Welcome to Brad’s Corner

As patrons of New York’s most esteemed bars may well know, Brad Thomas Parsons can frequently be found perched at the corner seat of his favorite bars. Brad’s perspective on the world of bars and cocktails is renowned, and in this section of our humble site he shares some of his thoughts on the history and importance of cocktails in New York City.

Brad Thomas Parsons is the author of Bitters (which was the winner of the James Beard and IACP Cookbook Awards, and a finalist for the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards), Amaro, Distillery Cats, and Last Call (James Beard Award Finalist, Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award Winner), as well as the founder and writer of the substack newsletter, LAST CALL.

He received an MFA in writing from Columbia University, and his work has appeared in Bon Appétit, Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, PUNCH, VinePair, and more. He lives in Brooklyn.

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NEW YORK CITY & COCKTAILS

If you were to stick a pin on a map to mark the cocktail capital of the world, it would undoubtedly be New York City. When it comes to classic cocktails, the Manhattan and the Martini stand as fixtures of New York City cocktail history, just as the landmark Chrysler Building and Empire State Building are to the iconic city skyline.

Bartenders from some of the world’s best bars in London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, and Mexico City travel to New York every year to stage collaborative pop-up events at some of New York’s top bars–the equivalent thrill (and exposure) of a basketball player’s first game at Madison Square Garden. And just like the Garden’s savvy, streetsmart Knicks fans, New Yorkers know a thing or two about cocktails, and are loyal to their favorite bars and bartenders, whether it’s an elegant restaurant bar, a beloved neighborhood tavern, or a well-worn corner dive.

But the wealth of options and the extensive variety of bars we have to drink at now–from posh lounges with panoramic views of the cityscape to dimly lit cocktail dens spinning vinyl on hi-fi sound systems–should never be taken for granted. It took living through some dark times before the spark of the modern cocktail revival we’ve been experiencing (and thoroughly enjoying) for the past two decades to catch fire. New York is a fast-paced city that seems to always be paving over the past, but the bridge between what’s considered classic and modern life is often stronger than you think.

Jerry Thomas, considered the father of American bartending, ran several bars in New York in the mid-1800s and more than a century later, his 1862 book, “How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion” would serve as inspiration to a bartender named Dale DeGroff, who would would then lay the foundation for the modern cocktail renaissance in the United States that took hold starting in the mid-to-late 1990s.

DeGroff oversaw the bar at The Rainbow Room, high on the 65th floor of historic Rockefeller Center, from 1987 through 1999, earning the honorific “King Cocktail.” Inspired by recipes he was researching from long out-of-print cocktail guides, he rejected the canned juices and artificial syrups then used at most bars to instead squeeze fresh juices for the cocktails he was stirring and shaking up with a keen sense of craft and showmanship, helping introduce a host of reimagined classic cocktails to a new generation of drinkers and fellow bartenders alike.

Downtown in the East Village, Tadao “Tony” Yoshida opened Angel’s Share in 1993. His upscale, Japanese-style speakeasy focused on precise and carefully made cocktails and became an early pioneer of the craft cocktail movement, influencing many bartenders in the years to come. After closing in 2022, the acclaimed bar reopened at a new location in the West Village in 2023 where Erina Yoshida now runs the family business.

One of those people energized by Angel’s Share was Sasha Patreske, who would open Milk & Honey, a Lower East side, hidden-in-plain sight speakeasy on New Year’s Eve in 1999. In 2012, after Milk & Honey moved uptown to the Flatiron District, former Milk & Honey bartenders Michael McIlroy and Sam Ross opened their bar Attaboy in the original space, maintaining the no-menu spirit of adventure. Two of Ross’ most popular cocktail creations, the Penicillin and the Paper Plane, have become modern classics and appear on drinks menus around the world. Petreske and his partners went on to open many cocktail bar concepts around the world until his untimely death in 2015.

Two of Dale DeGroff’s most notable protégés were Audrey Saunders and Julie Reiner who would both go on to become leading figures in the modern cocktail revival. Saunders had been hired by DeGroff as the bar manager at the legendary Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel. Born and raised in Hawaii, Reiner worked in San Francisco before moving to New York in 1998 eventually opening the high-volume craft cocktail bar Flatiron Lounge in 2003. Two years later Reiner and Saunders would open Pegu Club, one of the leading cocktail bars in New York and beyond. Reiner would go on to co-own the world-renowned bars Clover Club and Leyenda in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and Milady’s in Soho. Between them, Saunders and Reiner created a number of modern classic cocktails that have stood the test of time, including the Earl Grey MarTEAni, Old Cuban, Gin-Gin Mule, the Little Italy, the Gin Blossom, and The Slope.

