Next month will mark eight decades since Fernand Petiot made his first Red Snapper at Manhattan’sKing Cole Bar。咬人的狗,当然,只是酒吧的名字or the cocktail that everyone else calls a Bloody Mary. And even if that’s not the exact moment the drink was truly born — as with all things like this, the origins are somewhat disputed — it was nevertheless a seminal moment in the birth of the Bloody Mary. And it’s still a truly great drink, when made correctly. The problem is that in the 80 years since Petiot first mixed his version of the drink, American bartenders have seemingly conspired to turn it into something truly outlandish andterrible.
Here is the King Cole Bar’s method, from bartender Louis Rodopoulos, who started on the job way back in 1955 andlearned from Petiot himself:
Two dashes of salt, two dashes of pepper cayenne pepper and black pepper. A couple dashes of Lea&Perrins sauce, and then squeeze a lime or two, and mix it all together. Shake it once or twice, then pour it into the glass with two and a half ounces of tomato juice and two ounces of vodka. You mix it all together, you put it into a highball glass, and then you put in the celerystick.
Sounds good. Nice and lean, a little bit of spice. Simple. No reason to mess with it. But people have been doing just that, and it appears we won’t be satisfied until a once-proud drink becomes a literal joke. Just today,this photowas trending onReddit:
Turns out this photo is actually an elaborate hoax created bya comedian名叫兰迪·利特克。但问题是that this joke Bloody Mary — complete with an entire second Bloody Mary as part of the garnish — isn’t all that different from the Michael Bay-ification of the cocktail that’s happening with alarming frequency out there in the real world. To wit: There’s a whole fried-chicken garnish in密尔沃基。There areadd-on crawfishandburgers, and evenonion-ring garnishesout there,too.
It’s been mentioned in this space before, but it’s apparently worth reiterating: Stop ruining a perfectly good drink. If you want to add a dash of celery salt, fine. Drop a pickle in as garnish, okay. Horseradish is an acceptable addition, too. But that’s it. Anything more and we’re back on the road to trying to get a whole pizza and this drink deserves to be treated better thanthat.
Related:This Colossal Bloody Mary’s Whole-Chicken ‘Garnish’ Needs to Be the End of ThisNonsense
