You blow into town, any town, while traveling for business, all you need is a drink to take the edge off the terrible flight. After dropping off your luggage in your hotel room, you make a beeline for the hotel bar, sidle up and order a Manhattan, served up. The bartender obliges, no problem, and you’re back on cloud nine.
You and your date have time to kill between dinner and movie showtime, so you swing by the local pub for a pre-show nip. He orders an Old-Fashioned, and you get a Negroni. “Coming right up,” says the barkeep.
You’re planning a huge party and want a simple, easy signature cocktail you can batch up for your guests. While at the liquor store, a sales associate recommends mixing up French 75s, so you scoop up some gin, bubbly and lemons, ready to get the night started.
What do all these scenarios have in common, besides booze? All of the cocktails are classics, as easy to say as your name, and just as easy to mix up.
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But what makes a classic cocktail classic? And how does a bartender’s creation enter the same pantheon? We want to find out, which is why the baiduhai Food & Dining team is hosting the Chicago Cocktail Classic, to seek out legends in the making.
Classics like the previously mentioned are classics because they are known by bar pros and consumers alike. Order a mule, and you know what you’re getting. Same with a swizzle, a sour, a martini — all bartenders worth their salt know the basic structure of a classic and can customize it to their liking.
Modern classics operate similarly, becoming truly classic when they leave their bar of origin. Take the Penicillin, created at Milk & Honey in New York before traveling to London, Paris and Japan, a living, breathing phenomenon that has spanned the globe.
Taste, and time: These define classics new and old. Taste, because of course a cocktail has to be good to be memorable enough to ask for by name — what if the Manhattan tasted like kitty litter? It would be relegated to the dustbin of history rather than celebrated as a hallmark of drink culture today. Time, too, figures into the equation because classics have an air of mystery, their origins lost in urban legends and bartender lore. For instance, the bloody mary itself has multiple origin stories, while in the case of the Penicillin, creator Sam Ross still has the occasional guest tell him, to his face, it’s a Prohibition-era drink when, in actuality, Ross created it in 2005.
As the Tribune Food & Dining section celebrates all things Chicago this month, we got to thinking: Where is this city’s version of the Manhattan, Singapore Sling, or Old-Fashioned?
Chicago’s claims to fame in the cocktail world are the Cohasset Punch and the Chicago Fizz, but these are hardly household names — have you ever ordered either at a bar and the bartender knew off the top of his or her head how to mix one? Which raises the question: Are there cocktails being served in bars around town with the makings of a modern classic, hiding in plain sight?
This is where we turn to you, Chicago’s esteemed mixology professionals. Have a classic in the making? Food & Dining is hosting a contest to honor a homegrown cocktail that will, with time, luck and enthusiasm, become ingrained in cocktail culture alongside the greats.
We encourage drink pros, mixologists and bartenders to submit their cocktail recipes and try to one-up their fellow barfolk in some friendly cocktail competition.
The rules are straightforward — simplicity and flexibility are paramount — but beyond that, it’s anyone’s game. Want to showcase local distilleries or mix up an ode to your favorite sports team? By all means, fire away. We want to see the creativity the drinking community has to offer!
As you mix your entry, feel free to share and follow #TribuneCocktailClassic — share your process or entry with other bartenders on social media, or if you’re an enthusiastic bystander, track down your next sip. The finalists will be judged by the F&D team in a blind tasting in the Tribune test kitchen with beverage professionals, and at the end of the contest, a classic-in-the-making will be crowned. Will it be yours?
For rules, entry form and details, click here.
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