06/03/2012
The Cosmopolitan Cocktail Story
Once I found that my name was listed in Wikipedia and knowing that my close friends have wanted me write my story in my own words, I have decided to share with you the true story of the birth of the Cosmopolitan Cocktail. I am the person who possesses all the answers to the unanswered questions about the cocktail and the one who created the original drink. I'll try to clear up all of the misconceptions and rumors about the drink in the story that follows.
The story of the Cosmopolitan is not as much a story about the drink as it is a story about my life, and thus, it a story that I have been reluctant to share. Many people would like fame, but if you ask anyone with it, they will tell you it is not entirely what one desires. Even though I have been reluctant, because I’ve enjoyed my anonymity, I have been compelled by others to tell this story and I will let you judge it for yourself.
In the summer of 1975, my ex-college roommate called me and asked me if I wanted his job as a bartender in a restaurant in a small suburb west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The name of the suburb was Golden Valley and the name of the restaurant was the Cork and Cleaver. I was excited about this opportunity because at the time I was a student at the University of Minnesota. Tending bar in a restaurant seemed to be the perfect fit for my class schedule. I quickly agreed to come to the Cork and Cleaver for an interview.
On that day I was a little nervous, but I had done a lot of public speaking in High School, I was a student leader, and I was always confident of myself. I wasn’t just the student council president; I was the founder and first president of the Suburban Conference Student Council that represented thirteen high schools and twenty-two thousand students. I hadn’t just sat before my high school principal and had been reviewed and been given the stamp of approval from all thirteen high school principals. I was, no doubt, the boldest kid in the school.
I arrived at the restaurant at the appointed hour and was interviewed by the manager and the assistant manager. I thought that the interview went very well and I looked forward to the news about the job within the next week. A few days later my friend called me to tell me that I would not be getting the job. Wow! I was really crushed and asked my friend why. Then he said, "It’s because you are black". Immediately my friend and I broke into laughter.
I had grown up in a suburb just like Golden Valley. It was called Roseville. In Roseville, Minnesota, I was the only black student in my school of fifteen hundred kids, and I had been the only black student in my schools since I was in the fifth grade. My friend laughed because he never thought of me as being black, but just another upper middle class suburban kid. I laughed because even at my young age, I had experienced so much discrimination that I wasn't surprised to face it again. Well, I thought that was the end of the story.
About a week later I was stunned to receive a phone call from the bookkeeper at the restaurant. She called to tell me that she was upset and embarrassed with the decision that the mangers had made. Then she told me that the two managers were going out of town for a wedding in Fargo, North Dakota. It was their hometown and they would be gone for four days. She explained that I had four days to become a good bartender. Did I want the job?
Well, I thought for less than a minute and said yes. I think that most of you who read this story will think that it would be crazy to take a job where you knew from the start that neither of your bosses wanted you there. But I had the courage to face this challenge, as I had done many times throughout my years in the suburbs. I thought that this would be no more difficult than any of the experiences I had had in my past.
In the three days I had before I went to work, I memorized nearly all of the most popular drinks in Mr. Boston Bartender's Guide with the hope that I would not be stumped by any requests. Along with some coaching from my ex-roommate, I was confident of my beginning bartending knowledge. The drinks that are popular now are very different from those in 1975. Many people have come up with many new drinks over the last thirty-five years, yet it seems that the Cosmo has international recognition, something that to this day amazes me more than anyone else.
I got behind the bar and was greeted very kindly by the clientele and the staff. They found my character was not unlike my ex-roommate’s. But then came the fateful day when the managers returned. My schedule included some day shifts. I will never forget the look on manager's face when he came around the corner to see who the new bartender was and there I stood. Without saying a word, he immediately turned around and went back to the office. I knew that the bookkeeper was catching hell for hiring me, but I went about preparing the bar for the lunch shift. The manager had come in late and we were just about to open. Well, that shift was just like the last two. No problems or complaints.
During my first shift I went through extensive training. The cash register was the biggest challenge. The waitresses and waiters were very happy to see that I knew the drinks they requested and the speed at which I could make them. I only had to ring up drinks for the customers at the bar, so the register was no problem. That shift went along without incident. The manager had nothing to say to me at all that day.
