Ah, the Hemingway Daiquiri - one of nature's perfect cocktails

This thread is for intelligent cocktail lovers only - you Appletini or Malibu Rum or Peach Schnapps or "(liqour) and Coke" drinking proles can go to some other thread.

What are your favorite legitimate cocktails?

I have a few that are in my common rotation of favorites. Of course, there are many more legitimate cocktails than this, which is why I ask the question "Which are your favorites?"

Mine are, off the top of my head:

Martini (of course)
Aviation
Hemingway Daiquiri
Stinger
Negroni
Floridita
Petit Zinc
Sidecar
The Bronx
Pimm's Cup
Pink Gin
Moscow Mule
French 75
Bellini
Vesper
Drink With No Name
Monkey Gland (and yes, you "Amaretto Slammer" and "Sex on the Beach" college morons, this is a LEGITIMATE cocktail, so don't get snarky)
Caipirinha
Mojito
Lemon Drop
Maiden's Prayer

O8)

4 parts gin, 2 parts vodka, and 1 part Lillet Blonde

Yummy!!

And refreshing - a great summer afternoon on the balcony looking down on the black cars of Park Avenue picking up the executives kind of cocktail.

is always nice.

I love Moscow Mules - my Dad used to drink one on very hot days after mowing the lawn.

secret ingredients?

:hide:

what, pray tell, is the recipe for the Hemingway Daiquiri?

6 parts light rum
3 parts lime juice
1 part Maraschino Liqueur (good luck finding that! Took me three years of hunting around NYC to find a liquor store that had it, and then two years later I found a second store)
1 part red grapefruit juice

what about his Havana beverage - a mojito? Legit?


oops edit to say I see it in your original list. I agree.

the marachino liquer sounds like a quest! And I really am having a martini, straight up, two olives, shaken, if you know what I mean.

the marachino liquer sounds like a quest! And I really am having a martini, straight up, two olives, shaken, if you know what I mean.

but after prohibition, it didn't come back into popularity. The big drink of the 20s was The Aviation, which calls for Maraschino Liqueur, and right now, the Rainbow Room is one of the few places in which one can be guaranteed to be able to get one, at least as of a couple years ago (but it's changed hands, or somehow changed, again recently...so it might not have maraschino liqueur any more).

But please note: do not confuse Maraschino liqueur with the disgustingly sweet maraschino cherries. The Liqueur is made in only a very small region in Italy (and I think there are only two makers), and it's a dry, not sweet, cherry flavored (though very subtly flavored) liqueur.

I do love a challenge. My newest quest!

I prefer them dry, made with Jack Daniel's 'Gentleman Jack', and just a drop or two of bitters.

I find gin more disgusting than scotch, and despise the same foo-foo drinks you do (Appletini? What kind of lame shit is that??).

I used to drink Jack in college, and haven't touched it since... meaning no offense to Jack, but I've just been afraid of it ever since.

:-)

I do like Manhattans, though!

And I *love* scotch and even more so love gin.

It took some time for me to appreciate the really good ones. But I rarely ever venture there. The finer ones have a subtlety not found in other varieties of liquor. Has to be neat, or not at all!

I think my love of Jack is tied to the deep Tennessee roots on my Dad's side of the family. In all the years I have enjoyed it, it never made me sick, nor seriously hungover. It must fit my metabolism or body chemistry. (That's not the soundest theory, but it was enjoyed on a level playing field with everything else in my college days, lol).

If someone were to serve me blended scotch, I'd ask for something else. Of course, if blended were all they have, I'd never be so rude as to deny it, but of almost all types of possible drinks, a blended scotch is one of my last choices.

And I think there is something to be said about liquor that comes from one's heritage - genetically, I think our bodies are set for the type of alcohol that is indigenous to the area in which our genes cames from. Not to say that our genes modified themselves to the alcohol, but that our ancestors finally settled on a liquor style that was appropriate for our genes. Epsecially considering that, over the last 500 years, those of us of European descent have ancestors who didn't really travel outside their geographic area, and so have a few hundred years to perfect food and drink that was perfectly right for our bodies.

It obviously isn't that it doesn't have a stupid name. (Is it okay to post here if I drink vodka and cranberry juice, as long as I don't call it a "Cape Cod"?)

and this thread is about cocktails; BUT, you didn't call it a Cape Cod, so that is in your favor. :-)

A legitimate cocktail is a cocktail that a) doesn't have a stupid name, and b) is a classic and/or a new one that follows the rules of the classics.

And that means: it's a mix of on liquor and at least one other liquor or liqueur. It might also have freshly squeezed fruit juice, some other kind of non-alcoholic mizer, and possibly even more than one other liquor or liqueur. AND it also needs to have a complex taste, it can't taste like candy (it needs to have still the taste of the alcohol), and should be something that one sips, not slams.

Any drink that is one liquor + one or more non-alcoholic mixers is a mixed drink.

So, Long Island Iced Teas and Martinis are cocktails (though the Long Island Iced Tea is not a classic cocktail, since it disguises the taste of the alcohol).

