Category: cocktails

Cocktail of the Week: Garibaldi

Garibaldi

If you can cast your mind to September, and this blog, you might remember a post I made on the Grapefruit Garibaldi cocktail. I enjoyed that cocktail quite a bit, enough to look up the original and make a note to return to at some point. It took a little longer than I wanted. Vacation and New York City cocktails got in the way. So, what would be a perfect fall cocktail seems a little out of place as we move into the chill of winter! Oh well!

The Garibaldi is named after Italian General Giuseppe Garibaldi who played a pivotal role in the unification of Italy and is considered one of the country’s founding fathers. This drink takes its name from the popular historical figure’s red shirt and is inspired by its crimson ingredients. It is believed the cocktail was invented at the beginning of the 20th century, by mixing all-Milanese Capari with orange juice, the symbolic fruit of Sicily, where Garibaldi’s red-clad men landed in 1860 to liberate it and annex the island what would soon become the newly constituted Italian state.

Garibaldi
The ingredients

Garibaldi

  • 1 oz. Campari
  • 3 oz. Fresh orange juice

Fill old fashioned glass with ice. Add Campari and top with orange juice. Stir. Garnish with half slice of orange.

Garibaldi

This drink tastes as lovely as it looks. Sweet orange citrus with a slight bitter bite. I sat on my back porch last night watching the sunset sipping this drink hoping that through the act I might invoke an Indian Summer but it doesn’t seemed to have worked. Next time I’ll just have one in Sicily during the Mediterranean summer. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Cocktail of the Week – Staten Island

Staten Island

With the Staten Island my mixologist’s tour of New York City’s boroughs comes to an end. I’ve already “been” to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx and now that here we are at Staten Island I’m regretting it. I should have ended this series with the Manhattan or the Bronx. Really, anything but Staten Island, because this cocktail is a disappointment. (Friends in the know tell me that the ACTUAL Staten Island is also a disappointment so maybe this drink is true to its namesake.) It’s just a shame to end this series on a bad note.

Staten Island
The ingredients

Staten Island

  • 1 part coconut liqueur
  • 1 part pineapple juice

Stir together ingredients. Pour over ice into a highball glass.

Staten Island

I don’t know if there is much to say about this cocktail. It’s like a Piña Colada without requiring any of the special materials or tools that cocktails requires. a It’s sweet, cloyingly so and it tastes like coconut and pineapple. Depending on the size of your highball glass it is could also end up being very, very boozy. That’s about it really.

I wish there was more to say about the drink. I wish it was as enjoyable to drink as the Bronx or the Brooklyn, or ever the Queens. Comparing the Staten to the Manhattan would be too great an insult to the latter so I’m not going to. Staten Island might not be the best borough but it certainly deserves better than this…

Staten Island

Cocktail of the Week – Queens

Queens

I continue working my way through New York City’s borough’s this week (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island) with the Queens’ cocktail. The Queens most resembles a Perfect Martini, a martini with equal part of dry and sweet vermouth, that has had pineapple juice added to it. If you’ve been following the Burroughs cocktail you’ll also know that this cocktail is nearly identical to the Bronx, which happens to also be more popular as a cocktail, except having pineapple instead of orange juice.

Queens
The ingredients

Queens

  • 1 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. dry vermouth
  • 1 oz. sweet vermouth
  • 1 oz. pineapple juice

Fill shaker with ice cubes. Add all ingredients. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

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The Queens is a perfectly cromulent cocktail. Especially if you’re a fan of gin or pineapple… There really isn’t anything that makes it stick out though. It’s enjoyable but isn’t memorable enough that’d you’d order it at the bar. Or maybe it’s just unfair to compare it to the Manhattan? Probably unfair to compare most cocktails to the Manhattan. I do think some small changes would go a long way in making the cocktail more enjoyable the first among them are a little lemon juice and an egg white. The lemon juice would brighten the cocktail and add some depth to the drink and the egg white would make it silky smooth going down…

Queens

Cocktail of the Week – Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Sometime in the late 1800s the Manhattan had a cocktail named after it. A pretty good cocktail. At the turn of the century the Bronx also had a cocktail named after it. And at that point the borough of Brooklyn (it had been its own city until 1898) had to get involved. It too needed to have a cocktail named after itself. Eventually all five boroughs would have one (I’ll be doing all of them here…) The truth is that there have been many Brooklyn cocktails. All trying to live up, or really surpass, the Manhattan in taste and class. None have really come close, many have been very bad. The most popular, or the one that has lasted the longest, none of them have been particularly popular is the cocktail created by Jacob Grohusko. But much to the chagrin of Brooklynites is the fact that Jacob lived in Hoboken and worked in lower Manhattan… Despite all that it is the cocktail bearing the name of the beloved borough that has had the most staying power. Also, if you bother to look up all the alternatives it is the one that by far tastes the best.

Brooklyn
The ingredients

Brooklyn

  • 2 oz. rye whiskey
  • 1 oz. dry vermouth
  • 1/4 oz. Maraschino liqueur
  • dash of Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients with ice. Stir. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with cherry.

Brooklyn

Don’t try ordering a Brooklyn at your local bar, you’ll just end up having to describe the drink to them and then the bartender, well-intended or not, will invariably mess it up and you’ll end up with sub-par cocktail. Sadly, the fact is that the only cocktail a bartender will know out of the five New York City boroughs is the Manhattan. If you take the time, and money to make this yourself at home you’ll be pleasantly surprised! The Brooklyn is a delicious, warming and sweet cocktail that just can’t seem to catch on or match the polish of Manhattan…

But, seeing as Manhattan is the location of Wall St., my mom is from Brooklyn, and I come from a long line of unpolished blue collar workers I’ll take the Brooklyn every time over a Manhattan.

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