The Best Cocktails You’ve Never Heard of, According to Pro Bartenders
Cocktails are there and then they’re gone—it’s part of their romance. They leave behind glasses that need to be washed, recipes in old books, and a hangover if you’re not cautious, but these are distant echoes. For all the effort and care that a good mixed drink requires, the most important part might be the memory it leaves—and thus the possibility it might one day be drunk again.
When the Cocktail Revival kicked into full swing in the early part of the 21st century, bartenders became archivists of a kind, rescuing old mixed drinks from the fog of history. But beyond the endless negronis and manhattans that flowed from that wellspring, a slew of legendary bartenders began cutting their teeth on their first original cocktails as well.
Some of these new drinks, deeply informed by the period’s neoclassicism, were taken up by fellow bartenders. Scribbled on bar napkins or jotted in iPhone Notes, these drinks would later be pulled from memory during their own shifts, spreading from bar to bar and town to town across the country.
These days, when so many excellent cocktail recipes are easily accessible with nothing more than good service on your phone, the cheap recipe notebooks we used to cram into our back pockets seem very quaint. I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy realizing that some of those secret-handshake, in-the-know drinks that were part of an underground canon in that exciting era of revival are as ripe for reconsideration today as some pre-Prohibition drinks were during the golden years of the cocktail renaissance.
In the spirit of those salad days, I hit up a bunch of bartender friends for some of their favorite back-pocket drinks—the cocktails the professionals love to recommend and recreate when you’re going off menu. These drinks are the cult favorites, the hidden gems, and the desperately appreciated recipes we’ve borrowed from some of our most admired peers.
You might not find many of these recipes on bar menus nowadays, but they’re drinks beloved by a few people who know what they’re talking about. And here’s some good news: In order for these cocktails to have easily traveled from bar to bar, they had to be easily duplicated, at least with the mise en place of the average cocktail bar. It’s nothing you can’t recreate at home in 2023 with a little mindful effort.
These are drinks for people who want to branch out and find something else to do with that bottle of Campari they bought. They’re for people who miss the days of bartender’s choice, which has fallen out of fashion in much the same way as some of these drinks. They range from quite simple to fairly fiddly, and they call for a gamut of spirits, but this list isn’t supposed to be the end-all of anyone’s back-pocket compendium. These are just a few choice recipes recommended by veterans of the industry—so that when the time comes, the perfect drink will be tucked away in your own back pages.
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Photo by Joseph De Leo, Prop styling by Anne Eastman, Food styling by Judy Haubert1/10Prizefighter No. 1
The Prizefighter No. 1 is what’s called a smash—part of a 19th-century family of cocktails that usually incorporate muddled lemon and mint. Smashes are a little uncommon these days, which helps bartender Nicholas Jarrett’s fernet-meets-sweet-vermouth smash from his time at Brooklyn’s Clover Club feel even more fresh and original. Sweet vermouth usually plays second fiddle in a drink, but here it stars as the base alongside pungent fernet. This drink’s moderate ABV makes it sessionable and somehow bright despite the bitter and wine-focused base.
My friend Matthew Bellanger (presently the bar manager of Death & Co in Los Angeles) recommended this drink, and I couldn’t agree more with this pick. In fact, this was the cocktail I had in mind when I came up with the idea for this list, and its creator is one of my favorite bartenders. The original Prizefighter was never a trend or craze, but a really lovely, unique drink that never became the modern classic it deserves to be, despite being loved by many of Jarrett’s peers.
This is a perfect drink to introduce to friends who are looking to wander off the beaten path, and it’s a wonderful introduction to the rustic style of the smash family.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman2/10Archangel
My old boss and cocktail mentor Alex Day is a partner for cocktail empire Death & Co., but he’s long been a proponent of drinks from another iconic downtown New York cocktail bar. It was from his spec sheets I cribbed the Archangel recipe nearly 15 years ago, along with a host of other Milk and Honey modern classics. Not all of these are as famous as the Penicillin, but fame isn’t the only metric of quality, especially not in the world of mixed drinks.
Richie Boccato and Michael McIlroy invented the Archangel together in the aughts at the influential downtown cocktail haunt. Essentially a martini with the vermouth swapped out for Aperol, it might seem like a dicey sell—but it’s brought together by the deft addition of muddled cucumber. The Archangel remains austere and boozy, but with a perfect and subtle balance of citrus and vegetal flavors that’s ideal for someone looking for an elegant but unusual drink.
I’ve come back to this drink many times over the years and made it in many different bars. It even inspired a cocktail mash-up of my own when I combined it with the Black Manhattan in my Black Angel.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Micah Marie Morton3/10Gunshop Fizz
Drinks are ephemeral, but it’s clear that the really good ones can inspire the next generation of drinks from the people who live to make them. Don Lee, cocktail consultant, educator, and famous PDT alumnus, points to the Gunshop Fizz as his direct inspiration for working with cocktail bitters “by the ounce instead of just dashes.”
The drink was published in Kirk Estopinal and Maks Pazuniak’s 2009 Rogue Cocktails, where the two also adapted one of the drink’s inspirations: Charles Baker’s Angostura Fizz. Instead of the darker bitter mainstay, however, they reached for New Orleans’ Peychaud’s bitters—the stuff made famous by the Sazerac cocktail—and created a tall, refreshing cooler that tastes like nothing else. It takes more than a little inspiration from that other Big Easy classic, the Pimm’s cup, and with swaths of citrus and muddled strawberry and cucumber, it’s probably the most fiddly drink on this list. But the juice is worth the squeeze if you’ve got a friend you want to impress with something a little more prog rock than punk rock—and you happen to have some Sanbittèr you’re dying to use.
Photo by Lizzie Munro4/10Jasmine
“Have, like, 1,000 people said ‘the Jasmine’ already?” Toby Maloney asked me. But of the 30 or so bartenders I solicited for favorite underappreciated cocktails, the Violet Hour partner and author of The Bartender’s Manifesto was the only one to single out bartender Paul Harrington’s modern classic.
This 1990s gin daisy riff is wonderful to splash together when you’ve got a bottle of Campari just begging to be used. The drink’s blush color is striking and makes the Jasmine feel friendly, despite the Italian spirit’s reputation for bitterness. Here it plays more like an accent, similar to a few hearty dashes of bitter. The Jasmine offers a bright burst of a citrus made more intriguing with all the prickliness that good gin and a bit of bitterness bring to the table. This cocktail helped pave the way for the many modern classics in the aughts across the country, but few are as simple and perfect.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman5/10Salmoncito
Still got more Campari to burn through? Khristian de la Torre’s Salmoncito cocktail has become a popular favorite throughout Mexico City since it debuted at Maison Artemisia around 2013. That’s where bartender Jane Soto, who works with me at Brooklyn’s Jupiter Disco, first came across it and added it to her notebooks; years later, she brought it with her to New York City, where she still recommends it today.
The only highball on our list, the Salmoncito is a more beautiful gin and tonic, gone blush with both Campari and fresh grapefruit juice. The latter is the perfect foil for this bitter two-ways cooler, and the original drink calls for a grapefruit supreme that’s carefully placed on the top of the glass. According to the drink’s originator, this is the eponymous salmon, leaping over the ice of your refreshing beverage.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman6/10Siesta
Still looking for more Campari drinks? Don’t worry—craft bartenders from the aughts got you. Jessica Gonzalez, currently the beverage director at Wildflower Farms in the Hudson Valley, recommended this Flatiron Lounge cocktail from Katie Stipe. The Siesta is ostensibly a spin on the Hemingway daiquiri, but with tequila in lieu of rum and Campari standing in for maraschino liqueur. Campari sure has range!
But of course it does. Give the Siesta a spin next to the Salmoncito or the Jasmine and you’ll see just how distinct this drink is. Look how far and in how many directions talented barfolk can tease and twist an ingredient to do new tricks.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman7/10Bow & Arrow
When Nate Dobson, head bartender at Banzabar at Freemans in New York City, recommended the Bow & Arrow cocktail, I was very happy to see my old friend Scott Teague represented on this list. Scott and I worked for several years together and I never got enough of his warm, quirky humor, his positive vibes, or his cocktails.
The Bow & Arrow hits his style succinctly. A lime and pineapple sour, it’s built around a common cocktail bar ingredient: cinnamon syrup. With an unusual split base, however, the drink is refreshing but a bit of a sucker punch, pairing bourbon with mezcal, an intriguing match of woody whiskey and subtly smoky agave.
This is a recipe for people who are looking to see how interesting things can get with ingredients you might already have in your kitchen. If you’re shy on flaming cinnamon tincture for this one, just garnish with a healthy helping of good humor as per Scott’s instructions in this modern classic.
Photo by Lizzie Munro8/10Art of Choke
“What’s amazing about the drink is the way it comes together even though the recipe reads like it won’t,” says Freddie Sarkis, chief cocktail officer and cofounder of Liquor Lab. Craft bartenders love it when they can’t imagine how a drink’s going to taste by reading the recipe, and Kyle Davidson’s Art of Choke might be the epitome of pleasant surprise in cocktail form.
This modern classic was born at Chicago’s Violet Hour before making its way through a number of bartender’s notebooks and eventually ending up in 2009’s Rogue Cocktails. Building a stirred, boozy drink around white rum and Cynar is a bold move by any standard, but highlighting anise-forward green Chartreuse and stirring in small amounts of lime juice and demerara syrup really double down on breaking the rules. In the end, the vegetal, spirituous drink is easier-going than you’d think it would be, and it’s the perfect recommendation for a friend who wants to get weird.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman9/10Hot Lips
The Hot Lips from Jessica Gonzalez was recommended by Jane Soto (she gets two picks on this list because she knows good drinks), and as someone who spent a few years making this drink at its home bar, Death & Co. in New York, I can attest to its status as a customer favorite.
The Hot Lips is an early example of a stirred drink with fresh juice, like the Art of Choke. In the case of this spicy agave drink, however, it’s not a little dash but the sort of pour of lemon you’d find in a sour—and with pineapple to boot.
This drink is built from components that were around in the mise en place at Death & Co. at the time, before it was taken by Gonzalez to the NoMad Hotel, where it remained a popular favorite. Ingredients such as vanilla syrup and spicy tequila aren’t as common in the home bar as they are at the contemporary cocktail bar, but not everything needs to be easy. With a little planning and effort you can recreate this crowd-pleaser.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert, Prop Styling by Anne Eastman10/10Hot & Heavy
For the last cocktail on this list of gems, I’m choosing one of my personal favorites, because I can.
The Hot & Heavy was on the menu when I first arrived at Pouring Ribbons, the now-defunct East Village cocktail bar that created a Voltron-like assembly of cocktail luminaries. They worked so closely together on their menus that when I went back to ask them about this drink, several of them had difficulty remembering who exactly had done the original version.
But I did! I even married her!
Jade Brown-Godfrey invented this spicy agave smash during the first year the bar was open and served it to me several times before I ended up working there the following year. By then, the Hot & Heavy had rotated out of the constantly evolving menu, but I never forgot the perfect blend of mezcal, reposado tequila, and hot honey. As a fan of all things heavy, I couldn’t resist. This is a drink to remind you that things can be ephemeral but still have weight.
