Last night, I met a friend for dinner and drinks at a new restaurant in Arvada (a small town/suburb just west of Denver, for you non-Coloradans). The restaurant was famed for its extraordinarily long list of whiskies available for tasting and mixing (like, over a hundred), knowledgeable bartenders and hipster vibe. I was excited to put this possible new favorite spot to the D-test.

Upon arrival, I discovered the mixed drink options were all high sugar, and the only possible swaps that could happen (that wouldn’t nix the entire drink) were in the “old-fashioned” type of drinks…basically the ones that were straight up alcohol with just a hint of flavor from a second liqueur. Sigh. This meant I was going to have to rely on the restaurant to make me something that wasn’t on the menu. But, I remained hopeful because again, this place HAD to have some experienced bartenders who could toss a tasty, low-sugar something together.  Anyone who works somewhere with over 100 whiskies had to know SOMETHING about mixing, right? When I discussed this with our waitress, she pointed out that this was possible AND that one of the bartenders was a Type 1! Score! Off she went to ask him to put something together for me. I KNEW this was going to be my new favorite place.

10 minutes later, she returned with a dirty martini with a lemon rind in it. My heart sank. I don’t like dirty martinis (because I frankly am just not into drinking straight vodka – soooo gross and depressing), and in my opinion, they’re the cop-out of drinking diabetics everywhere (this blog was more or less founded on my frequent run-ins with diabetics drinking vodka soda water). I took a sip, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, and nope, I was not. There was no way I was drinking that. I called the waitress over and mentioned that straight up olive-tasting vodka just wasn’t my jam, and was it possible to push said Type 1 bartender to be just a tad more creative? “No,” she said, “he told me he doesn’t really take care of himself and just drinks a lot of beer; he doesn’t know how to make low-sugar drinks.”

Wow. D minus for the new restaurant (it’s not an F because our waitress was awesome and the food was good). I gave up and ordered an old-fashioned.

The point here is…

I get it, we’re all fucking busy and some people like beer. We do live in Colorado, the micro-brewery capitol of the universe, and I don’t expect everyone to maintain the exhausting level of alcoholic snobbery I do. My point is that you don’t have to, nor do you even really have to be a fancy bartender or spend any amount of time throwing something together. It wouldn’t have taken much for this beer-carb-laden Type 1 bartender to make me happy last night.

So, in no particular order, some ideas he might want to consider (for himself and his restaurant) in the future:

Use flavored seltzer water.

Not feeling creative/don’t have time to make a fancy drink? No problem… you only have to choose from five hundred BILLION kinds of flavored zero-sugar seltzer water, sweeten it up a tad with some liquid stevia to enhance whatever the flavor is, and drop in your liquor of choice. I swear, every time I go to the grocery store there are more options. You can’t go wrong.

My current favorite is the Seven brand, which recently produced a series of unsweetened “beverage” flavors. I’m most partial to the “Lime Mint Mojito,” which really does, in my opinion, effectively capture that mojito flavor. I add 1/2 oz of St. Germain, 1.5 oz of light rum, and squeeze in a lime – and voila – an almost completely sugar-free (St. Germain aside) pear mojito for you right there.

Flavored sodas can be magic.

I know, I know… soda is bad for you. And I personally think Diet Coke tastes like crap, but I know there are people out there who like it. And, if you really MUST have a legit diet soda, both Coke and Pepsi recently started to make flavored diet options, some of which lend themselves quite nicely to alcoholic beverages.

If you’re jonesing for a Coke but have sworn off of actual soda because you’re, like, healthy and shit,  Zevia makes some great soda flavors that are pretty legit (and some even have caffeine in them).

And if you’re into mules or gin & tonics, for example, don’t tell yourself you’re stuck with a high-sugar beverage because EVERYTHING has a diet equivalent, and most can be found right next door to the original in any major grocery store. I use diet ginger beer all the time for my mules, and keep diet tonic water around in case I suddenly have a hankering for a scholarly beverage.

Low carb hard selzer, like White Claw and Truly, is a gift from the universe.

I could kiss whoever came up with this concept (and so could every sorority girl in the world, no doubt). This isn’t zero sugar or zero carb because it has alcohol in it (in case that wasn’t immediately obvious), but it’s damn close.

What the fuck else can I say about this? Buy yourself a six pack and hit the beach. End of story.

You can literally buy a whole fucking low-carb cocktail pre-mixed in a bottle.

One example is the Skinny Girl series; I can’t totally speak to these because I haven’t really tried them, but I have friends who like them. All you have to do is pour that shit into a glass. I promise, you can do it.

Try using a protein drink.

Like to multitask? Then this one’s for you.

Okay, it’s little bit of a stretch but roll with it. I was in Costco the other day perusing the protein aisle for deals (I mean, who doesn’t need 500 pounds of whey protein, right?), and stumbled across an Isopure bottled protein drink I hadn’t seen before. It was on sale; a case of 12 bottles for $16, so I thought eh, what the hell, I’ll give it a try – and bought the case. I like to use Isopure protein powder (the whey isolate) for my protein shakes because it’s very low carb and doesn’t have a bunch of other crap in it. Having it in a premade drink form was a nice bonus.

I was driving home eyeballing these almost glowing green bottles of what looked essentially like coolant, wondering how horrible they were going to be, when I had a brilliant thought: what if they made a good drink? I could boost my protein intake while also having a delightful apple melon and rum mixed beverage. My immediate second thought after that: what special kind of crazy does someone have to be to even be having this thought process?

The answer: low-carb fitness nuts who like to drink, obviously. I can’t possibly be the only crazy person out there… Anyone? Anyone?

In case you’re wondering – I did pair it with alcohol, and it was actually quite good. I used 1.5 oz of vodka, and mixed in a cucumber melon sugar-free seltzer (see? those seltzers are good with anything) to cut some of the sweetness, and I really can’t complain. I’ll probably do it again.

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