Recipes By Robert Simonson
110 recipes found
La Quebrada Spritz
Austin Hartman of Montana’s Trail House in Bushwick, Brooklyn, sticks pretty close to the wine-bitters-bubbles template of the classic spritz with this simple drink. His main break with tradition is his use of the fiery agave spirit mezcal as a base. Wanting the liquor to play well with the other ingredients, he opts for the sweeter, softer Crema de Mezcal, from Del Maguey. “It still has some of the smoky, spice qualities of mezcal, but some of the sweetness that works well with the bitterness of the Aperol,” he said. At first, the mezcal delivers a bracing, spirited hit you don’t expect from a spritz. But after a few sips, it all calms down into an easygoing, refreshing whole.
Hummer
This popular Michigan drink, which is thick and creamy and tastes like coffee ice cream, is credited to bartender Jerome Adams, who invented it one night in 1968 at the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit. The drink caught on with the local sailing set and over time spread inland. Mr. Adams, who died in 2018, went on to bartend at the club for more than 50 years, making countless hummers along the way. Brian Bartels, the author of “The United States of Cocktails,” has modified the recipe ever so slightly, topping his hummer with a cherry.
Three Sheets to the Watermelon
This summer cocktail is essentially a variation on the watermelon margarita that eliminates the blender and the Curaçao and adds some fun and easy prep work. The result is thick, fresh and fruity — a drink that poses no danger of your interrupting your backyard barbecue with deep thoughts.
The Seelbach Cocktail
When devising a signature drink for the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Ky., Adam Seger drew inspiration from the cocktails made with cava and Spanish brandy that he had tasted at a Spanish restaurant. Wishing to create something that would resemble a pre-Prohibition drink, he replaced the brandy with Old Forester, a bourbon with a long heritage in Kentucky, and the cava with Korbel Brut, the sort of sparkling wine that would have been available to a Louisville bartender in the early years of the 20th century. The drink comes across as a mash-up of a manhattan and a Champagne cocktail: refreshing and just peculiar enough to keep you interested. Mr. Seger strongly recommends that all of the ingredients be very cold before being introduced to the glass.
Paper Plane
The drink, invented by the New York bartender Sam Ross, who created the classic modern cocktail the penicillin, has slowly been gaining steam since it was introduced in 2007, showing up on cocktail menus in numerous time zones. It is a rich, immediately likable whiskey sour lent plenty of culinary complexity by the amaro and the Aperol.
Periodista
In 1995, Joe McGuirk was tending bar at Chez Henri, a bistro in Cambridge, Mass., with an executive chef of Cuban descent. Mr. McGuirk was asked to come up with a menu of Latin-flavored cocktails. He found a rum drink called the periodista (Spanish for “journalist”) in a liquor company's cocktail book and gave it a whirl. Mr. McGuirk did a little tinkering and delivered a cocktail, under the same name, that called for Myer’s rum, apricot brandy, Rose’s lime juice, triple sec and a bit of sugar. The drink took off and was soon served across the Boston area. Mr. McGuirk continued to work on the recipe. Here is the one he currently uses.
The Chadburn
The sweetness of the pear liqueur and port in this relatively simple tiki drink (named for the Chadburn telegraph) make it ideal for after dinner. If, however, you are looking for something more preprandial, Mr. Cate recommends decreasing the amount of port and pear liqueur to 1/4 ounce each. That should do the trick.
Reverse Manhattan (Berretto Da Notte)
For the drinks writer Kara Newman, author of the book “Nightcap,” a nightcap can perform many functions, from sending you to sleep to reigniting a conversation to standing in for dessert. The recipe, one of Ms. Newman’s own, turns the manhattan upside-down, with the softer, calming notes of the vermouth taking center stage instead of the sharper, palate-awakening notes of the rye. Ms. Newman said a standard sweet vermouth can be substituted in this recipe in a pinch, but the Cocchi Vermouth di Torino will add elegance and complexity to your last drink of the night.
Tuxedo
The Tuxedo is a simple affair, made of gin, sherry and orange bitters, that will give any traditional martini a run for its money in dryness. One of the most prominent old cocktail books to feature this recipe was issued by the Waldorf-Astoria hotel bar in 1934. Jarred Roth, beverage director of the Bar Room at the Beekman in New York, gives the drink an added herbal touch by applying a light rinse of absinthe to the glass. To achieve a more traditional Tuxedo flavor profile, simply omit the absinthe.
Mula Español
This drink, served at Whisler’s, a bar in Austin, Tex., is a classic Moscow Mule with a Spanish twist, using brandy de Jerez and sherry, as well as ginger liqueur, lemon and ginger beer. Brett Esler urges the use of drier styles of ginger beer, sherry and brandy for the cocktail. For presentation, the traditional copper mug will work, but Mr. Esler says a Tom Collins glass will do as well.
Alaska Cocktail
The big question when preparing an Alaska cocktail is the choice of gin. Though most bars make it with London Dry gin, the earliest known recipe for the drink calls for Old Tom gin, a sweeter form of the spirit that was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is the recipe found in “Drinks,” a 1913 book by the bartender Jacques Straub, and favored by Jim Kearns, an owner of Slowly Shirley, a cocktail bar in Greenwich Village. "The orange bitters adds a nice, dry, citric note to the end, keeping the cocktail from becoming too sweet,” Mr. Kearns said. While Straub’s instructions do not call for a lemon twist, Mr. Kearns added it anyway, because it “complements the orange bitters so nicely.
