Origin myths are funny things. The cocktail has more of them than I can count, and most bartenders have their favourite. I used to be of the school that believed in the story whereby Antoine Peychaud would serve Sazerac cognac with his eponymous bitters in eggcups, or, in french, ‘coquetel’, and this was bastardised to […]
Category: Recipes
There’s a bunch of different families of drinks out there that have a lot in common…often you just swap out your base spirit and you’ve got a different cocktail; collins, sours, rickeys, flips, swizzles and so on. But there’s also what I like to think of as the bigger drink genuses, where we’re just looking […]
Following a Manhattans management retreat to Whitstable last weekend (oysters on the seafront, board meeting in the hot tub) we’re back in town and getting ready for the weekend. While we were away we did a bit of riffing on the menu and the result was The Little Hook. Somewhere between a Red Hook and […]
Time to talk about gin. And why the G&T is not just a cocktail, but a masterful cocktail. Cocktails are a simple thing, really; pretty much every time (there are exceptions, of course), you’re trying to balance 4 flavour directions; sweet & sour flavours, and strong & weak flavours. The gin and tonic is one […]
”Any guy who’d put rye in a mint julep and crush the leaves would put scorpions in a baby’s bed.” Irvin S Cobb A nice simple southern drink for the summery days (especially this humidity London does so well). As the esteemed Mr Cobb notes, the key here is treating your mint well; a […]
That’s right, I’m going to rescue the reputation of the Pina Colada in my first post. What?! Here’s how it goes. The only thing that’s coming out of a bottle is the rum. Fresh pineapple, fresh coconut, fresh lime. That’s it. No cream. No coconut milk. Please, again, no cream. You’re not going to make […]