Cocktail

We discovered the New York Sour in the summer of 2003 while we were researching cocktails to put on the opening drink list for Keith McNally’s Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side. Visually inviting, this sour is deep yellow with a crimson band of red wine floating on top. The origin of the cocktail is shrouded in mystery, but it is certain that it was served at several New York City speakeasies in the late 1920s. It was no surprise to discover that this cocktail was New York’s Prohibition-era favorite, probably because the lemon juice, sugar, and wine camouflaged and successfully balanced the bad watered-down whiskey common in those days. It was the cool drink to have, and people who ordered it were “in the know.” Think of it as the Prohibition-era Cosmo—or any other status-symbol cocktail that clearly advertises itself in appearance. Made with better ingredients, the cocktail became a masterpiece of complex flavors and mouthfeel. A chef friend of ours once remarked that this drink is like sangria à la minute—and one of the few cocktails that can be successfully paired with a main course.

The name “Old Fashioned” here refers to what was once known as the Whiskey Cocktail. It is a cocktail in the simplest terms: spirit, water, bitters, and sugar. Sometime in the late 1800s, the use of the word “cocktail” broadened far beyond its original definition, so it was necessary to come up with a new moniker to distinguish the older cousin. Many self-described purists will argue that there is only one way to make this drink properly. We disagree. So if you decide to order a whiskey cocktail as an Old Fashioned, be precise about what you want. Intentionally being ambiguous about your order is just a nice way of being obnoxious.

This Grand Fashioned was the first-place winner of Grand Marnier and the New York Film Festival’s Independent Cocktail Festival in 1999, long before we ever opened Employees Only. The idea was to get two ounces of Grand Marnier into a cocktail without being cloyingly sweet. To balance this much Curaçao, we muddle fresh blood oranges with lime juice, sugar, and dashes of Angostura bitters. This cocktail looked so much like the contemporary recipe for an Old Fashioned that the name just took over. For the competition, we garnished the drink with a kumquat that had to be tediously scored and peeled to resemble a “blossom,” then stained inside with grenadine. You can imagine our surprise when, upon winning, we were told we would need to make five hundred of these cocktails at the premiere for All About My Mother by director Pedro Almodóvar. The Grand Fashioned is so rich and luscious that it can be consumed as an after-dinner drink.

Stunning to look at, the Greenwich Sour is rich and frothy, with a band of red wine floating on top. It is a variation of a Prohibition classic, the New York Sour. The key difference between the two is that we have add an egg white in our take, a practice common throughout the history of making sours. Many people today are wary about consuming raw eggs for fear of salmonella. The risk of contamination is actually quite low and ca be reduced even more by using eggs from free-range chickens; add high-proof spirit to that, and the chances of getting sick are reduced to almost nothing. The egg white adds texture to the cocktail by trapping air and requires a very long hard shake to create the necessary consistency. Many bartenders will shake the egg white on its own first to begin this process. To give the Greenwich Sour its necessary backbone, it is important to use high-proof whiskey to cut through the sour body. The wine’s tannins add depth to the cocktail and complete its finish.

According to David Wondrich, the Whiskey Smash comes from the Baroque Age (see opposite page) of the cocktail. Obviously, it served as inspiration for our seasonal Ginger Smash cocktails, but it is in all its features a julep—the only difference being that the Smash has some ornamental fruits for garnish and is always shaken so that the mint is “smashed”—hence the name. From all the smashes in the Baroque Age, it appears that the Brandy Smash was the most popular (same drink, different base spirit—try it out for yourself), but somehow the whiskey version stuck with us. Maybe sampling Dale DeGroff’s rocking peach whiskey smash sealed the deal for us, or maybe it was just that we loved the term “smashed.” In any case, this is a very simple drink to make, and we suggest that you use our homemade Mint Syrup in place of simple syrup for a far more dimensional cocktail experience. This cocktail is one of the very few that contains no juice but nevertheless should be shaken and smashed.

This fall version of the Ginger Smash has been with us for years, but it truly came together with the addition of allspice dram, a highly bitter and aromatized liqueur. It contrasts two of our favorite ingredients—pears and ginger. Gin mixes very well with pears because it helps open up the subtle aromas that these pome fruits are prized for. Green Bartlett pears are our choice in this cocktail because of their tartness and solid nature. Feel free to try whatever pear you can find in its peak of season.

We had just finished working with the team that developed 10 Cane rum and wanted to use this excellent grassy pot-stilled spirit in a cocktail. Naturally, we gravitated toward fresh, sweet, and tangy pineapples, which are so common in the Caribbean. We added maraschino to the mix to help give a fruit punch to the more vegetal ingredients. The result is a cocktail so tropical and multidimensional that it will make your head spin, so tasty and good looking that you will fall in love with it instantly.