Bitter Giuseppe
Cynar is a low-proof, bittersweet amaro derived from artichokes, among many other ingredients. Italians typically drink it over ice with a slice of orange. But it has found a home in many cocktails thanks to adventurous American mixologists who not only treat it as a supporting player, but also sometimes as the foundation of a drink. Such is the case with the Bitter Giuseppe, a creation of the Chicago bartender Stephen Cole. The cocktail calls for a full two ounces of Cynar. Though audacious in concept, the drink is easy to understand if you think of it as a Cynar manhattan. The lemon juice, lemon twist and extra bitters do much to lighten up the mixture, which is brighter and more buoyant than you might expect. A great aperitivo cocktail.
Our Lady of the Harbor
This twist on the Last Word substitutes Irish whiskey for the traditional gin, and uses a pineapple syrup (simply a mix of pineapple juice and sugar) in place of maraschino liqueur. The Chartreuse, despite being the smallest component in the mix, still asserts its herbal self, as Chartreuse tends to. Equally boozy, fruity and vegetal, the cocktail tastes like a whiskey sour that went to a Friday night garden party and decided to let loose a little.
Lunchbox
Edna Scott, the owner of Edna’s Club & Restaurant in Oklahoma City, came up with the lunchbox by accident while trying to make another drink, probably a boilermaker, according to her daughter Tammy Lucas. For such a low-brow cocktail, the instructions are very specific. The beer must be Coors Light, not another light beer. And the glassware must be ice cold. As for the orange juice, no need to squeeze it fresh. Store-bought juice is fine.
Pimm’s Cup With Muddled Cucumber
Pimm’s No. 1, a gin-based liqueur, is named after James Pimm, the bar owner who created it in the mid 1800s. By the 1860s, it was bottled. At one point, there were other “cups,” numbered 2 through 6, based on brandy, rum and other spirits. But the No. 1, a reddish tonic with citrusy and bitter notes, has always been the star, and it is not quite like anything else on the shelf. The Pimm’s Cup’s skeletal components are nothing more than a measure of Pimm’s and roughly three measures of either lemonade, lemon soda or ginger ale (your preference), served over ice in a long glass and typically garnished with cucumber.
Hotel du Pont Cocktail
This austere cocktail, as elegant and proper as the hotel it’s named after, has long been associated with the Wilmington, Del., landmark, which still stands. This version of the drink is served at Le Cavalier at the Green Room, the hotel’s new restaurant, which recently opened. It was devised by Tyler Akin, a Wilmington native and Philadelphia chef who is running the kitchen and is a partner in the restaurant.
Falling Leaves
Many cocktails that ask for nocino employ trace amounts, since a little of the liqueur goes a long way in terms of flavor. Here, Columbus, Ohio, bartender Travis Owens uses a full third of an ounce. The liqueur is prevented from taking over the drink by the assertiveness of the two Scotches and the strong, herbal quality of the Punt e Mes. This is a rich, potent nightcap that lies somewhere between a Rob Roy and a Boulevardier.
Gold Rush
The Gold Rush was created in the early aughts at Milk & Honey, the famed cocktail speakeasy on the Lower East Side in New York. It came to be when T.J. Siegal, a friend and colleague of Sasha Petraske, the founder of Milk & Honey, came in one night and asked for a whiskey sour. Spying a batch of honey syrup Mr. Petraske had whipped up for a different cocktail, Mr. Siegal asked for his drink to be made with that instead of sugar. The winning result, silkier and richer in flavor than the average whiskey sour, was soon served to customers.
Jimbo and Ginga
The lowly Mexican bulldog (a frozen margarita with an upturned bottle of beer in it) was the inspiration for this quirky variation on a whiskey and ginger highball. As with many of the bulldog variations created by Eben Freeman at Genuine Liquorette, a bar in Little Italy, the booze comes from a 50-milliliter mini-bottle and the mixer from the short can the bottle is emptied into. Don’t expect a lot of finesse from this drink; it is a highball, after all. But expect a little more fun than usual. If you can’t find a mini of Jim Beam, another light whiskey like Jameson will do.
Kentucky Mule
Larry Rice’s Louisville bar, the Silver Dollar, is all about whiskey. So its version of the Moscow Mule is bourbon based. Nothing complicated here, just good Kentucky whiskey subbed for the usual vodka. Ginger syrup is used instead of ginger beer, pushing the drink very close to whiskey sour territory, albeit one served under a mound of crushed ice.
Brandy Crusta
More than most cocktails, a properly made brandy crusta requires a little effort. Achieving an even sugar rim on a glass and paring a long lemon twist (known as a horse's neck) may take a few tries before you get it right. This recipe, to be used at the new New Orleans bar Jewel of the South, is not very far removed from the one first printed by the bartender Jerry Thomas in his seminal 1862 cocktail manual. Thomas credited the drink’s inventor, the New Orleans bartender Joseph Santini, who had his own bar named Jewel of the South. The resulting cocktail may look too beautiful to drink. But that’s what iPhones are for. Take a picture and get to drinking.
Ice Queen
Natasha David has served a wide variety of spritzes at her Lower East Side bar, Nitecap, since it opened in 2014. Some she delivered in the fashion of a standard cocktail — that is, chilled but iceless. Despite its name, that is the case with this bright and sparkling take on the classic daiquiri. Fragrant crème de menthe and the light flavor of the muddled cucumber give the drink an additional garden freshness.
Negroni Mela
This apple-centric twist on the Negroni comes from the bartender Jacques Bezuidenhout. He created it for the opening gala of the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, a bygone cocktail convention, and thus had the Big Apple on his mind. Wanting the drink to speak its native language, Mr. Bezuidenhout gave it the Italian word for apple.
