[ul]
[li]Daquiri[/li][li]Martini[/li][li]Old Fashioned[/li][li]Manhattan[/li][li]Jack Rose[/li][li]Sidecar[/li][/ul]
Now, I’m sure you know how to make the first four, but the last two I had never heard of.
Bonus - what is the significance of these particular six drinks?
I just ordered a sidecar last week, at a very busy bar inside a huge casino. The waitress had never heard of it.
I looked up the history of the sidecar after I had it. I think those are all among the drinks in the first ever book of cocktail recipes. That may be the whole list, in fact.
How many bartenders know how to make a Snow Shoe?
Sidecars are one of my favorite drinks, and from experience, most bartenders don’t know how to make them, and most bars don’t even have the ingredients (fresh lemon juice is key).
I ordered a Screaming Viking the other day. The new bartender had never heard of it, but the young kid behind the bar knew how to make it, and even bruised the cucumber for me (slightly).
Are you sure you didn’t get a Laughing Swede?
No, Screaming Viking! Screaming Viking! Screaming Viking!
It’s been a long time since I was a bartender, but I knew how to make all but the Jack Rose.
As to how often they’re ordered, it depends on the bar.
I’m not a bartender, but I knew all of those except the Jack Rose. I’m surprised that the sidecar is not known by bartenders. It doesn’t strike me as a particularly oddball drink (as opposed to a Screaming Viking, whatever the hell that is. ;)). Looking up the Jack Rose, it appears to be an applejack-based drink. Not many bars I know stock applejack. (Off the top of my head, I can’t name any.) I need to give it a try one of these days (both applejack and Jack Rose.)
If you’re going to give applejack a shot, the best out there is Laird’s.
Know them all save the Jack Rose - which I suspected had applejack but I wasn’t sure. My bar doesn’t have it and no one has ever asked for it.
The rest are common base drinks that are really essential to know. At my work, which is a fine dining restaurant that also does events, the Manhattan is the most common drink on the list, followed by Martini and Old Fashioned.
Daiquiris and Sidecars never really come up - although I do like to order a Remy Sidecar from time to time. Most bars, as one poster correctly mentioned, don’t really have the fresh lemon juice it calls for and so they’ll substitute with sour mix or something - decent in a pinch but not quite right.
On a related note, it’s funny the drinks that become popular for a night when I’m bartending a wedding. One time, I made about 25 Nuts & Berries drinks - I suppose one independent thinker ordered it and people saw it and wanted to know what that creamy drink was all about. Another night the big drink was the Harvey Wallbanger - another oddball old-school cocktail that’s mostly fallen by the wayside.
Ugh, not to me. Sour mix is not the same as fresh lemon or lime juice, and is far from “decent”. I’ll order something else if they use sour mix.
My wife was involved in a hunt to find a bar that could make a Jack Rose in Washington DC. The intrepid duo at the head of this effort finally found an barkeep at the Mayflower Hotel who could do it, but had no Applejack. They brought some in, and he whipped them up.
The six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks(1948).
Not a bartender. My take:
Daquiri - You make a “real” one. Them: “No! That’s not a daiquiri! Where’s the banana!? Make it again!” Kinda similar to margarita (the non-frozen kind), but most people don’t know/expect that.
Martini - spit “Where’s the vodka!?” A bartender should ask, and not assume one or the other. Even if there really is only one way. :dubious:
Old Fashioned - more popular as of late. Isn’t it in Mad Men or some show?
Manhattan - common enough, has a girly connotation now, when it really shouldn’t be. Not exactly cloying.
Jack Rose - bartender: “a what?”
Sidecar - I’m gonna guess that Wisconsin bartenders know what you’re talking about, otherwise some but not all can do it. Probably more than 50%.
Sour mix - I would rather have sour mix than a poorly mixed and proportioned homemade lemon+simple syrup. And lime juice+anything is no substitute for Rose’s. They both work in different places. I mistakenly asked a kid for a gimlet. It was way too sour.
I assumed they were from that book. I wasn’t 100% sure about Jack Rose, but knew it was at least something similarly obscure today.
A daquiri or a Slush Puppy with rum?
I haven’t been called that since high school.
Did she try Jack Rose in Adams Morgan?
I guess it depends on the size of the cucumber.
No-it’s how you use it.