Other bars from those early years of the cocktail revival that are still going strong and remain pillars of the cocktail scene include PDT (Please Don’t Tell), the modern East Village where Jeff Bell (American Bartender of the Year 2017) now oversees the narrow bar famously entered from a phone booth in the hot dog joint next door, and where Don Lee first created the Benton’s Old Fashioned and Jim Meehan’s Mezcal Mule remains a top seller; Death & Co., which has continued to expand their footprint across the country; Employees Only in the West Village; and Dutch Kills, a Patreske project opened with Richard Boccato in Long Island City.

When it comes to modern classic cocktails created in New York, one early star currently experiencing a revival is the Cosmopolitan, first shaken up by bartender Toby Cecchini at the Tribeca hotspot the Odeon.

The pink-hued cocktail grew from a New York City-centric drink into a pop culture phenomenon a decade later when it became synonymous with Carrie Bradshaw and her friends on “Sex and the City.” While it’s not on the official menu at The Long Island Bar, the beloved Brooklyn bar co-owned by Cecchini, the bartenders are always happy to make you one.

From Brooklyn to the Bronx, the five boroughs of New York City have all been represented with a cocktail named in their honor, but the iconic Manhattan is forever emblematic of everything New York City cocktail life represents. The Manhattan even crossed its namesake bridge into Brooklyn where it served as the muse for a number of modern classics named after neighborhoods within Kings County, including the Red Hook (Enzo Errico, Milk & Honey), Greenpoint (Michael McIlroy, Milk & Honey), Carroll Gardens (Joaquín Simó), Bushwick (Phil Ward, Death & Co.), and The Slope (Julie Reiner, Clover Club).

Just like the culture of the city itself, New York is home to a new generation of cocktail bars, many heralded among the best in the world. Like Dante’s elegant interpretation of Italy’s famed aperitivo culture and celebration of the Negroni in New York’s historic Greenwich Village, or Amor y Amargo and their ever-expanding backbar showcasing the world of bitters and amari. In Lower Manhattan the award-winning Irish bar, The Dead Rabbit, the two-story compound mixes a casual pub downstairs with a more intimate cocktail den on the second floor. At Katana Kitten, Masahiro “Masa” Urushido high mixology is balanced with a keen sense of whimsy and in the casual atmosphere of a Japanese izakaya. And at Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you’ll experience sophisticated cocktails alongside icy platters of fresh oysters in an atmospheric bar that evokes both New Orleans and Paris.

THE NEGRONI

“A Negroni is a perfect drink as far as I’m concerned. It’s three liquors that I’m not particularly interested in… But put them together with a slice of orange. It works… That first sip is confusing and not particularly pleasant. But man, it grows on you.” –Anthony Bourdain

Italy’s iconic Negroni unites equal-parts of three botanical-rich ingredients–gin, Campari, sweet vermouth–into a spirited and bittersweet cocktail with undeniable transportive powers. It’s not only easy to make, it also serves as a template for endless experimentation, and its stylish red hue evokes la dolce vita no matter where you are.

Unlike a Martini where each person will typically call for a specific brand of spirit, simply ordering “a Negroni” will almost always result in a solid drink. But, like they say about pizza and sex, even when it’s bad it’s still pretty good.” There’s no such thing as a bad Negroni, but a well-made Negroni is a thing of beauty.

The key components are gin, typically a juniper-forward London Dry style; the classic Italian bitter, Campari; and an Italian-style sweet vermouth. You can build it right in the glass or first stir it together in a mixing glass over ice to bring the temperature down and add a bit of dilution before straining it into a rocks glass over a big cube of ice. The final flourish is an aromatic orange slice garnish. These three distinctive elements achieve a perfect balance and harmony, delivering an herbaceous, bittersweet through-line of flavor.

These days it’s not uncommon to swap out the Negroni’s signature Campari for another Italian-born or American-made red bitter, though some bartenders will claim that it’s not truly a Negroni unless it’s made with Campari – though despite the tremendous popularity of so many Negroni variations may beg to differ.

