Sometimes a spade is best left a spade, with no gewgaws, just a quality build.
INGREDIENTS
Serving: 1
1 ounce green crème de menthe, preferably Marie Brizard
1 ounce crème de cacao, preferably Tempus Fugit
1 1/2 ounces heavy cream
Garnish: shaved chocolate
DIRECTIONS
Combine all ingredients in a mixing tin and shake with ice.
Strain into a Nick and Nora glass.
Garnish with shaved chocolate.
I’m not generally into this sort of thing, but even I wouldn’t turn down one of Dale’s Grasshoppers once in a while. Just look at Lizzie’s photo—SOLD!
Even Dale’s current version has grown up a little, though. This takes me back to the tiny bar at Beacon around 2000, where @AudreySaunders would sometimes turn out Grasshoppers in giant V-shaped cocktail glasses. I think she used that chocolate “magic shell” syrup to decorate the inside of the glass. At least that’s what I recall. This was many years ago, and I drink.
I haven’t thought about Grasshoppers in decades. Once, though, they represented a full quarter of my understanding of the world of cocktails, one comprised solely of Grasshoppers, 7 & 7s, Brandy Alexanders, and Scotch on the Rocks—and perhaps also that mysterious baseball bat bottle of Galliano that nobody ever used. When allowed the occasional sip from my parents’ glasses, there was no question that I was a Grasshopper man.
In recent years, I’ve mainly encountered the Grasshopper as a rite at Tujagues when I’m in New Orleans—a rite I generally beg off of, because… well… they just aren’t that good, there.
I’ve always enjoyed the Tujague’s Grasshoppers, at least when Gustings was making them. Heis version used to be far simpler than the one in the article, though–equal parts creme de menthe, creme de cacao, cream, and VSOP cognac, IIRC, and shaken with ice.
There’s no way in hell Tujague’s invented the drink, though, as a quick glance at the 1908 Cocktail Bill Boothby will prove.
I learned something from that tasting about Gustings’ Grasshopper. He dry shakes it, which makes some sense in a hot climate like New Orleans. Since the drink was cooler than the air around me at Tujague’s, it tasted cool enough. But, that same method, executed in colder New York, does not work. The drink was room temperature and just came off as odd.
The recipe Gustings provided was the one from his second tenure at Tujague’s.
That’s definitely not how he used to make them at Tujague’s fifteen years ago, when I first started drinking them there. There was ice and no dry shake. It was a simple drink; normal, except for the addition of the good cognac. Perhaps it wasn’t so very mixological, but after two or three Sazeracs standing at the bar and watching him fence with the customers (“Why aren’t I smiling? Show me what your face looks like when you’re at work.”), it really hit the spot.
@slkinsey and I have been separately iterating on the Grasshopper based on the axiom that anything crème de menthe can do, Branca Menta can do better, with the sole exception of making a drink green.
As is our inclination, we have also been heading in the direction of making the drink a bit more “adult”. The spec I’m currently enjoying is this:
0.75 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1 oz Branca Menta
0.5 oz Brizard crème de cacao
0.5 oz Varnelli Caffé Moka
1.5 oz cream (or half-and-half or whole milk)
0.5 tsp macha
the Rittenhouse provides a spine without imposing itself too much; I’m sure cognac would work fine, too
the Varnelli Caffé Moka is a little esoteric, but it’s also a lot more interesting than simple crème de cacao; one could certainly omit it and bump up the crème de cacao to 1 oz; if you haven’t tried the Varnelli, keep an eye out for it
I think cream, half-and-half and whole milk all work fine
the macha is mainly just there to make the drink green, it works, and it does add some flavor of its own; totally optional; you could also use a green food coloring
Won’t Tempus Fugit cacao make it a mess visually? True, their cacao and menthe are top notch, and I’d rather drink a brown one using those two picks than using MB green and its food coloring and more of a single note regardless of the cacao choice, but it needs to be green to the eye.
My version has Rittenhouse, Varnelli Caffé Moka and Branca Menta in it, and those three are all brown spirits. Once you get the dairy in there plus something suitably green, the drink will be green or at least greenish. Personally, I too prefer greenish to garish.
We made a modified and potent one at Peacock Alley for years. All I would have to do is send one to a table and the room would soon be lit up with pastel green cocktails, especially post-theater. It was also one of my lone run-in’s with management creativity-wise when I named the original, modified rendition a “Bionic Grasshopper”, Corporate sent some young manager down to to tell me to change the name, that it was “too cute”, whatever that meant. This was like 2006 or 7. So I complied. It lives now in memory and print as the “Jaded Grasshopper”. See what I did there?
