Playboy Guide to Football Tailgating Like a Gentleman

With your college years behind you—and football season upon us—it’s high time your tailgating party graduated from supermarket hot dogs and plastic cups of beer. Our upscale upgrade features a surf-and-turf grilling menu worthy of an Iron Chef (Wolfgang Puck, to be exact), top-shelf champagne cocktails (from the world’s greatest bar, no less) and the coolest vintage-inspired fashion and gear. Take a cue from the following pages and you may need to put up a red velvet rope.

Respect the cocktail - serve a drink that’s sophisticated, sparkling & strong-like you

Earlier this year, the Varnish, a mixologically inclined speakeasy in downtown Los Angeles, was voted best bar in the country at Tales of the Cocktail, the Oscars of the bartending world. We enlisted their talented barmen to create a high-octane twist on the champagne cocktail.

Nightingale Cocktail

Ingredients

1 oz.
Bulleit
rye
2 dashes
Regans’
orange
bitters
Prosecco,
chilled

Orange peel
½ oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur

Instructions

Shake first three ingredients with ice and strain into a champagne flute. Top with prosecco. Squeeze orange peel, skin side down, into drink to release aromatic oils. Garnish with peel.

1. Go vintage

The stadium parking lot will be awash in oversize jerseys, hoodies and other school colors. That said, a vintage-style letterman sweater from the good people at Etiquette Vintage Design in Austin will have you showing both your school spirit and your exquisite sense of style. They can custom tailor sharp-looking sweaters and blazers with your school’s logo. (evintaged.com)
2. Blanket Statement

Pack a wool blanket. It can double as a picnic blanket or a wrap for the ladies. (Civil War artillery blanket, $109, woolrich.com)

3. Glass act

Polycarbonate champagne flutes look like glass but won’t break when things get too boisterous. (Connoisseur champagne flutes, $42 for six, nauticalluxuries.com)
4. Tray chic

Presentation counts. You’ve gone to the trouble of making a restaurant-worthy lobster surf and turf, so don’t ruin it by serving on paper plates. (Chancellor rectangular tray, $49, potterybarn.com)
5. Get a cooler cooler

You’ll need ice. A lot of ice. Coleman’s reissues of its classic steel-belted 54-quart coolers do the job and look, well, cool. They can also double as seating or a prep surface for your grill mastery. ($150, coleman.com)

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Anonymous wrote

Amazing!
Anonymous wrote

I agree, first dude in the blue sunglasses is total hipster, but the rest are really just classic vintage looks.
Anonymous wrote

Since when did gentleman translate to hipster?