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The Modern Old Fashioned, as Tootell calls it, isn't on the regular cocktail menu. When you order one, tell them South sent you.
The old fashioned is new again at Savannah’s favorite British pub.
There’s a certain percentage of the population that will always associate the Old Fashioned with the mid-mod ’60s aesthetic of Mad Men. But when you’re picturing Don Draper throwing back cocktails, you’re probably not picturing the bartender wiping down a glass with the same rag he just used on the counters. And you definitely don’t want to picture the bin of dirty ice cubes.
“Back in the day, the reason bartenders used lemon twists was basically to make the glasses cleaner, in a way. We’re not in the world anymore,” said Gareth Tootell, bartender at Churchill’s. “The idea of taking a lemon, an orange and a cherry and muddling it with a really great whiskey nowadays, to me, is old hat.”
The Modern Old Fashioned, as Tootell calls it, isn't on the regular cocktail menu. When you order one, tell them South sent you.
Modern hygiene has, instead, led to a modern take on the Old Fashioned, one that doesn’t hide behind a lemon peel. Ask for a Modern Old Fashioned at Churchill’s and you’ll get Old Overhalt Rye Whiskey, with just a Damerara sugar cube, Angostura and orange bitters, a splash of club soda and peel of orange. No diffusing factors, no coverups. How very modern.
“For me, the Old Fashioned is one of those cocktails that should have changed more than what it has over the years.” thebritishpub.com
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