Whynatte’s Thai Restaurant Takeover went off with multiple hitches, but none were big enough to derail the latte express. In fact, you could have hitched a catamaran to the hitch we were working with last night. My Thai isn’t exactly what you would call “fluent”. So when the staff at Mali Restaurant thought that I was asking them to drop a full smoked eel into the latte, I knew that we’d have to settle into the night and catch a proper rhythm.

Which we did. Once the staff got the hang of it, they were dealing out Whynatte’s left and right, and the crowd blew through five gallons of latte like my rabbi blows through the shofar horn on Rosh Hashana. To be sure, it was one of the more raucous Whynatte throwdowns, and all the better that it was planned only one day prior, and hosted by a nondescript Thai restaurant.

Here are the first batch of photos, with a second group to be posted tomorrow.

The crowd was thicker than the bore on a concert tuba:

The first five Whynattes on the night. More would follow:

Tom displays a gallon of the finest latte that money can buy. On this particular evening, we spiked the latte with Hazelnut:

If blood is thicker than water, than what is latte thicker than? Creamed corn?

Yes, that’s me behind the bar. I bought the black polo I’m wearing here just for the party:

Bluefin Tuna auction or the view from behind the bar at a Whynatte party?

You’d have a nonchalant look on your face too if you had a pocket full of roasted macadamian nuts in your pocket:

The staff of Mali looks on in terror as they realize that one of their own has been converted to the latte: