Straight Up Or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail

Front Cover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 16 Oct 2002 - Cooking - 208 pages
After exploring the proto-cocktails of the early nineteenth century, Grimes tracks the rise of the saloon and the bartender, and the spread of the American cocktail to Europe the golden age of the cocktail, from 1880 to 1920, when classics such as the Bronx, Manhattan, martini, and daiquiri came into being the Jazz Age and the subterranean world of the speakeasy the post-Prohibition lull and the Cold War landscape of cocktails that followed the strange efflorescence of a Polynesian-influenced lounge culture and the recent resurgence that has produced a wave of exciting new drinks. (The martini, of course, gets a chapter of its own.) The book includes about one hundred recipes-half of them new for this edition-for both classics and innovations.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2002)

William Grimes was the restaurant critic for The New York Times from 1999 to 2003. He is the author of Appetite City (NPP, 2009), Straight Up or On the Rocks (NPP, 2001) and My Fine Feathered Friend (NPP, 2002), and the coauthor of The New York Times Guide to New York City Restaurants 2004.

Bibliographic information