One of the popular drinks when I hired was the vodka gimlet; simply vodka with Roses Lime juice. Then someone added Triple Sec. It turned out that one of the most requested drinks the summer and fall of 1975 was the Kamikaze. One evening while I was experimenting with drink recipes and thinking about the Cape Cod, (vodka and cranberry juice) I put a little cranberry in a Kamikaze. It tasted great. It was a 'pink looking' martini. I had very few customers at the bar that evening, and a regular customer who was close to the ’well’, where I had made the drink, looked at me and said, "Neal, what's that?" I sort of stuttered and said, "I don't know what it is". I explained that it was a Kamikaze with a little cranberry. I immediately stuttered again and told him, "I thought it needed a little color." He realized that I was making a joke about how I had been hired; the staff had told some of the regulars the story about the managers. Then he joked, "Oh, how cosmopolitan", and I replied, “Ok, that's what we'll call it- "a Cosmopolitan". Prior to creating the drink, I drank mostly Bourbon.
From that point on when customers came in to the bar and asked me what they should have, I would always suggest a Cosmopolitan. When I went out for drinks I would always order a Cosmopolitan for myself. The bartenders would look at me and say, "What's that?" I would casually reply, "It’s a Kamikaze with a little cranberry". They would say: "Oh, yeah", like they knew what the drink was. I inevitably laughed under my breath because I knew that they didn't have a clue. They then would make the drink for me. Some were really good and some were awful; which is still true today.
I kept my job at the Cork and Cleaver for nearly two years.
Then, in the fall of 1977, I became a Congressional intern. I went to Washington and was still drinking Cosmopolitans. Always the bartenders would ask, "What's that?" and I would tell them "It’s a Kamikaze with a little cranberry" and inevitably they would say: "oh, yeah", like they knew what the drink was. It got to be quite funny to me. Well, at some point during that fall, Congress took a week's vacation. I took advantage of that week and traveled to Boston to visit a high school classmate who was attending Harvard University. While in Boston I ordered my drink several times, and then drove down the coast to see another classmate who went to Yale. I was fortunate to go to the trendy bars and restaurants as I traveled. As it were, I had one more stop to make to see a friend of the family that lived in Manhattan. When I went to parties I would often drink Scotch and water, but when we went out on the town, I ordered Cosmopolitans. Later that fall, during Thanksgiving, I went to Atlanta to visit another college roommate, and he was actually the mutual roommate of the one that got me my job at the Cork and Cleaver. He had been a waiter there when I was hired. My drink followed with me to Atlanta of course.
In 1979, after working for the State House of Representatives in St. Paul, Minnesota, I moved to San Francisco, California. I became a waiter and then a bartender. There, I once again would suggest the Cosmopolitan to customers. By that time I had had enough Cosmopolitans and would only order them when I went out to new establishments. In 1982, I was on the opening staff of a restaurant called the Elite Café. This is was there that the drink was discovered by many San Franciscans. By 1985, I was working at another very popular place called the Fog City Diner. It was at the Fog City Diner in 1987, that I began making the Cosmopolitan with Mount Gay Rum. At the Fog City Diner I became known for the ‘Barbados Cosmos’. Neal’s Barbados Cosmopolitan was placed on the drink menu at the restaurant BIX when it opened in 1988.
By this time I had traveled back to Minneapolis, out to Chicago and further east to New York City again, down to Barbados, through Miami, to Dallas, and Denver, up and down the west coast from San Diego to Seattle and even west to Hawaii. I would always order Cosmopolitans and then move on to drink something else. I sort of felt like Johnny Appleseed because I knew that the bartenders with whom I had shared my drink would make it for their customers long after I was gone. The place I enjoyed introducing my drink to the most was the Lime Light in New York City in 1987.
