Waitresses in abbreviated sailor-girl getups back and forth with Unicum boilermakers and fruit-heavy house specials in coconut and conch shells, ceramic mermaids with purple Cellophane drinking straws emerging from the tops of their heads, smoke hanging like tropical weather.

Shadow Ticket, p. 188.

The patron ordering the Unicum boilermaker has pretty different tastes to those ordering the fruity specials. Unicum is a bitter herbal apertif made from more a secret recipe of more than 40 herbs. It’s intense, bracing drinking, tasting like some medicinal distillation of Hungarian forest floor. I like it, but a beer chaser is not at all unwelcome! On that front, I’ve gone with Arany Ászok, a pretty straightforward Hungarian eurolager that is doing the job nicely.

Unicum makes a second appearance later in Shadow Ticket, when Bruno’s trying to convince Daphne to sign over her dairy asssets:

“Just never say I didn’t warn you. Here, here’s a ‘Kleenex,’ wipe your nose and try not to fall apart into too many pieces.” Reaching for a Unicum bottle that happens to be nearby, meantime wondering, What’s wrong with the kid? she used to have some sense once, there was even a time he’d expected to bring her into the Cheese racket someday, teach her everything he knows about the different cultures and processing, how to read the markets, buy and sell, options and futures…

Shadow Ticket, p. 223.

Daphne’s got some bitter inheritance ahead. Bracingly so? Hicks has played the part of her “chaser” for much of the book, but the time may be coming where she needs to drink it neat…

Egészségedre!