describing with such exultant glee?
The Hang: In Hot Water With Marian Hill
For the Haverford High kids behind the Apple ad earworm “Down,” a trip home means home-baked high jinks. By Drew Lazor· 8/26/2017, 8:58 p.m. Get our weekly picks of what to do this weekend and the latest on Philly's arts and entertainment scene. Marian Hill with friend and collaborator Steve Davit (left). Photograph by Justin James Muir Can you gnaw on raw rhubarb? Marian Hill doesn’t know the answer offhand, but that doesn’t stop me from chomping a chunk like it’s crudité.
Without Filipino Bartenders, There Is No Tiki
Mystery has always been central to tiki’s appeal. The sleight of hand inherent to the genre’s allure can range from the benign—encrypted recipes, hushed techniques—to the elaborate: the culturally obtuse cultivation of Asian, Caribbean, Hawaiian and Oceanian customs, all in the name of a faux-tropical experience.
How "The Expendables" Re-Defined the Action Flick
Ten years ago today, hundreds of people gathered in Los Angeles to watch a strung-out Dolph Lundgren blast a pirate in half with a grenade launcher. The advent of the talkie, the adoption of Technicolor, the grisly bisection of a nameless bad guy by the hand of Ivan Drago — these are the moments that changed Hollywood forever.
The Century-Old Mixologist Club, Revisited
In the early 1900s, Washington, D.C.'s elite bartending club was a powerful declaration of Black agency. Today it remains a source of inspiration for the city's bartenders. July 8, 2020 On the night of November 26, 1900, 1412 Pennsylvania Avenue NW was the only place to be in Washington, D.C. Three weeks earlier, President William McKinley had secured a second term in office, but the ball taking place at Grand Army Hall, five minutes from the White House, was not in his honor.
Bring Back the Cloister
The term “cloister”—religiously speaking—conjures visions of clerics secreted away in clandestine grottos, or oath-bound mystics who spend their days scratching runes onto vellum scrolls. In cocktail parlance, however, a Cloister is something altogether different—an underappreciated cocktail drawn from the pages of the most secular source text imaginable: Playboy.
Bring Back the Grand Royal Fizz
Every year, the instant the weather turns even remotely warm, Jillian Moore starts dreaming about the Jersey Shore. Her thoughts drift back to childhood afternoons stomping along the whirring Wildwood boardwalk, crushing hot, saucy slices from Mack’s Pizza and gravity-defying cake cones of quick-melting ice cream. This interminable pandemic, of course, has a way of turning even the sweetest memories sour.
How the Bamboo Became a Flex
On paper, a Bamboo is just a 50/50 Martini made with dry sherry in place of gin. Though simple in construction, the resultant flavor profile is lively, savory and sneaky-complex at an elegant proof—lean, but not particularly mean. Fluctuating proportions, occasional hits of sugar and bitters and varying garnishes notwithstanding, it’s also a cocktail that has mostly maintained its factory settings since emerging in the late 19th century.
"Click Here to Get Drunk"
In the time before the pandemic, the act of postponing, side-stepping or outright bailing on happy hour was a practice as familiar as the ritual itself. Now, more than a month into this indefinite shelter-in-place, I’m not the only one mourning the unassailable pleasure of whiling away time at a bar—any bar. Drinks with friends, the sanity-sustaining tradition we so naïvely took for granted, is suddenly the exclusive domain of private homes and WiFi networks.
Dispatches From Philadelphia
Testimonials from bartenders, owners and community organizers in the wake of COVID-19. By the time Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the closure of nonessential businesses on March 16, many offices, schools and public gathering places had already shut down. Some bars and restaurants quickly leaned into pickup and delivery orders, but a larger percentage of the industry packed up altogether, laying off thousands of workers indefinitely.
Bring Back the Hot Pants
Bartender Tammy Bouma reimagines the disco-era tequila cocktail. February 28, 2020 People have been wearing shorts for centuries, but “hot pants” are undeniably a result of the disco-era. Popularized by designers in Italy and France, these leg-baring bottoms, characterized by their shrink-wrapped tailoring and economic approach to fabric, were first named in 1970, on the pages of Women’s Wear Daily.
After going viral, Taqueria Morales is keeping up
It was four days in, and Daniela Morales was frustrated. For weeks, she and her family had toiled to transform the dormant storefront at 1429 Jackson St. into a restaurant of their own. Her parents, Melquiades Morales and Felipa Ventura, got the kitchen up to speed, installing equipment and perfecting their hand-pressed tortillas. Her 12-year-old sister, Elizabeth, helped decorate the dining room, trimming the ceiling in a festive kaleidoscope of Mexican papel picado.
The Modern Bartender’s Top Shelf
We’ve long been conditioned to accept as a canon law that expensive liquor is best sipped neat or on the rocks. It’s a natural, but outmoded notion—one that might be keeping you from finding your next favorite drink. But that doesn’t mean you should just throw fiscal prudence to the wind.
The Bartender’s Well has Changed
Long gone are the days of “well liquor” being synonymous with rotgut. As a result of ever-growing knowledge and increased selection born out of the cocktail renaissance, bar owners and bartenders in all manner of venues are filling their rails with accessible, affordable spirits that bear personality. PUNCH reached out to more than two dozen bartenders around the country to determine how the well has changed since we last checked in, and to find out what they’re keeping within arm’s reach in 2020.
How Much Can Breaking Bread Help Bridge Our Cultural and Political Divides?