In 2000, some fellow named Ben from the magazine G.Q. called and said he had talked to bartenders all over the country who claimed that I created the original Cosmopolitan. He asked if I would tell him the story about how it was created. I assured him that I was the fellow that had concocted the original Cosmo, but that the story was of a personal nature. Because the story was about the discrimination I had faced in my youth, I was reluctant to tell it even then. I explained to Ben that here in San Francisco I was known for the Barbados Cosmos made with Mount Gay Rum. He said that he knew that, that he had tasted one and that it was a great drink. I looked at the phone receiver and could not believe that some guy in New York had tried the Barbados Cosmos. It had been three years since its conception and I had not been back to New York within the last four years! I realized then that drinks go viral and morph. I first told the true cosmopolitan story in 2002.
Along the way, I created many other drinks, none of which became popular except in restaurants where I created them as their designer cocktails, they were generally served only in that establishment. By the late 1980’s, I had become a bar manager, a restaurant consultant, and general manager working in a score of restaurants over the years in the Bay Area. Although the cocktail became popular in San Francisco, and then in New York City, I truly believe that it was the TV show “Sex in the City” that drove the cocktail to its international fame.
Many people have told stories about the creation of the drink. This is my story, the true story of how the Cosmopolitan was created and how it traveled from one coast to the other and then back again.
Some think that the Cosmopolitan is a type of Martini, yet that is because of the name of glassware. The cocktail stem glass is often referred to as a martini glass. Bartenders know this stemware as a cocktail glass. The Cosmopolitan is in the family of drinks called sours. It is closely related to the Margarita or the Whiskey Sour. Some have speculated that the Cosmopolitan was created in a gay bar because it was pink and in a triangle shaped glass. Some think that the drink was created in Provincetown, but I believe that it caught on in Provincetown once I introduced the d**k to the bars near Harvard in 1977. Yet others believe that the drink was created in the twenties, but indeed it came after the Kamikaze, thus after WWII. I believe that the Kamikaze was created in 1974. There are others that believe the Cosmopolitan originated in New York or Miami. All these claims are false. I'm consistently amused by all these rumors. I continue to see the Wikipedia page changed to suit the whims of the want-to-be creators, but their stories are about how they created a version of the original cocktail and they don’t know how the drink got its name.
The irony of the story, for me, is that the managers of the Cork and Cleaver in 1975 have to live with the knowledge that the bartender that they didn't want to hire created one the most popular drinks of the last quarter century. The symbolism behind the drink is that in the last thirty-five years the United States has become more cosmopolitan. The drink fit the era in which it was created. The color, the name, the cocktail glass, and the flavor all came together to make it something that many people of varied backgrounds have enjoyed. Even though I have not sought fame, I think that it is important to publish the story as a historical milestone.
In the book Viva Vodka by author W. Park Kerr, published in 2006, his research led him to write, “…around the mid-1980’s Julies Supper Club in San Francisco was serving a drink called the Cosmopolitan”; with which I agree. I introduced the Cosmopolitan to Julies Supper Club. After the drink became popular at the Elite Café in 1982, the drink was served at Julies Supper Club in the SOMA district of San Francisco and The Blue Light on Union Street before The Fog City Diner opened in the summer of 1985.
In the book The Art of the Bar by authors Jeff Hollinger and Bob Schwartz, also published in 2006, their research led to the discovery that the Cosmopolitan was first created in a steak house in Minneapolis. Let the myths be dismissed.
I want to thank all who have helped me make this cocktail popular and those who have made innovative variations. And special thanks go to Toby Cecchini, who popularized his version of the drink at the Odeon in Manhattan in 1987. I hate to disappoint the International Bartenders Association, but it was Toby’s version that used citrus vodka. The first Cosmopolitan was made with Gordon’s vodka and Leroux Triple Sec in 1975. Later in the 1980’s when flavored vodkas became popular, bartenders made their versions with different flavors and used Cointreau and fresh lime juice as substitutes for the original drink.
In Toby’s book, “Cosmopolitan, a bartender life”, he explains that he did not create the original drink, but that his co-worker traveled to San Francisco and discovered it there. He states that she was introduced to the drink at the Life Café, but most likely it was the Elite Café. His co-worker didn’t get the recipe right, but as a good bartender he figured it out and made it popular in the “Big Apple’, when all along it started out in the ‘Mini Apple’ many years before.
Creator and Author
Neal Murray
[email protected]
