A Southside at "21"

The "21" Club thinks its invented the Southside. It didn't. But you have to admire how they uphold the drink's honor.

The other day, I dined at the famed 52nd-Street eatery. I began my repast with a Southside, just to see if they upholding the standard well. I was eating with a regular, and she gently warned me against ordering one; the night bartender made them better (by which she mean sweeter). But I was in the mood and and I wasn't going to be back at dinner, so I went ahead.

I have no complaints about what I got. Beautifully refreshing and piquant, sweet enough for my tastes, and with more than enough ice to keep the chill on until I got to the bottom of the drink. (That didn't take long.) Nicely presented, too, the highball flecked through with pieces of muddled mint.

Why Hasn't "Mad Men" Exploited "21"

The AMC series "Mad Men," which is set in New York in the early 60s, has done a good job of mining the city's great restaurants and bars—both extant and vanished—for background texture. We've had mentions and scenes set in such bygone food and drink meccas as Toots Shor's, The Stork Club, The Pen & Pencil, Rattazzi's, Lutece and Chumley's. Of eateries and watering holes that still exist, we've heard from Keen's Chop House, The Four Seasons, P.J. Clarke's and La Grenouille.

What's missing here?

The "21" Club, of course. Around since the 1930s, a longtime favorite of businessmen with fat expense accounts, and just a hop, skip and a jump from Madison Avenue, where "Mad Men" ad agency Sterling Cooper is located, it's a natural. The show's characters should have availed themselves of the place's red-checkered tablecloths long before now and inhaled a Southside or two. You just know that Roger Sterling haunted this place at least twice a week, and probably had his own table.

So, what gives? I asked "21"'s longtime publicist Diana Biederman and she confessed that, indeed, she has been valiantly trying to coax the "Mad Men" people into giving the restaurant a cameo, or at least a mention, for some time now. But to no avail. Biederman sent the production people volumes of historical material about "21," including clear ideas on what the place would have looked like in the early '60s. Among those material was an image of the above artwork, which hangs in a private hall on "21"'s second floor. It's an illustration that appeared in Town & Country magazine in 1961, of a smartly dressed woman about to be seated in the bar room's second section, right underneath the bell. (That's J.J. Hunsecker's seat in "Sweet Smell of Success," by the way.) Pearls, gloves, purse, patterned topcoat with shortened sleeves—you could just see Betty Draper in that outfit, couldn't you?

Biederman thinks she may have came close at the end of the second season. There was a scene in the final episode—where Betty beds down in the ladies room of a bar with a stranger—that the publicist feels may have once possibly been intended as for "21." But, Betty sits at a stool, and Biederman had told the show that "21" did not have stools in the 1960s. (The loss may have been for the best. Sex in the bathroom? It's not really a "21" moment, is it?)

One thing we know for sure—with the third season almost over, there's no chance of "21" getting its due this year. Let's hope Matthew Weiner wises up and sets a scene there in 2010.

Two Southsides

I don't remember the impetus, but some nights ago I fixed myself a Southside.

I don't usually give the Southside much of a thought, except when I'm at the "21" Club, where it's the official drink. Don't know why. I guess I've always considered it a rather uninteresting refresher. Plus, I think it's association with bluebloods has hurt its rep. WASPs have never been known for their exquisite taste in comestibles. With them, the blander the better. So, their favorite cocktail must be a bore, right?

But I must have not had the ingredients necessary for anything more complex, so I made a Southside.

Imagine my surprise when I slurped up a dose of a superior libation. I loved the Southside I made. In fact, I was in love with it. I wanted another. Immediately.

So what happened? Well, first, the recipe I had used from from the Beverage Alcohol Resource, whose five-day intensive course I had taken in spring 2008. I had never tried the recipe before. When I gazed at the formula, I remember thinking: I don't remember the Southside being this complicated. Here's what I saw:

2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
2 lime wedges
1 ounce simple syrup
2 sprigs of mint
Soda

Muddle on of the mint sprigs with the limes, lime juice and simple syrup in the bottom of a bar glass. Add the gin and shake well. Strain into a goblet over crushed iced and stir until the outside of the glass frosts. Top with soda and garnish with the sprig of mint.

As I sipped and sipped, enjoying myself thoroughly, I thought: lime? Wait a minute. Is lime right? I checked in a couple other cocktail books. Sure enough: most specified lemon, not lime. And none of them said anything about lime wedges being muddled. Is that why I suddenly liked the drink so much—because it was a different drink?

So I decided to conduct a taste test. I'd make a Southside with lime, and one with lemon, and see which was better. I tried to keep the recipes as close as possible to one another. I used the B.A.R. recipe for the lime version, and a Harry McElhone one for the lemon. I used simple syrup in both, and the same amount of mint. However, I did not use wedges of lemon for the second; the wedge thing seems to be unique to the B.A.R. version.

So, what did I learn? I learned I like me a Southside cocktail! Honestly, the two weren't much different. By a very small margin, I liked the lime rendition better; the play or sweet and tart was more tantalizing, somehow. But I didn't dislike anything about the lemon drink.

Then, finally (did the drinks job my memory? Is that possible?), I remembered where I had first derived my sense of the Southside. It was from a pocket recipe guide from the Museum of the American Cocktail. It called for lemon juice, and no ice at all. And it was served up, in a Martini glass.

The Cocktail Chronicles informs me that the drink I've been liking is actually a Southside Fizz. OK. I'll accept that. But why does B.A.R.—a group of guys that ought to know their stuff—call it a plain Southside? (Others do, too.)

I wonder what I'd get if I ordered a Southside at "21"?

Like many cocktails with a long past partly shrouded in the mists of time, there seems to be a lot of variation with the Southside. Just know this. If you're playing host to me and I ask for a Southside, I want the once with the ice.