BYOB at the Burger Co.

Hot on the heels of Mari Taketa’s review of Honolulu Burger Co. and hearing it’s a BYOB establishment (bonus!), my neighbors wanted to get together and try it. We’d been trying to get together for a while now, and this was a good excuse as any.

Now, there are many interesting denizens residing at the condo I call Melrose Place, but Amber Watt and Dawn & Derek Paiva are my Twitter friends. We know each other online; why not get together in real life? Brazilian capirinhas are perfect for our hot summer days, so we packed a pitcher, Derek’s bar tools, Amber’s eight pounds of limes, and my bottles of cachaça straight from Rio de Janeiro, and headed to dinner.

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Amber and Dawn watch as Derek makes his magic caipirinhas (with grapes). Derek is an aspiring bartender and owns every bar tool known to man—including not one, but two muddlers.

The food was pretty consistent with Mari’s review; while I like my burgers medium rare, others do not, so you may need to consider that if you go to Honolulu Burger Co. The company was outstanding, and I have to give big props to the staff, who cheerfully gave us ice and pushed two tables together to accommodate our food and caipirinha ingredients.

We’d love to check out your favorite BYOB joints, if you know of any others in town. I’m not sure if we’ll bring such a big production everywhere, but I do have two more bottles of cachaça.

In the meantime: Cachaça is now sold in the United States, so you can make these on your own. I don’t have Derek’s caipirinha recipe handy, but I’ll share mine. Derek used maybe 1/6 of the bottle to make a round of caipirinhas. When I made mine, I used 1/2 a bottle for four of us. Oops.

Caipirinhas for four
8 teaspoons granulated sugar
4 limes, cut into wedges
1/2 bottle cachaça (Brazilian brandy made from sugar cane)

Muddle all ingredients together in a pitcher. Put ice in four glasses and pour.

<i>You can read all of Melissa’s blogs at www.nonstophonolulu.com/urbanmixplate. Follow Melissa on Twitter@Melissa808, on Foursquare as Melissa808, or email at Melissa@nonstophonolulu.com.</i>