The Lounge Lizard is an old term for an habitue of cocktail lounges, an idle man who haunts establishments frequented by the rich or fashionable. Not an endearing term, to say the least.
The apogee of the cocktail was in the Nineteen Twenties, when the high life was in vogue. Drinking cocktails was a mark of leisured luxury. Maybe in those days, the idea of spending time in a cocktail lounge wasn't frowned upon. It seems like something invented, maybe, in the 1940's or '50's, during the gritty noir, progressive jazz era, when soulful self-destructive hypnotic degradation was deemed "cool."
In any case, here's my latest creation, dubbed The Lounge Lizard--a sophisticated, elegant drink poised between sweet and dry, smooth and edgy.
Recipe:
2 parts straight rye
2 parts Drambuie
1 part Southern Comfort
1.5 parts fresh lime juice
shaken hard and served up
By the way, for those who don't know, the only way to serve cocktails is as cold as possible. The glass should be kept in the freezer compartment for at least 5 minutes before filling, and the drink should be shaken hard for at least 50 strokes before pouring. Ideally, there should be tiny fragments of ice in the drink, to enhance its bracing, frosty character. Anytime you order a drink at a tavern, and they send it out luke-warm or room-temperature, it's almost certainly a mistake. Make'em re-do it!
Amazing: in all the bottles around this place, most of them between a quarter and two-thirds full, liqueurs of every hue and cry, gin brandy whisky vodka, bitters and such, you've hit on a concoction whose ingredients aren't with a two-hour walk. I guess I'll have to pass on this, at least until I get to a bar. I'll put it in my memo app and ask for it, not by name, by recipe.
ReplyDelete