I think this story is best told by Sam Borden, A Times sports reporter, who also wrote about this episode on his blog: samborden.com.
I regret there are not pictures of the actual excursion, although there are many pictures of the aftermath.
This from Sam’s blog:
Greetings from The Games, Feb. 18
Good morning. Greetings from Krasnaya Polyana. I’m determined to actually see a little ski jumping this afternoon and then tonight is the start of the women’s bobsled event featuring, among others, Lolo Jones and Lauryn Williams.
For now though, let me tell you the story of how I ended up drinking Russian moonshine in the middle of the afternoon yesterday.
So, as you may have gathered from my previous posts, the food here generally ranges from high-school cafeteria to 2 a.m.- bodega. There are some outliers – occasionally Food Court 1 will throw a decent soup out there – but a steady diet of MielPops and fruit at breakfast has been a significant part of my nutrition here.
Because of this, when my colleague, Joe, mentioned that he’d heard there was a great Georgian restaurant not far from the media center, I was immediately excited. A group of us made the 10 minute walk and found the tiny eatery tucked into a side street.
The restaurant was spare but welcoming. The only problem was that there were six rectangular tables – three on each wall – and they were all full. We were going to have to wait.
Sitting at one table was a family from Belarus – husband, wife, son. They motioned to a few of us that we could sit with them while we waited, and so we did. Myself, Joe and a web producer named Justin sat across from them.
The Belarussians were kind. They spoke in broken English but offered us some of their food – including delicious khachapuri, which is like a calzone with a fried egg on it. Then they offered us some of their drinks, which included a large bottle of Jagermeister. Remember: it was 2:30 in the afternoon.
It seemed important to the man that we drink with him. “Is 40 percent, 40 percent,” he kept saying, pointing to the bottle’s label which stated, quite clearly, that it was 35 percent alcohol. “This is best in world,” he said, as his wife nodded. “Super! Super! Super!” he said.
This continued on for a while. Then he asked, sort of out of nowhere, “Do you have 5 minutes to see something very beautiful? Do you want to see it? I will take you there right now.” All of us, obviously, politely declined to go “see something beautiful” with this strange man. Except for Joe, who inexplicably said, “Yes, of course, I’ll go with you.”
A few minutes later, Joe and the man and his family left the restaurant. The rest of us sort of assumed we’d never see Joe again. We began talking about whether we should tell the rest of our colleagues about Joe disappearing before or after we described how delicious the Georgian food was. We all agreed we’d tell them about the food first, then mention that Joe was likely gone forever.
About thirty minutes later, Joe walked back into the restaurant. He said the man had taken him to a hotel a few minutes away from the restaurant that had been built by the man’s friend. Joe said it was actually quite gorgeous – great views, a spa, a stunning lobby – but that at some point the man from the restaurant left him to continue the tour of the hotel property with just the man’s wife and the hotel owner.
As they went down the stairs to the basement of the main building, Joe said, the man’s wife commented, “Oh, I’ve never been down here before,” which was about the point that Joe began to get a little nervous.
But then when they walked into the room, it was clear that Joe was not seeing a Russian torture chamber. Rather, he had walked into a homemade distillery.
There were bottles and glasses and tubes running everywhere. Joe said the hotel owner vaguely described the potions as plum wine but the whole place smelled more like rubbing alcohol. He gave Joe a bottle of one cocktail to take with him and Joe brought it to the restaurant to show to us.
The bottle had no markings on it except for some Russian letters and the number 13. It smelled sort of like gasoline or, maybe, battery acid. It had a few bugs floating in the bottom of it.
Did we taste it? Of course we did. And, you know, it tasted pretty much exactly as you would imagine. It burned my lips. It burned my throat. It cleared my sinuses almost immediately. I imagine it probably tasted like that stuff you spray on charcoal briquettes to help start a barbecue fire.
Still, we were all pleased. Joe was alive. We were eating Georgian food. And we had tasted bootleg Russian liquor. It was, if nothing else, a nice break from what we find at Food Court 1.
Eat at Joe’s 
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