This version of the Ginger Smash was the last seasonal version added to our menu. When it was being created, we had become enamored with tequila and wanted to showcase it in the springtime. Pairing ginger with kumquats—small citrus fruits that come to market at the end of winter—we found the perfect canvas for 100-percent blue agave tequila. Its texture, slight velvety sweetness, and spiciness from fresh gingerroot make this drink one of our new favorites.

This version of the Ginger Smash is the original Employees Only seasonal cocktail. We set out to create a cocktail composed of ingredients that warm you up on a winter day. The result was so tasty and fresh in aroma that it was a “smash” from the start. It remains, to this day, one of our best sellers.

This Mint Julep is the quintessential American cocktail, so regal that it sits at the summit of cocktail Olympus next to classics like the Martini, the Manhattan, and the Sazerac. It hails from Kentucky and Virginia and is enjoyed throughout the South. We know for sure it was consumed as early as 1790, particularly in the summertime. A particular type of spearmint, Kentucky Colonel, is best suited for the preparation of this cocktail, commonly served in a silver or pewter cup to keep it chilled longer. Since 1938, it has been the official drink of the Kentucky Derby, where up to 120,000 mint juleps are served over the period of two days. There are many historical and regional versions: some use bourbon, others brandy; some only tap the mint, others pulverize it into a paste. We favor a bourbon recipe in which fresh spearmint is bruised with a ladle, then sugar, bitters, and bourbon are added; the mixture is chilled overnight so the mint releases all the flavors and essential oils into the whiskey, then strained the following day for final julep preparation. To simplify this process so the julep can be made to order, we use our own homemade Mint Syrup.

The Mojito was born at the La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s. Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway wrote “My Mojito in La Bodeguita,” which still can be read today, hanging on the wall. Others claim that this was a forgery, a marketing ploy of the restaurant owners to promote their mojito cocktail and bring in tourists after communism took over. Over the last decade, the Mojito has quietly become one of the most recognized drinks in the world. Today, people carelessly consume it regardless of the season or weather. But somewhere along the way, the mojito has been reconfigured as a short, stout, bittersweet rum hybrid of muddled lime wedges and pulverized mint. Then a friend of ours who went to film school in Cuba came back and pointed out that mojitos were supposed to be tall, light, and fizzy, clean and effervescent. We brought it back to its true form and labeled it the Havana-Style Mojito. Although it never made it onto our menu, it is the closest you can get to a true mojito without the luxury of Havana Club Cuban rum. It is a fantastic cocktail—but please don’t order it while there is snow on the ground.

The original Gin Julep published in Harry Johnson’s 1882 Bartenders’ Manual was the only other julep that people generally ordered besides the whiskey and brandy versions. It’s likely that the prominent malt flavor of Holland gin, a product we know today as genever, appealed to the whiskey lover. With the rerelease of Bols Genever gin to the U.S. marketplace, we tested this cocktail but were not at first happy with the results. So we cut the amount of genever in half and substituted Plymouth gin for the other half—and then we had one of those great drinks that will stand the test of time. It is unlike most cocktails because it has two base spirits. It is delicate, light yet full-flavored, and very refreshing. It is a cocktail to fall in love with.

The Gin Rickey (see photo) is the most prominent member of the Rickey Cocktail family, which basically calls for a shot of any straight spirit, a splash of freshly squeezed lime juice, and club soda, served tall. The story has it that the founding father of this cocktail trend was a retired Civil War colonel and lobbyist, Joe Rickey. The man loved his bourbon with soda and a squeeze of lime. He refused sugar on the grounds that “drinks with sugar heat the blood,” and as a string-puller in D.C., he clearly didn’t want passion to interfere with clear thinking. We played with this cocktail but shelved it, feeling that although it is a wonderful drink, it was not intriguing enough to put on our menu. Then we made our own lime cordial. The concentrated flavor of the sweetened cordial created the same feel as the original, only with more depth and intensity and more focus on the gin. Also, our lime cordial is sweetened not with sugar but with agave nectar, which has a much lower glycemic index and therefore should not “heat” the blood as much. The good colonel would be pleased.

The Grapefruit Gimlet (see photo) came as an inspiration upon tasting Charbay ruby red grapefruit vodka. Unlike other flavored vodkas, this producer actually uses real fruit in a natural process of infusion. Charbay pays Texas ruby red grapefruit growers premium prices to leave the fruit on the tree until they are overripe. Then they are shipped to California, where father-and-son distillers Miles and Marko Karakasevic grind the whole fruits—skins, pulp, and juice—then let them sit in alcohol for six months to extract the real fruit flavor. This essence is then strained and added to clear vodka. The result of this infusion is unlike any other flavored vodka. The beauty of our Grapefruit Gimlet is that it consists of only three ingredients: Charbay grapefruit vodka, fresh lime juice, and agave nectar. This recipe is very simple to make and really accentuates the grapefruit vodka. Make it and taste it and you’ll feel like you’ve just bitten into a sweet, ripe ruby red grapefruit through the skin. It’s refreshing and full flavored, and it begs for another sip.

