Drunk Brunch: Latitude 41

“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Could we please see your cocktail menu?”
“We don’t have one.”
“Hm. Oh. I’ll take a mimosa, I guess.”

Having spent the morning looking at Latitude 41’s locally-packed cocktail menu online, with drinks like the Tessora Mio (Tessora Limone and Brioso espresso) and the London Calling (Watershed gin, rosemary, honey, lemon, benedictine), hearing that they didn’t have a cocktail menu was a bit of a (confusing) buzzkill. While our waiter and, apparently, bartender made my mimosa, I pulled up the cocktail menu on my phone so my husband could peruse it before placing his drink order. He asked for the Sweet Makers when our waiter returned.

“I don’t know what that is”
“It’s on your cocktail menu. We pulled it up online, see?”
“Oh. Uh. Well, we’ve gone through several bartenders lately. I don’t know what that is. Tell me how to make it”

As I read the ingredients to the waiter (Makers Mark, peach schnapps, iced tea) from my mobile screen, I realized that 1) Latitude 41’s mobile website has a completely different cocktail menu than what I had seen on the desktop version and 2) no one here seems to know how to make any of the drinks on either menu anyway, at least not at brunch time and 3) combined with the 5 minutes 26 seconds it took before someone greeted and seated us, and the fact that we were the only people in the massive dining room, this was probably not going to be the best brunch.

After quite some time, the waiter brought the a drink back, boasting that the manager had never heard of it, either! It was unsurprisingly not a very well-balanced cocktail.

The food was the delicious saving grace of brunch. My husband ordered the hanger steak, which a very polite chef came to our table to inform us they were out of, substituting a perfectly prepared tenderloin, served with flavorful potato wedges and scrambled eggs. The chef even came back out of the kitchen to check that he was satisfied with the steak. (Our waiter never checked that we were satisfied with anything.)

I had the ricotta pancakes, which were rich and moist and didn’t last more than ten minutes. Which is good, I guess, because our dear waiter came to unceremoniously drop off our check less than one minute after the food had arrived, as we both sat with empty cocktail and water glasses.

As my husband and I laughed about the awkward meal, the tiny fly that had been lingering near our table Kamikaze’d into the remains of my mimosa, lucky enough to find a way out before we could pay and get away ourselves.

Latitude 41 is located at 50 N 3rd St.

Read about other drunk brunch spots in Columbus.