Some Favorite Cocktails: The Sidecar

I made some new friends recently and had them over for drinks for the first time. I didn't know much about them but I knew exactly which cocktail to make for them: the Sidecar. It's the perfect cocktail when you want to make something fancy but you're not sure what kind of drinkers your friends are (of course you're assuming you're friends are drinkers; if not I guess you can have a double for yourself). The Sidecar is sweet (but not too sweet) and lemony enough to appeal to most palates but the the cognac (or cheap brandy...) makes it sharp and complex enough to keep it interesting. In this sense it's actually quite similar to a well-made Margarita.

When I was living in Chicago briefly, in the fall of 1997, Jessica and I went to the opening of a new bar (name and location since forgotten) that was one of my first encounters with the classic cocktail revival. In celebration of the new establishment they were serving free Sidecars and their own very tasty take on a Gimlet (which maybe I'll describe in a later post). Both were made with fresh citrus and served in cocktail glasses laced with confectioner's sugar. That's more sweet than I tend to like things these days but at the time it was a revelation and the evening as a while was one of the key events that set me on the path to being the cocktail-obsessive I am today.

Making a Sidecar is easy. My version is something like:

2 oz cognac (or decent but cheaper brandy... I use Raynal's sometimes)
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1/2-3/4 oz Cointreau

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass and garnish with a lemon twist. (Confectioner sugar rim optional but fun once in a while.)
Incidentally this is the same ratio I use for a Margarita, obviously replacing cognac with tequila blanco.

If I haven't already written it elsewhere, I think the key to good "sweet" cocktails is to underdo it a bit with the sugary liqueurs like Cointreau. Read more!

La Perdida cocktail

In the spring of 2005 Jessica held a release party for her graphic novel, La Perdida. Her father hosted a party for her and his wife asked me to create a Perdida-themed cocktail for them to serve. The obvious choice would have been to do a margarita type of thing but since this was a special occasion taking place in an apartment on the Upper West Side, I decided to go for something classier. The first thing that came to mind was to do a champagne cocktail and I quickly settled on a variation on one of Jessica's favorites, the French 75 (this is the closest to the version I usually make; I've never tried it with orange bitters but that of course sounds interesting). Kathleen printed up cocktail napkins with the recipe printed on it so I don't even need to type it up!


The party was a hit and everyone got really drunk. Classy. Read more!

The Happy Hooligan

I've invented quite a few cocktails, some worth remembering, others just improvisations of the moment. I do have a few though that I'm happy enough with to want to share. One of those is the Happy Hooligan, named in honor of Frederick Burr Opper's wonderfully iconic tramp character from the Sunday papers (when is someone going to gather and reprint that stuff? It's past due!). I tried to come up with something that might have existed at the turn of the last century, so gin was the obvious choice for the base liquor (and in any case it's always the bottle I reach for first!). I tried to keep it simple and classic: some lemon juice, sugar, and a few dashes of Angostura Bitters to finish it off. I liked the cocktail so much I made a comic out of the recipe (click to enlarge for a legible version):


Feel free to print this out and take it to your local drinking establishment! Read more!