The story of the Roselle highlights the creative process at Employees Only. After seeking a hibiscus cordial, bar manager Robert Krueger infused the dried blossoms into syrup for a delicious result. The citrus and floral elements immediately suggested a pairing with gin, and the botanicals in Tanqueray No. 10 specifically led to grapefruit. A quick shake revealed that the red of the hibiscus turns an iridescent rose when mixed—inspiring the drink’s name. The resulting drink is a reminder that a confident bartender should never be afraid of mixing a pink drink—or of drinking one, for that matter.

The name “French 75” refers to the most deadly and accurate artillery piece of World War I: the 75-mm field gun. Some credit WWI French-American flying ace Raoul Lufbery as the creator, who poured a little cognac into his beloved champagne for added kick. Other recipes list gin as the main ingredient in what is basically a Tom Collins with champagne instead of club soda. This recipe is first seen in The Savoy Cocktail Book; author Harry Craddock notes that it “hits with remarkable precision.” Across the pond, the French 75 was made popular at New York’s infamous Stork Club, which opened during Prohibition and survived into the 1960s. Looking back at the historical cocktail record, it seems most likely that this cocktail began as the gin version, then makers shifted to cognac in order to make the drink a bit more French.

The Millionaire Cocktail is not as romanticized as the South Side or as revered as a Whiskey Sour. Little is known about this Prohibition-era cocktail except that it was a popular name for cocktails of that time. We have found five different cocktails carrying the moniker, with recipes varying from whiskey to rum to gin. Even Harry Craddock, author of The Savoy Cocktail Book, listed two completely unrelated recipes as Millionaire Cocktail No. 1 and Millionaire Cocktail No. 2. The first consists of Jamaican rum, apricot brandy, sloe gin, lime juice, and grenadine; the second has anisette, egg white, gin, and absinthe. We have provided the Millionaire recipe from The How and When cocktail book by Hyman Gale and Gerald F. Marco, first printed in 1938. Although it inspired the name for our Billionaire Cocktail (page 64), we have made some slight adjustments to the proportions and added lemon juice for balance.

The Fraise Sauvage was inspired by the famous pre-Prohibition classic, the French 75 (page 70). The name itself is a play on words in French, meaning “wild strawberry.” This cocktail uses our EO homemade Wild Strawberry Cordial to create a cocktail in the classic style. We shake together Plymouth gin with fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and strawberry cordial, then top it off with demi-sec champagne. For our first summer menu at Employees Only, we wanted to put on the list a cocktail that would be a crowd-pleaser. Fraise Sauvage is the EO equivalent of the ubiquitous Caprese salad. The flavors of gin, strawberry, and champagne are a timeless combination and showcase how simple flavors can become complex when combined. To make this cocktail without the strawberry cordial, simply muddle a whole fresh strawberry, then follow the rest of the directions.

The return of the Aviation cocktail signaled the rebirth of the classic cocktail. Using ingredients that were obscure a mere ten years ago, this drink is simple and snappy and speaks of the era surrounding Prohibition. The original Aviation cocktail was created in the early years of the twentieth century by one of us—a New York bartender, Hugo Ensslin, who was the head bartender at the Wallick Hotel. Probably his intention was to celebrate the Wright Brothers and other achievements in flight made at that time. Ensslin also published the recipe in his book, Recipes for Mixed Drinks, which appeared in 1916 and in which he called for dry gin, lemon juice, maraschino, and crème de violette. We must assume that the crème de violette Ensslin had at his disposal is different than the ones we have today, as the drink does not turn sky-blue. Harry Craddock left out the crème de violette in The Savoy Cocktail Book and so did many others. Only recently have we begun to see the emergence of really high-quality crème de violette on the market—but it still remains to be seen if it will catch on beyond cocktail geekery. We add a touch of aromatic bitters at the end to dazzle your nose and create depth.

This cocktail was created in a flash of inspiration to showcase overproof whiskey by offsetting it with wonderfully lush and flavorful ingredients. Strong Baker’s 107-proof bourbon serves as the backbone to the cocktail, providing vigor and heat. This is balanced with our rich homemade grenadine and fresh lemon juice to give a delightful sweet-and-sour balance. The Absinthe Bitters’ anise essence rounds out the cocktail, giving it a classic feel and third dimension. After conceiving the recipe, we were stumped for a name until we realized it was quite similar to a version of the Prohibition classic Millionaire Cocktail (page 66). Because of inflation and the fact that ours is a “richer” cocktail, we named it the Billionaire Cocktail.