Lefty O'Doul's Bar at AT&T Park

Not being a baseball fan, the name Lefty O'Doul meant nothing to me.  But apparently, he was a baseball player, who then opened a bar near Union Square in San Francisco in 1958.  The bar is actually still open, and serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It sounds like quite the place, with the food served cafeteria style.  But what makes it famous, besides the name, and being around for so long, is the cocktails.  Apparently Lefty made some mean cocktails.  They have capitilized on this, so now, you can even purchase bottles of their mixers, like the the most famous, the Bloody Mary, or Margarita and Sweet and Sour mix.

This past year, they also opened a bar at the ballpark.  It is just a little stand, and doesn't serve any food, only cocktails.  Since Emil is known to like Blood Marys, and actually did know about Lefty O'Doul's, this was of course our first stop when we reached the park.

Yes, we had to stop here before heading out on my first priority adventure: crab!  We proceeded to stop back between each round of food, so Emil could get another Bloody Mary, or drag someone else there to try it too :)

Blood Mary.

I don't actually care for Bloody Marys, but I figured I had to at least try it.  It was ... a Bloody Mary.  Tomato-y.  Not a ton of spice.  No garnishes.  I don't have a lot to say about it, except that Emil deemed it decent, and he is pretty hard to please with a cocktail.  He noted that it wasn't quite as good as at the full bar, but good enough that he returned several times.  Given that they are using the same mix, it makes sense.

Bloody Mary, Margarita.

We were also in the market for margaritas.  It turns out, we had many options for margaritas, as pretty much every stand sold them, but since we were at Lefty's already, and they also had their own branded margarita mix, we decided to try it out.

It had a well salted rim.  Tart lime flavor.  Not too sweet.  Really, a pretty decent margarita, and the best of the bunch we had that day.  Margaritas can be nice on a hot day, so if I were ever back at the park, and it was somehow warm, I'd consider getting another.  Note: the margarita from Tres, which I expected to be decent, was not.  It was watery and not good at all, barely any salt on the rim.  Definitely would not get that one again.