little italy

2 oz Rittenhouse Rye
3/4 oz Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth (Cocchi)
1/2 oz Cynar

Stir with ice, strain into a coupe, and garnish with a cherry.While typing up the In Cold Blood, I made a note that I ought to finally write up the Little Italy here on the blog. The recipe appears here most notably in a post where the bartenders at Drink in 2009 had hollow Kold Draft ice cubes that they filled with Cynar and entrapped it by freezing it in with water on top, and I suggested a Manhattan that turned into a Little Italy with the ice melting over time. I had my first Little Italy prior to my blogging here when Kevin Martin poured us a round of Little Italys at Eastern Standard in 2007 (as documented in a note on this post), and it was time to enter it into the records. Therefore, I reached for Robert Simonson's Modern Classic Cocktails for the recipe. Robert cites 2005 as the year that Audrey Saunders created this neo-classic at the Pegu Club, and he included a bit of history with Audrey's quote of, "We were drinking Manhattans right then [over dinner at Raoul's in NYC], and I wondered what one would be like if I substituted Cynar for the Angostura Bitters. Rittenhouse tied it together." I was unaware that Rittenhouse was the specific call for the Little Italy, and I frequently made them in the past with Old Overholt to highlight the Cynar more. While I did not have Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth on hand, I came as close as I could to Audrey's specifications with Cocchi. Here, it came across with a rye and vegetal bouquet. Next, grape and caramel notes on the sip transitioned into rye and caramel-herbal flavors on the swallow.

Postnote 6/28/23: I asked Audrey on Twitter why many recipes for the Little Italy (such as in Imbibe and Food & Wine call for the garnish to be two cherries. "Was this symbolic of the mob lore of what it means when the barkeep hands you a drink with an even number of garnish? Or was it aesthetic or other?" She replied that she "always found the whole business of odd number garnish rubbish – instead prefer to go on drink by drink basis. Do we really need 3(!) sugar soaked cherries regardless of how delicious? I think not. Yet one would not suffice. So one for the 1st 1/2 of the drink & one more for the 2nd."