Cocktail · Medium strength

Grasshopper

Crème de menthe, crème de cacao, cream — a mint-chocolate milkshake with a wink.

How to order it: New Orleans, 1918. Equal parts, shaken cold. Dessert is canceled; this is dessert.

The story

The Grasshopper is credited to Philip Guichet of Tujague's, the venerable New Orleans restaurant, who by family account entered it in a New York cocktail competition around 1918 and took second place. History does not record what won. The drink's true empire, though, was the mid-century Midwest, where Wisconsin supper clubs blended it with ice cream and served it as dessert, a tradition that persists with regional pride. Green, sweet, and utterly unembarrassed, it spent decades as a punchline before the retro revival restored its standing. It endures because mint and chocolate is a treaty no generation has ever broken.

Adjacent pours