2nd Anniversary Recipe: Parasol Cocktail!
The New Jersey Cocktail Sasha Petraske Adopted—and Misnamed.
Happy Friday and Happy Anniversary, readers! The Mix turns two years old today!!
That’s quite an accomplishment, let me tell you. Over my career, I’ve written for publications that have lasted fewer than twenty-four months. And they had large staffs, offices and lunch rooms.
The second year of writing and editing The Mix has gone by even faster for me and Mary Kate than the first. I guess time does really fly when you’re having fun. And if there’s one thing I can say without reservation, it is that I have fun writing The Mix.
If you personally know any writers, you know that there’s nothing they like better than bellyaching about how hard writing is. I, however, love writing. And there’s no writing I enjoy more than what I do for The Mix. I write for many publications, and put out the occasional book, but it’s here where I’m my happiest.
I have you—the Paid Subscribers and Bar Regulars who are reading these words right now—to thank for that joy. Because it’s you and me, kid. It really is. I have said many times over the past two years that The Mix is a reader-supported publication, but it bears repeating. There is no advertising at The Mix. There are no sponsors and no sponsored posts. There is no marketing department telling me what to write and who to cover. My only editor is Mary Kate, and we pretty much see eye to eye. (Well, almost always.) That is the greatness of this format: no middlemen. You have no idea of the great number of middlemen who get between the reader and the writer at an average publication, be it printed or digital, but it’s a lot.
By becoming a paid subscribing, you’ve also, incidentally, made The Mix one of the best-read Food & Drink newsletters on Substack!
Oh, and if you’re not a Paid Subscriber, there’s a fix for that:
And so we begin Year Three.
I’m not going to tell you exactly what we’ve got planned for the coming weeks, for the same reason you don’t put a fresh pie on an open windowsill. But I will say this. There will be an appreciation about the best bar in one of the best bar cities in the world, a bar you’ve never heard of. There will be a report of the drinking scene in a major American city never before covered in The Mix. And the newsletter will venture for the first time into the world of poetry. (Don’t unsubscribe! I promise it’s an interesting story.)
And, of course, the third edition of the New York 50 is coming soon!
And now, I’d like to officially welcome and salute that latest graduating class of Bar Regulars, that most generous body of Mix subscribers. This last week has been the most dramatic in The Mix’s history as far as Bar Regulars go. In that time span, we had added more than ten new names to the virtual bar wall of brass plaques! (see above)—a faster rate than any time since the newsletter launched two years ago. The number of Bar Regulars has swelled to nearly 90 names! Among them are family members, colleagues (including some of the most esteemed names in the food and drink business), dear friends and friends I have yet to meet.
I am humbled by your participation and overcome with your generosity. Thank you for supporting this newsletter, but also for backing the whole idea of independent journalism, something that is desperately needed more and more these days. I plan to work harder in 2024 to better deserve your support.
One of the things I promised Bar Regulars in 2024 is a new feature called “Regular Recipes.” These will be cocktail recipes only accessible to Bar Regulars. The recipes will be for new, original cocktails drawn from the best bars in the world. In all or most cases, they will be appearing for the first time ever in The Mix.
Look for the first “Regularly Recipes” column on Monday, Jan. 22. Again, that post and recipe will be sent out only to Bar Regulars.
Finally, how convenient is it that The Mix’s second anniversary is on a Friday! The week is over. (And, in New York, it’s been a frigid week indeed. We’ve had no trouble keeping our Martinis cold.) The most important cocktail hour of the week approaches in just a few hours. And—just as we always do—The Mix has got you covered with a cocktail recipe. And a particularly good one at that. It also comes with a bit of modern cocktail history, something I did not learn of until three months ago.
The story is below.