Japanese Cocktail

Japanese Cocktail Story

The Japanese Cocktail was one of Jerry Thomas’s few storied off-the-cuff riffs that ended up becoming very popular among discerning, adventurous drinkers and, of course, Japanese diplomats. In 1860, members of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States stayed in New York City’s Metropolitan Hotel, just a stone’s throw away from Thomas’s bar on Broadway. The mission’s seventeen-year-old translator, Tateishi Onojirou Noriyuki, who had a bit of a party boy reputation, is thought to have frequented Jerry Thomas’s bar along with the rest of the delegation. That's where the bon vivant bartender presumably crafted an old fashioned-style cocktail with an unconventional twist: using orgeat and brandy in tandem to produce a creamy, nutty libation. His recipe called for an unusually high dose of Boker’s bitters, which lent the drink an assertive and confident backbone that made it stand out from the standard old fashioned cocktail.