We have Gaspare Campari to thank for his signature red liqueur he created in Novara, Italy in 1860. By 1867 he opened Caffè Camparino in Milan at the Piazza del Duomo. When his sons Davide and Guido took over the family business, a Campari production facility was built in Sesto San Giovanni with key access to railway hubs which, along with decades of creative advertising campaigns Davide commissioned with artists and filmmakers, helped Campari travel throughout Italy and then the world.

While we have Campari to thank for his namesake bitter, it took a fortuitous exchange between two Italians in Florence one day in 1919 to bring the Negroni to life.

Since the early days of its creation in the 1860s, Campari was typically consumed with an equal pour of vermouth as a drink known as the Milano Torino (or Mi-To)–named for the respective birthplace of Campari and Italian sweet vermouth. By the end of the 1880s, many Italians adopted the practice of modifying the Milano Torino with a splash of soda water. Prohibition-era American expats took to the drink, which likely led to the drink’s name, the Americano, the sessionable highball that would lead to the more spirituous Negroni.

As with many cocktails, there are some details up for debate regarding the origin stories of the Negroni, but most roads lead to an Italian-born Count named Camillo Negroni. The well-traveled aristocrat, gambler, former cowboy, and fencing instructor spent time in the United States in the 1880s as well as England (where he likely became enamored with gin).

While Count Negroni was at Caffè Casoni (now Caffè Giacosa) on Via Tornabuoni in Florence, he asked barman Fosco Scarselli for something a bit stronger than the usual Americano. Scarselli replaced the drink’s soda water with gin, and swapped the usual lemon twist for an orange peel, and the resulting drink was christened in honor of the namesake count.

But due to Prohibition and World War II it wasn’t until the late 1940s and early 1950s when word of the Negroni traveled beyond Italy (one of the first in-print mentions of the Negroni is around 1947). But it’s certainly made up for lost time as the Negroni is now considered one of Italy’s most spirited exports around the globe, and in recent years has outpaced the Old-Fashioned as the number one most-ordered cocktail in the world. And for over a decade, each September bars and restaurants around the world celebrate Negroni Week, sharing some favorite Negroni variations, with a portion of sales donated to charitable causes.

Popularity in American Drinking Culture / Variations

The Negroni, hand in hand with the Aperol Spritz, have both served as sunset-hued beacons to the transportive power of Italy’s ritual of aperitivo. And while the Negroni doesn’t exactly fit the aperitivo model of bright, bitter, bubbly, low-ABV drinks, it has become symbolic of sprezzatura charm and captures the essence of what it means to drink like an Italian. The Negroni and the spritz both helped many Americans embrace, or at least engage with, the often divisive profile of bittersweet drinks.

Since the roots of the Milano-Torino, which lead to the Americano, the Negroni family tree has a history of multiple branches of the drink which continue to this day. Some classic examples include the Boulevardier (bourbon, Campari, sweet vermouth) and Old Pal (rye, Campari, dry vermouth), as well as the Cardinale (gin, Campari, dry vermouth) and Negroni Sbagliato (Campari, sweet vermouth, sparkling wine).

And this tradition shows no sign of stopping with some contemporary Negroni variations now considered modern classics, such as the Mezcal Negroni (mezcal, Campari, sweet vermouth), Kingston Negroni (Jamaican rum, Campari, sweet vermouth), and the Negroni Bianco (gin, Suze, Lillet Blanc).

Among the “Negronis Sessions” menu at New York’s Caffe Dante, you can taste a bit of history with a Negroni crafted from vintage 1970s spirits as well as their bestselling Chocolate Negroni (gin, Campari, Punt e Mes, cème de cacao, chocolate bitters), Mezcalito (hibiscus-infused mezcal, red bitter, dry vermouth blend, cherry heering), and their espresso-kissed Caffe Negroni (rum, Marsala, red bitter, coffee liqueur).

The 1:1:1 formula of the Negroni allows you to easily modify the primary ingredients to suit your palate (dialing up the gin in a 1.5:.75:.75 ratio is a popular twist for many Negroni lovers). Bartenders continue to modify the flavor profile and preparation methods of the Negroni in new-look takes, whether through barrel-aging, fat-washing, and fresh fruit infusions to adjusting the texture through carbonation, serving on draft, or as a frozen.

Just over a century old, the Negroni is a true classic that continues to evolve, presenting endless possibilities and continued inspiration.

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