“To listen,” Harris Sokoloff instructed the name-tagged onlookers stuffed around the stove, “is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.” That silky strand of page-a-day calendar wisdom, which originates with the spiritual writer Mark Nepo, was the perfect pleasantry to kick off a recent evening centered on cultivating common ground.
Bring Back the Manila Hotel's Mint Julep
In Kentucky, few things are as sacred as the Mint Julep. “Let no vandal pollute your palate with any base imitation of this glorious vintage. Whiskey, sugar, mint and water are the sole constituents,” reads an 1899 column in The Louisville Times. Additions beyond that? “These are but inventions of the devil.” Though you’d never know it, given the Bluegrass State’s devotion to the classic build, the Mint Julep once enjoyed a much less stringent existence.
Will the Real Inventor of the Sazerac Please Stand Up
“Everything in New Orleans is at least a little made up.” My friend Drew, who’s lived and tended bar in the Big Easy for years, acquiesced as much the other night over a couple beers at Markey’s in the Bywater. He wasn’t throwing shade. When French settlers first cleared this boggy crescent of land pinched inside a fortuitous hairpin of the Mississippi River in the early 18th century, it provided safe harbor for fast-talking fabulists gifted in the art of fudging for financial and social gain.
Rescuing the Sex on the Beach
When Christine Wiseman bartended at Outback Steakhouse in her home state of West Virginia in the late 1990s, there was one off-menu request she dreaded above all others: the Sex on the Beach. Comprising vodka, peach schnapps, orange juice and cranberry juice, the punishingly sweet cocktail was as cringe-inducing as its name. “It’s a terrible drink—super-unbalanced,” says Wiseman, who shook up thousands during her years of service at the home of the Bloomin’ Onion.
Bring Back the Yellow Bird
Garret Richard updates the tropical-leaning, midcentury Galliano cocktail. November 8, 2019 As one of the modern tiki movement’s most erudite voices, Garret Richard doesn’t necessarily scream “Galliano guy.” But the bartender has long been an avid collector of ephemera associated with the herbaceous Italian liqueur, regularly scouring library archives and odd internet corners alike for old advertisements.
For Philadelphia chefs, a knife is more than a tool - it’s a slice of life
Hiroki Fujiyama wears a faint smile as he unlatches the unassuming metal case resting on the counter and starts to unpack it. After a few seconds spent deftly sliding handles from scabbards and popping the tops off a succession of skinny boxes, nearly every inch of his quarter-sawn white oak omakase bar is covered in gorgeous steel, sparkling in hypnotic unison, like the Holy Grails at the end of The Last Crusade.
The Alamagoozlum Conspiracy
At his prime, the Gilded Age financier John Pierpont Morgan was the quintessential stogie-chomping big-city boss—and he had the high-class drinking habits to match. As a member of the Zodiac Club, an elite private dining group, the banker was known to organize 10-course tasting menus with endless bottles of Château Latour, Clos de Vougeot, Moët and Cognac flowing. He filled his private cellars with the best vintages from the Rhône, Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Consider the Appletini
Decades after its heyday, bartenders are rethinking the ’tini template—apple, lychee, coconut and all. October 10, 2019 Nearly 20 years after the 1990s ended, ephemera of the decade has emerged from the loam like flannel-clad cicadas. Jamiroquai’s bucket hat, Friends and international trade wars are back—and so are novelty Martinis.
Bring Back the Queen's Road
We live in an age of tiki transparency—an age in which falernum is a backbar staple, and Gardenia Mix is no longer an inscrutable mystery whose composition is known only to Don the Beachcomber insiders. But for every Zombie, Pearl Diver or Test Pilot that’s earned newfound notoriety, dozens of other recipes originating from tiki godfather Donn Beach still fly beneath the radar. Take the Queen’s Road, a Daiquiri deviation buried deep within the Polynesian panoply that’s overdue for its moment.
Drunk Food: Late Night Tiki and Dumplings in Philly’s Chinatown
One a.m., in David’s Mai Lai Wah time, is early. Holding down the northwest corner of 10th and Race for nearly 40 years, the Cantonese restaurant is one of Philadelphia’s most enduring late-night options. Every evening, swarms of tipsy, hungry bargoers and post-shift industry folk cram into David Chan’s charmingly dated dining room to decimate mountains of noodles and rice until the wee hours.
Meek Mill returns to Philly for his first concert as a free man
Bad things tend to happen on Friday the 13th, but Meek Mill didn’t let superstition stop him from doing a little good. Before Friday night’s stop at BB&T Pavilion in Camden, the halfway point of the “Legendary Nights” tour he’s co-headlining with Future, he stopped by the James G. Blaine School in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion section, which he attended as a child, to donate a haul of backpacks and supplies to current students.
Bring Back the Angel's Tit
“You can’t mix angels and alcohol,” warns country legend Alan Jackson on his album Angels and Alcohol. “I don’t think God meant for them to get along.” This ecclesiastical precaution arrived about a century too late for a generation of Jazz Age bartenders who collectively produced an entire flock of cocktails inspired by heavenly beings. This “squad of angels who never had wings,” as raconteur Charles H. Baker described them, varies in composition, but a few characteristics apply across the board.
As live music returns to the Khyber, peep archival images of the best shows in the Old City space
When asked to share his earliest concert memory, Paul Havelin does not hesitate. “December 17, 1985. I was 11 years old. Kiss at the Spectrum.” The arena spectacle, one of nearly 100 dates on the band’s makeup-free Asylum Tour, made an impression, sparking his lifelong love of live music. And though Havelin didn’t get to commit that first time to film, he’s carried a camera with him for nearly all the rest.
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