Cocktail honor for Craft & Commerce, a new brewery and lots of meat

Craft & Commerce was just named a finalist in 2012 Spirited Awards, which will be handed out at the annual Tales of the Cocktail festival happening in New Orleans in July. Despite San Diego's growing, damn-fine craft-cocktail scene, this is the first time a local establishment's received such an honor. If you're not familiar with the Little Italy bar and restaurant's cocktail program, scope it out here (and note the lack of vodka, considered by C&C's 'tenders to be "an odorless, tasteless spirit").

Last week, the Museum of Photographic Arts opened The Jazz Loft Project: W. Eugene Smith in NYC, 1957-1965, a multimedia exhibition that features Smith's visual and aural snapshots of his time living in a Manhattan building frequented by jazz greats like Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus. Every Thursday, beginning May 31 and going until Sept. 27, The Prado restaurant, located a couple doors down from MOPA in Balboa Park, is offering a special $79.95 per couple ($39.95 per person) three-course dinner that includes a bottle of wine and two tickets to the exhibition. The jazz-themed menu includes items like the "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (slow-roasted pork prime rib, goat cheese potato puree, peaches, baby arugula and a Jack Daniels-and-ginger sauce) and "Night in Tunisia (red lentil and chickpea soup with North African spices and yogurt).