This is a drink that I serve to guests who are new to the whole cocktail thing. Nobody has ever claimed not to like it — but some of them might have actually hated it, who knows? In any case, Jen and I are big fans:
The Bronx Cocktail:
1 1/2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
1 oz. fresh-squeezed orange juice
Stir on ice, serve straight up with a cherry or orange peel garnish
According to wikipedia, the Bronx cocktail
was ranked number three in “The World’s 10 Most Famous Cocktails in 1934”, making it a very popular rival to the Martini (#1) and the Manhattan (#2).
That’s high praise!
The “origin stories” of these classic, pre-Prohibition cocktails are usually controversial or contested, in line with the maxim about success having many fathers. One of the claimed originators was a hotshot New York bartender named Johnnie Solon, who claimed to have invented the drink on the fly, in response to a wager between customers. He claimed to have chosen the name because
I had been at the Bronx Zoo a day or two before, and I saw, of course, a lot of beasts I had never known. Customers used to tell me of the strange animals they saw after a lot of mixed drinks. So when Traverson said to me, as he started to take the drink in to the customer, “What’ll I tell him is the name of this drink?” I thought of those animals, and said: “Oh, you can tell him it is a ‘Bronx’.”
Did people in those days really hallucinate animals so often? Science sadly affords us no means of discovering the truth.
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The stories, whether true or not, are definately part of the fun. We had another Side Car tonight and find them absolutely delicious. Mom