It’s rude to the other patrons who are also paying for their drinks who now have to wait for ten minutes while the bartender mixes your fruity concoction.
My friends and I order bloody marys all the time at night. Although it’s usually at 4:00am when we’re eating a late-night breakfast.
This is why I drink beer. It’s simple, easy, and I’ve never pissed off a bartender ordering it. I’ve had some snooty wait staff look at me funny, probably because beer wouldn’t have been their choice to go with whatever I ordered. But at a bar, I keep the bartenders happy.
Eegh! That should have been an Old Fashioned, not a Manhatttan. :o
Normally, when you order an Old Fashioned, they’ll make it with a pre-mixed syrup. Bleh. But if the bartender knows what she’s doing and isn’t busy, they’ll muddle it by mashing a sugar cube, bitters, lemon, orange, and a maraschino cherry in a pour of bourbon, using a muddler (looks like a tiny baseball bat). Kind of sweet for my taste, but much improved over the syrup version.
As an aside, when I looked up the recipe online, I found the strangest array of recipes, including one calling for Scotch whiskey, another calling for lime instead of lemon, and most leaving out the cherry. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
I normally order Jameson (or Black Bush), neat, for a similar reason; there’s no way to screw it up. I’ve had so many poorly made vodka martinis, manhattans, and (once) even a lousy vodka gimlet (vodka and RLJ over ice…how hard is that?) that unless I know the barstaff I’ll stick with straight liquor. But then, that’s my standard nightcap anyway, and it’s a good compliment to sitting in a quiet nook or snug and reading a book as I often do at The Good Luck.
Stranger
When is the time or place to order a muddled old fashioned?
A slow, lazy Saturday afternoon is a good time. I always think of it as being a Southern drink; hence, bourbon, not Scotch whiskey or (Og help us!) rye, is the base liquor. It’s a Big Easy, or maybe Savannah, GA, type of drink.
That being said, I wouldn’t order it at all. Too sweet for my taste. I had one a few years ago in Milwaukee; I ordered a Manhattan, but the bartender got so excited that I responded to his “Scotch or bourbon” question* with, “Uh, bourbon. Of course.” that he lost his head and started to muddle up an Old Fashioned, so I tried it. Meh. But he did give both me and the Irish girl a spill of some well-aged private stock (not being a bourbon enthusiast I couldn’t tell you what) and was generally very entertaining as we waited for our table.
Stranger
*Apparently, at least in Wisconsin, people come in and order a Manhattan made with Scotch. Uh, guys, that’s a Rob Roy, not a Manhattan. :rolleyes: You might as well order a Cuba Libra without the lime, or a Gibson with olives instead of onions.
Do you remember where in Milwaukee you were served that?
As a long time manhattan drinker I have noticed that many bartenders don’t know what one is and will just make something and hope you don’t say anything.
And in Wisconsin it is probably more likely to be a brandy manhattan, this state drinks more brandy than anywhere i have ever seen.
Regarding Bloody Marys:
When I bartended, people could order them anytime but if it were nighttime, what they got wasn’t as good a drink as they’d get during the day. That’s because every place I worked made Bloody mix ahead of time. One, it takes a lot of ingredients that come from the kitchen and are not stocked at the bar; and two, Bloody mix benefits greatly from having time to sit and have all the flavors blend together and mature a little. If we ran out by dinnertime, we didn’t usually make another big batch until the next day.
If people ordered them at night and we had run out of mix, I’d offer to make one individually but I’d always warn them that it wasn’t going to taste just like the establishment’s regular Bloodys. If they were okay with that, it’s no more problem to make one of them than to make a strawberry daquiri from scratch. It’s just not going to taste as good. If they want to pay anyway, okay by me.
My local sort of specializes in Bloody Marys, so it’s not a big deal to order one. That’s mainly due to the fact that the bar does their own flavored vodkas, and uses the jalapeno pepper one in the Bloody Marys. So no, it’s not a pub foul in my opinion and experience, but I think one should be sensitive to the time it might take the bartender to make one on a busy night. I agree with others who’ve said that a more labor- and time-intensive drink warrants a larger tip; it seems only fair to me.
Spot on. As a waiter in SW Wisconsin, I was taught that when a customer requested a Manhattan, you asked, “Brandy or whiskey.” It was hilarious, because the out-of-staters looked at you as if you were absolutely nuts for asking.
What is a brandy Manhattan? Is it brandy instead of bourbon?
I don’t remember the name, but it was an Italian restaurant that was (as I recall) at the corner of 2nd and Wells.
It is absolutely bizarre how much brandy those people drink, and we aren’t talking about Napoleon and Courvoisier; they drink the bottom of the barrel, plastic bottle, nuclear fallout hangover crap for $2.99 a liter. Ug!
But they do have a few good microbreweries (including the excellent Sprecher, which has a great tour–I try to do that every time I’m in town) and I rather miss the East Side/Riverwest and my lake view. 
Stranger
Screwing up a vodka gimlet? That bartender flunked intro to dumbass. I can even make them well when I’m half slammed. 
Mauvaise: those were my thoughts exactly.
Yes, although I always thought a “real” Manhattan was whiskey, not necessarily just bourbon.
In the same vein as the OP, I used to work with a older woman who would get all bent out of shape every day at lunchtime when I ordered iced tea, when it wasn’t summertime.
The first time I did it, she gave me a look like I’d asked for foaming yak piss. She made these little sniffing noises and acted like I’d made some huge breech of conduct.
I asked her what was wrong and she told me pretty much the same thing; ordering iced tea any time other than summer “simpy wasn’t done.”
She was genuinely appalled that I would drink iced tea all year round.
Hey Stranger, I just happen to be a brewer at a Milwaukee brewery, email me the next time you are coming to town and I’ll arrange a tour, if you’re interested. Or we could go to a bar and mock them for not having vermouth bianco for a “perfect manhattan”. It’s always nice to meet up with an experienced drinker.
I think he must have confused the vodka with the lime juice. It was like drinking a really sweet limeade with a hint of lighter fluid.
I really wanted to take the tip back, but he already grabbed it. I instead pointed out his error and asked for a vodka over rocks instead.
Stranger
I tended a restaurant bar for 3 years that catered to an older crowd. Old fashioneds were the bane of my existence. But I never once thought about getting snooty about it or discouraging a customer from ordering one. My customers paid my bills, fer cries-sake.
In a later incarnation, while teaching at a university, the faculty in my department loved going to a certain watering hole. I think it was because there were practically no students there because the drinks were overpriced and the service sucked with a capital Uck! Staffed by unkepmt arty types who cared nothing about chatting with their pals at the end of the bar while folks waited at the tap.
After about a year of putting up with that crap for the sake of others, I stopped going there altogether unless it was, say, a going-away party for a very close friend.
I agree with those who say, if you get crap from a bartender, screw 'em, go someplace else.
There is absolutely no etiquette against drinking a bloody Mary at night. If you want a glass of sour mix neat with a splash of bitters and a twist in a pint glass, the only acceptable response is “Coming right up.”
So I like screwdrivers (vodka and orange juice). Is that a hard to make drink, ala a daquiri, or is is more like a 7&7? Just curious. Everyone’s usually a beer drinker, so my drink comes after theirs. It is because it’s a snotty thing to ask for or because the waitress gets the beers and the bartender has to make my drink?