queen's road

1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Orange Juice
1/2 oz Honey Mix (1:1 Honey:Water)
1 1/2 oz gold Puerto Rican Rum
1/2 tsp (1 barspoon) Ginger-Infused Simple Syrup
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Earlier in the day on Sunday, Andrea was at a bridal shower where she brought the fixings for virgin Ginger Bellini Punch (recipe is in this month's Imbibe magazine from Preggatinis the book). When she got back from the event, she was in the mood for cocktails and I set off to search for a drink to use the surplus ginger-infused simple syrup she had made for this punch. The first book I grabbed was Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari which did indeed have a few ginger simple syrup-laden recipes. The one we chose was the Queen's Road Cocktail; the book provides the following history, "As served in the Mandalay Bar of the Colonel's Plantation Beefsteak House, cerca 1958. Created by Donn Beach sometime before 1941, when it first appeared on the Hollywood Beachcomber's menu."
Ingredients-wise, we had to made two substitutions. First, we did not have oranges or orange juice, so we punted with some pink grapefruit juice. And second, we did not have a Puerto Rican rum (save for the Bacardi 151 which I use for bitters making), so we went Nicaraguan with Flor de Caña. The drink itself was very citrusy with the honey contributing a bit of flavor. The ginger syrup was somewhat detectable and added to the complexity along with the Angostura bitters. The ginger either needs to be upped or the ginger needed to be grated or slice thinner to extract more flavor during the syrup making process. Or perhaps, the hint of ginger was all that Donn Beach wanted in this drink and the syrup itself is indeed the correct strength.