From Shots to Spectacle: How LA Changed the Way I Drink (and Eat)

By: Ani Gutierrez
October 6, 2025

I moved to LA for new beginnings. Instead, I found smoking martinis, pregame rituals, sober curiosity, and the art of turning every night into a story worth telling.

The first thing I learned about living in Los Angeles is that a cocktail is never just a cocktail. It’s an accessory, a lifestyle, and an experience. A sparkling coupe of something pink and floral tucked into your hand says as much about your night as your outfit does. Back when I first turned 21, I was a strictly shots girl. Vodka if I didn’t care, tequila if I wanted to pretend I did. I used to think drinking was simple: you took a shot, you felt the burn, you danced until your feet ached, and you ended the night with greasy food that tasted way better than it should have at 3a.m. That was my rhythm before, and honestly, I thought that was all nightlife would ever be: blurry, fast, and fueled by whatever was cheapest and strongest.

Then I moved to Los Angeles.

Suddenly, alcohol wasn’t just alcohol anymore. It was an accessory, a performance, and an experience. A cocktail here doesn’t just live in your hand; it completes your outfit, your vibe, and your story for the night. Order wrong and you feel off-balance. Order right and you’re beaming before the first sip. The first time I ordered a cocktail in LA, it arrived smoking, rim glittering, and surrounded by rose petals. It was less of a drink and more like a piece of art, and the final touch to my look. That’s when it clicked: in this city, your drink says something about you, and maybe I didn’t want to be a shots girl anymore. Holding a cocktail here is almost like holding a microphone: it signals you’re ready to perform, even if the stage is just the bar you’re leaning against, and in LA, there’s always a stage.

Every night has the potential to be the night: Mondays on a rooftop, Tuesday karaoke nights, Wednesdays at your favorite neighborhood dive, Thursday jazz nights, Fridays on the Weho strip, and weekends for whatever invites float into your DMs. The city has a way of whispering, “just one more night out,” until suddenly you realize you’ve partied harder in six months here than you did in four years of college. It’s a daily rotation that makes college nightlife feel like practice drills. Somewhere in the middle of all that, my relationship with drinking completely changed.

What makes a night-out in LA different isn’t just about what you order at the bar, it’s the ritual. Pregames in LA are almost sacred, like the official way to start your night. It’s where the affordable liquor lives, where your makeup sets, and where the night gets its direction. Someone pulls out a bottle of tequila, a questionable playlist blasts from a speaker, and everyone’s half-ready, half-tispy, and applying eyeliner in the mirror while swapping shoes. Depending on the night, this is where the chaos begins and the liquor starts to hit.

By the time you get to the club, you’ll only need to buy one or two drinks to carry you, and sometimes, you won’t have to buy any at all. The truth is, LA is full of shortcuts, because sometimes all you have to do is stand by the bar and wait. Someone will offer you a drink. Someone will wave you over to their table. Someone will make sure you skip the line. I say this with humility, but also honesty: being a woman here is a kind of currency. Think pretty privilege, but shaken, stirred, and with a lime.

It’s almost impossible not to notice that being a young woman in LA has its perks. Stand at a bar long enough and someone will offer you a drink. Wander into the right circle and suddenly you’re pulled into a booth, champagne appearing like magic, and bouncers waving you past the line. Drinks flow, but your credit card stays buried in your purse. Back home, I would’ve been grateful for one free drink on a good night. Here, it’s the norm, and while it sounds glamorous (sometimes it really is), it also makes it alarmingly easy to overdo it. When alcohol becomes both free and abundant, restraint becomes the real flex.

The irony here, of course, is that while LA nightlife has pushed me deeper into drinking culture, it’s also the first place that’s made me question it. Hangovers hit harder than they used to, and mornings sometimes feel like collateral damage. However, the amazing thing is that this city can even make sobriety seem glamorous. Sober curiosity is everywhere here, but in true LA fashion, it’s done stylishly. If LA knows how to glamorize alcohol, it also knows how to make abstaining chic.

Non-alcoholic bars are opening, serving “zero-proof” cocktails as complex and beautiful as their boozy cousins. Mocktails aren’t afterthoughts, they’re entire experiences. In LA, being sober isn’t a downgrade, it’s just another lifestyle choice. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been tempted, especially on mornings when the hangover outweighs the memories. Drinking too much can sometimes feel like an occupational hazard here, but knowing that LA can make not drinking look just as delicious is oddly comforting. If shots were once my shortcut to a good time, now I know I could show up sober and still feel like I belong.

I’d be lying if I said this city didn’t elevate my palate. I went from ordering vodka cranberries to developing actual opinions about martinis and which garnish is worth the garnish. It turned me from someone who couldn’t name more than three cocktails, to someone with opinions about mezcal infusions, and which outrageous drinks to avoid, because here, bars compete not just on flavor, but on spectacle. Cocktails arrive glowing, smoking, rimmed in chili, and crowned with edible flowers. Half the time, they look better than they taste since this is still LA, where performance trumps authenticity more often than not. However, when you find the right spots, like the ones that care more about craft than clout, the taste is as delicious as its stage presence. I’ve learned that drinks aren’t just fuel for the night ahead, they become part of its story.

LA also changed the way I eat. Food, like drinks, stopped being just about consumption here. Back home, dinner was just what you grabbed before or after the bar. Here, dinner is an event. Plates arrive looking like art, layered with flavors I didn’t even know I craved. Sometimes they taste as good as they look, but sometimes they don’t. That’s the gamble here: is it tasty, or is it just a performance? When I say “performance” I also quite literally mean, a performance. Dinner in LA almost always comes with a show, whether that’s a live band, a burlesque dancer weaving between tables, or just the spectacle of people-watching (which is personally my favorite form of entertainment). The man in a corner booth with sunglasses on at midnight. The influencer staging photos between courses. The inevitable celebrity sighting, or the sugar-daddy date unfolding in real time. Dinner is never just dinner. Even a simple Tuesday night out can feel like you stumbled into a scene.

As it did with cocktails, my palate expanded in every direction with food, and living in LA has taught me where to look for the real thing when I’m craving taste over spectacle; those mouthwatering authentic dishes that you’re confident will hit the spot. East LA for smoky al pastor that drips down your wrist. Koreatown for Korean BBQ that feels like comfort food after too many drinks. Chinatown for noodles pulled by hand at 1a.m. Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Tokyo; each neighborhood reshaping what I thought I knew about food. LA is one of the few places where you can stumble out of a nightclub and find yourself at a taco stand that blows most sit-down restaurants out of the water. The options are endless, and the city’s cultural patchwork makes it almost impossible not to be shaped by them.

What LA really did was reframe everything for me. Drinks aren’t just something you sip, they’re theatrical and part of your aesthetic. Food isn’t just dinner, it’s a spectacle and cultural immersion. The whole city operates on this idea that consumption is never just consumption, it’s an experience.

Yes, LA changed the way I drink (and eat). It turned me from a shots girl into someone who knows her way around a cocktail menu. It expanded my palate and showed me that some nights are indulgent, while other nights are performative, but one thing guaranteed is that it’s never boring. This city taught me that every night out is its own kind of show, whether ending with champagne on a rooftop or tacos on the curb. Lucky for me, I’m not just in the audience, I’m part of the story.