BOTTOMS UP It’s a good thing no one ever convinced Hamilton Rousseau that soft drinks would ruin his appetite, rot his teeth, and nuke his health. Otherwise, the cigar-chomping owner of Ifs Ands & Butts might be selling insurance or cell phones instead of the largest variety of exotic, hard-to-find soda pop in Dallas. The cola king holds court in a comfortable, smoky store at 408 N. Bishop (the “Butts” stands for imported cigars and cigarettes), where he has a lot to say about the 135-plus foreign and domestic brands he carries. His riff on pre-sixties-formula Coca-Cola is mesmerizing: Imported from the Netherlands, it is made with cane sugar instead of the more common but inferior corn sugar, contains real citric acid instead of cheap phosphoric acid, and is packaged in heavy glass bottles under one hundred pounds of pressure per square inch (instead of the more usual forty pounds) to achieve a longer level of carbonation. Particularly meaningful to Texans are special bottlings of two of the Lone Star State’s native soft drinks—Dr Pepper and Big Red—each made from its original formula. To order, call 888-712-8887 or go to ifsandsbutts.com.
