We sat down with cocktail creator and influencer Julianna McIntosh to chat all things dating and drinking. Plus:

• Rugged aprons, automatic pepper mills and more: Our editor-in-chief's most-used kitchen items.
• Clear ice cubes are cool, but do they actually make your drink better?

Take It From a Woman: This Is the Sexiest Drink You Can Order on a Date

There are three certainties in life: Death, taxes and drinking on first dates (that is, if you consume alcohol). It’s the easiest way to calm the nerves and get the awkward conversation flowing, as long as you don’t get sloppy, obviously.

You might think that’s all you have to be concerned with — not slurring your words across from your Hinge date. But did you know that your drink order, your choice of bar, and even your own bartending skills can tell a woman a lot about you as a potential partner?

Yesterday, we asked if you prefer beans or no beans in your chili. About 70% are pro beans in your chili, while 30% of you said "no thanks." 

These Are Our Editor-in-Chief’s Most Used Kitchen Items

BY MIKE CONKLIN

I’m a longtime enthusiastic home cook, and while I’m happy to fire up the oven at any time of year, I am, like many home cooks, I would imagine, especially into cooking during fall and winter, when temperatures drop and things get real cozy. So this week, we’re going to take a look at some of the kitchen items I turn to most regularly.

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We’ve Hit Peak Cocktail Ice

When it comes to ice, does size matter? Well, that all depends on the drink. “If you’re serving a slow sipping cocktail, like an Old Fashioned, you want a big block of ice because the dilution is slower,” explains Tom Macy, New York-based cocktail educator and founder of Social Hour Cocktails. “Or if you’re shaking a cocktail and want more aeration to give a drink more foaminess, then you want big cubes, too.”

For some, this kind of technical detail is what the increasingly nerdy world of mixology is all about. In recent years, the cocktail world has become more than a little obsessed, not so much with invention or ingredients as with chunks of frozen water. Much as dealers in diamonds — that metaphoric “ice” — are preoccupied with the “three Cs” of cut, carat and clarity, so dealers in cocktails are likewise microscopically attentive to the cold stuff, some bringing blowtorches, bandsaws, Japanese steel picks and even CNC machines to carve their own.