The Bali Bali was an offering unique to the Bali Ha’i in New Orleans, the Crescent City’s premier Tiki bar during the heyday of such things, the 1950s and 1960s. (Jeff Berry will be bringing Tiki back to the city soon in a big way – might be time for a road trip soon!) A…
Have you ever been to a deli or restaurant that is really old, and keeps copies of old menus on the wall? I’m thinking about Musso and Frank’s in LA; they have a huge menu from the 1920s (or so) hanging up near the rear entrance, and it’s got all kinds of horrible things on…
I first made one of these out of a recipe from Tiki Drinks, illustrated by SHAG, back before I really knew much of anything about making a decent cocktail. The recipes within tend to be overly sweet, with a hefty reliance on sweet and sour and an imbalance between the alcohol and the accompanying juices (when…
We’ve talked about the Bar La Florida before. One of the main stomping grounds of Ernest Hemingway as he descended into alcoholic middle age, The driving force behind Bar La Florida was Constantino Ribalaigua Vert, or Constante to his friends and regular clientele. No one can say who first started making drinks with a blender,…
I always wonder about these cocktails with the same name but different recipes. Are they meant to be variations of each other, or are they cases where people independently came up with very different cocktails that just happened to be given the same moniker? Obviously, in the cases of things like Manhattans or Martinis, it’s…
This drink was invented at the Savoy Hotel in London, perhaps by Harry Craddock himself, although the book only specifies that it was “a very great favourite” there. Perhaps tastes have changed, because this thing isn’t very good. In fact, I have yet to find much of anything featuring apple brandy to be especially good.…
According to Erik Ellestad of “The Savoy Stomp” – yes, I’m not the first to come up with the idea of making an expansive number of drinks out of the Savoy Cocktail Book; Ellestad made them all in alphabetical order, replicating as best he could any ingredients no longer available, such as Hercules, although, unlike what…
The White Lily comes, once again, from the Savoy Cocktail Book, and is, I suppose, aptly named. Well, it’s not exactly white – more of a slightly milky color, halfway between transparent and opaque. And that’s because none of its ingredients, save one, have any color at all, and the one that does is present…
Remember when I told you that there was yet another recipe for the Singapore Sling, the one championed by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry? He found it in a 1950s issue of Gourmet magazine, where it was professed by the reader who sent it in as the authentic Raffles Hotel version. There’s no way to know if it…
Another great name, and another great cocktail. It was probably named after the proprietors of Frank and Jack’s, a very popular New York City speakeasy, and, one must assume, the site of the drink’s creations. It first appeared in a 1927 book called Here’s How by one Judge, Jr. Also an interesting name, that. Craddock apparently…
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