Rum and Coke, or Vodka and Cranberry Juice are mixed drinks.

when I used to slam Midori Sours. :-)

I used to drink those constantly. I still love them. And Apple Pucker.

I'm such a trashy drinker. I can't stand wine very much and only drink Rum or vodka in mixed drinks.

tequila
cointreu (spell?)
lime (or lemon or combo)
touch of simple syrup if citrus is too tart
shaken with cracked ice

NO FREAKING BLENDER

salted glass

But yes, the unblended ones are legitimate!

And tasty!

A Brandy Manhattan are those legitimate?

And of course, we must also take into account that there is no ONE Old Fashioned - that's a name that covers a HUGE variety of drinks in America, as I have disocvered over the years travelling all over. Even within Wisconsin (my used to be home state), there is a HUGE variety, and one never knows what one will get. In Nebraska, they were awful. (So was my Martini, but that wasn't because of Nebraska, that was just because of an ignorant illiterate bartenderess who didn't know her asshole from a billboard advertising Doan's Pills and she served my "straight" Martini neat, the whore). Old Fashioned in NYC depends on the bar one is at, Wyoming is different than Nebraska is different than South Dakota is different than LA is different than MI (and like WI, it depends in MI on where one is)...

I like a Southern Comfort Old Fashioned with a wheel of orange and a maraschino cherry, with bitters, pestled sugar, and a splash of soda water, which is almost impossible to find anywhere outside NYC, since almost no one has soda water except NYC.

I think it was brandy, I know it had the cherry and the orange. It was smooth with a warm after taste. Yum!

I usually don't like the sweeter cocktails, but this one is a keeper.

Especially at that awesome Cuban restaurant on 51st.

Fuckin' EH!

A couple Mojitos and the Paella, then finished with some serious coffee - a perfect evening!

if you can find the perfect Paella, let me know.

The Cuban place on 51st.

I wish I could remember the name.

miss N.Y.C. Maybe I'll find something here. As I said, it's a quest.

Fucking EXCELLENT Cuban food. Of course, this is high end pricey Cuban food, not Cuban peasant food.

http://www.victorscafe.com/index2.html


If you want EXCELLENT peasant Cuban food, go to the Cuban place at around 108th and Broadway. La Rosita is the name. I can't remember the location exactly, but 108 and Broadway is pretty fucking close. They have a black bean soup that is fucking to die for.

I've heard of it already!

It's excellent!

Regis loves it.

And the Dave Letterman show gives gift certificates to Victor's.

So, even though it is sort of in the "popular venue" and on the edge of "trendy", it actually is brilliantly good food - it's GODDAMN GOOD FOOD!

It's popular and trendy for a reason.

It was nice to have some rapport with one of the good-time-feeling old timers again!

:D

I'm a gimlet man, myself. Or in summer, a Pimms Cup man.

I fit in with the old guys at the hardware store. ;)

You rock, Robb!!

Chambord + Frangelico + Cream :shrug:

:hide:

No I don't want a sugary fruit slush (although they have their place)

I want lime and rum on ice, maybe lightly sweetened.

I was in a restaurant/bar once, and it was "margarita night", and I said, "I'd like a Cuervo Margarita, please" and then got into an argument with the waitress, and then the bartender, because they couldn't make a Maragarita with Cuervo because "they" (meaning "margaritas") arrive at the "restaurant" "pre-made".

I said, "Look, I don't care about whether it will cost me the one dollar you are charging for the 'pre-made' shit, I just want a good margarita made from Cuervo".

They said, "We can't do that".

Even though they HAD Cuervo behind the bar, it was obvious this restaurant chain (it was "Sergios", by the way), hired ignorant piles of shit as bartenders, and only served "Cuervo" as "shots", apparently.

but regular Cuervo is not tequila. Tradicional is a Cuervo tequila and it is ok for mixing.

as for Pre-made margaritas :puke:

So they didn't even have freaking lime juice (or even sour mix) and triple sec? Why did they need a bartender? Couldn't they just rig up a serve yourself soda fountain?


I have gone as far as ordering a shot and somethign to mix it with and making my own drink at the table :rofl:

how about the cocktail he describes in "Islands In the Stream" (no, *not* the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton ditty)?

If I recall correctly, it's a concoction of the water fresh from a coconut, gin and lime juice.

I tried it once back in my bad, old "hemingwayesque" english major days in college. It was labor intensive, but not half bad.

Can't remember the name.

1 clean, empty glass. Mix and enjoy.

so my favorites are perhaps a little dated, and perhaps remembered a little better than they actually are.

Singapore Sling
Grasshopper

and two that I still get regularly, but as the virgin ones:

Strawberry Daiquiri
Pina Colada



But one we used to make ourselves, which are only for people who can stand a little extra sugar in their diet, was the "Gutterman." It combined Kahlua and lemon-lime Gatorade.

I don't even order drinks anymore - bartenders don't know them so I just play DD.