For sake of research, the Fizz bellies up with bar-hopping duo

A couple of weeks ago found me snug within the wood-paneled walls of the Madison Pub & Grill, drinking a Caramel Apple.

Anyone who knows your humble Fizz would see a few things in that previous sentence that don't quite mix. Number one, wood-paneled rooms make me think of dungeons Mike Brady would have designed. Scary. Two, the very notion of my consuming a Caramel Apple is bizarre. I'm a much more straightforward kind of tippler: cosmopolitans for the good days, Maker's on the rocks for the bad.

As for this Apple business, I had no idea what was in it. Neither did the bartender — funny, since the drink was listed at the top of the day's specials. Nevertheless, he whipped something together and I drank it down.

This is the kind of thing you do when you partake of 570bars.com's Quest, a feat easily implied in the title: 570 bars in 365 days. No, Brandon Amancio and Jason Vanhee, the 570bars.com guys, don't have a problem, they have a mission: to finish their history-making bar crawl March 21, 2003, the one-year anniversary of the Quest's first "bottoms up." In the duo's first three weeks, they checked out 50 drinking holes. Currently they're averaging about three or four bars a night, three or four times a week.

As it turns out, the Madison (bar No. 393) makes a Caramel Apple that tastes like a Jolly Rancher. According to Amancio and Vanhee, this is the goal of all drinks containing schnapps. Since they've been to hundreds of bars at this point, I'm inclined to take them as the authority on all things cocktail-related. Even though the drink was sweet and the price right at $3, the Madison got only an average rating from the 570bars.com guys, for its less-than-thrilling ambience.

Then it was on to the nautical and naughty Seawolf Bar and Galley, No. 394, for a cosmo and the offer of karaoke.

"Every place we go into pimps their karaoke," Amancio moans. "What they don't know is, I hate karaoke with a hot burning passion."

In case you're wondering, Amancio and Vanhee aren't boisterous, loud-mouth partying frat boys. Quite the opposite. Amancio's a little more reserved than the wise-cracking Vanhee, and when they're Questing, they're more likely to share a quiet drink at a bar than have a rowdy time with friends.

Anyway, the two concocted their scheme after reading an article in The Stranger about Seattle's byzantine drinking laws, in which the writer cited a Liquor Control Board statistic of 570 spirit-serving establishments in Seattle. Guessing that nobody had consumed beverages at every one, the pair decided to claim this dubious honor for themselves. It's a boozy job but ... all right, nobody has to do it.

However, once they've completed their mission, Amancio and Vanhee will have hit them all, from the most elegant highball lounges to dives so low that they exited slowly for fear of getting the bends.

To complete this reeling task, and avoid the Betty Ford Clinic, they also established rules: One drink per bar, and it must be spirits. If there's a bar to belly up to, you must do it.

Restaurants and taverns can be skipped, unless the eating establishment's drinking area is its own entity. Thou shalt not get wasted if you can help it.

Anyone who wants to challenge their claim is going to have to answer some tough trivia. These are men who obsess about the design of bar glasses and doors to establishments, who know little tricks like the bartender's nod. ("Make that a double for 75 cents?" Nod, nod, nod.)

"We have come to realize, you really can't fake this," Amancio said. "There are too many stupid details."

They've learned harder lessons along the way, too. For example, it is inadvisable to drink screwdrivers for more than 20 bars or so. "Too much acid," Vanhee laments. "So I had a gin and tonic, period, then for the last 300 bars it's been vodka cran."

"All these little things sneak up on you that you don't expect," Amancio concurs.

Truly, my place in this endeavor is minuscule, like so many others around the Seattle area who hook up with the pair. "We have met a lot of people who become our best friends for a bar," Vanhee says, and snickers.

No shock there. Not many people can zoom through 400 bars in eight months. The very thought of it makes my liver ache. Even so, I think I might tag along for a few more of their exploits — for research and history-making purposes only, understand.

Even more intriguing, they seem to have lined up a celebrity for their last call March 31, though the drinking establishment has yet to be named.

Still, next time you're out, you may want to raise a glass in their honor, or join them for a drink by contacting them through their Web site, www.570bars.com. After that, we suspect the 570bars.com guys will experience a bit of a dry period. Goodness knows, I would.

E-mail Pop Fizz at mmcfarland@seattletimes.com, and it'll be cosmos for everybody!