The Myth of the Drink of Summer
On Drink Journalism's Most Contrived Perennial Story; Plus, a Visit to DanDan in Milwaukee.
Memorial Day Weekend is just around the corner. But for journalists who write about food and drink, like myself, the summer-story-pitch season began months ago. And first and foremost among the email pitches I receive from publicists at this time of year are ones that begin something like this:
“I wanted to write you to see if you're working any stories surrounding the Drink of Summer. If so, may I suggest… “
We journalists brought this plague on ourselves.
Oh, not all of us. I am a firm believer that there is not, and has never been, a Drink of Summer, either this year or any year past.
But other journalists and publications have gnawed well on this bone. And others still have openly strived to conjure up a Drink of Summer of their own choosing.
The website Delish recently ran an article with the brazen headline of: “We're Calling It—This Is 2024's Drink Of The Summer.” The article included a tidy history of the Drink of Summer phenomenon, an honored journalistic tradition that goes back (ahem!) four years.
Aperol Spritzes were the runaway favorite for drink of the summer in 2020. Espresso Martinis dominated restaurant menus in 2021, then ushered in the Dirty Shirley a year later. We predicted that the Hugo Spritz, a refreshing, low-alcohol cocktail, would be 2023’s drink of the summer. It may not have become as popular as its Aperol-based cousin, but according to Google searches, interest in Hugo spritzes skyrocketed last July. So it’s safe to say that you can trust our cocktail-predicting abilities.
Yet somehow, I don’t feel safe.
I personally didn’t see any uptick in Hugo Spritz sightings last summer. And it’s my job to go to bars and look for such trends. As for the rest, Aperol Spritzes were already wildly popular worldwide by the time skies turned sunny in 2020. The same goes for Espresso Martinis in 2021. Suddenly calling those classic cocktails the Drink of Summer would be like calling flowers the Plant of Summer. Were the writers issuing these reports born yesterday?
The Dirty Shirley was something different. I had never heard of a Dirty Shirley prior to 2022. But, despite reports that the boozy kiddie cocktail was besting the Margarita at bars from coast to coast, I spent the whole summer in 2022 without ever seeing a Dirty Shirley on a cocktail menu (though other journalists reported that they had).
In fact, I’ve only seen the drink on a menu once ever, in 2023, at a distinctly untrendy red sauce joint in Binghamton, NY.
The years listed in the Delish article—2020-2024—are important. For there was no such thing as a Drink of Summer before Covid. It is a recent phenomenon born largely of TikTok, the bandwagon-esque social media platform where a lot of people do videos of the same thing at the same time, causing other people to do more videos of that same thing. Indeed, it is a rare Drink of Summer story that doesn’t mention the drink in question’s popularity on TikTok.
Liquor brands embrace that tech godhead as well, with some citing TikTok on their official websites.
The difference between such long-established traditions of a Song of Summer or Movie of Summer, and the recent Drink of Summer phenomenon, is that the first two happen organically.
I remember back in the summer of 1976, the pop anthem “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John and Kiki Dee was everywhere. It was always on the radio. Everyone bought the single. It topped the charts for six weeks. You couldn’t escape it. By the end of summer, the sales numbers were in. It was the Song of that Summer!
The year prior, Jaws was the Movie of Summer. How did we know? Well, everyone went to see it. Movie theaters were packed. It made millions.
Drinks of Summer, meanwhile, are shady, unverifiable characters. They are manufactured phenomena. This is an easy accusation to make, for the simple reason that the Drink of Summer is always predicted beforehand. They are usually cooked up by either, A) liquor brands; or, B) journalists; or, C) both.
If the media were doing this silly business right, it would wait until the end of summer, tabulate bar sales figures and then declare the Drink of Summer by that data. Makes sense, right?
But nobody does that, or wants to. In this age of social media and influencers, it is paramount to prophecy. You must herald the Drink of Summer beforehand and then see how many lemmings follow your lead.
It is all, to put it bluntly, bullshit.
But if bullshit gets clicks, then the bullshit continues.
Better Homes and Gardens doesn’t agree with Delish, which ultimately crowned the Porn Star Martini 2024’s Drink of Summer. BH&G believes a cocktail called the Lone Ranger (the work of Portland bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler and invented in 2012) will be the season’s ubiquitous quaff. The editors boasted that they had surveyed 23 beverage experts from across the nation. 23! Wow.
But, in the end, the modern journalist’s best friend (TikTok) made the call for them: “When we saw the Lone Ranger having a bit of a moment on TikTok in late March, we knew we had unmasked the ultimate mixed drink of summer.”
Who needs legwork when you’ve got an iPhone? Hi-yo, Silver!
Delish is not the only one going all in on the Porn Star Martini. The most recent publicist email I received on the subject told me, “The drink that's capturing attention as 2024's ‘drink of the summer’ is the nostalgic Pornstar Martini.”
Nostalgic, indeed. The Pornstar Martini was invented by Douglas Ankrah way back in 2001, and has been monstrously popular for years. So why is 2024 its lucky year? Well, would you look at that—the Porn Star Martini is on the menu of the restaurant the publicist represents!
Most of the buzz this year, however, has been about the Batanga, the gimmicky Mexican tequila highball you stir with a knife. This movement did not come from a tequila brand. Rather, a bunch of influencers jointly came up with the idea earlier this year after traveling to Mexico. They later declared that they were doing this for completely altruistic reasons. They had been given no money to promote the Batanga. No, they just liked the drink and decided to collude to raise its profile. Aw.
It may have worked. Just last week, Martha Stewart Living proclaimed the Batanga the winner of the 2024 Drink of Summer sweepstakes.
But a lot of those Batanga TikTok videos were back in February, so momentum may have slowed on the drink.
But that’s the way the Drink of Summer dribbles; for every Emperor’s New Clothes, there are 99 naked predictions that don’t pan out.
In summer of 2021, I was told a specific kombucha from Nashville was going to be the Drink of Summer. The next year, I was informed that a combination craft beer/seltzer was going to be the golden child. Last year, the word came down from on high that something called the Frezeddo would rock the world.
None of these things happened. And sane summer adults went on drinking Gin & Tonics like always.
Hopefully, the Drink of Summer trend will die in the next few years, succumbing to the sort a natural death that must befall any trend devoid of the oxygen of ideas. It may have exhausted its short supply of imagination already. This year, I actually got an email predicting that the Espresso Martini would by the Drink of Summer.
Again.
Sigh. Weren’t they paying attention? The Expresso Martini is so 2021.
HOT DOG WEEK IS COMING! Watch this space June 1-7, when, in the name of Summer Fun, The Mix’s feed will be dedicated solely to hot dog content, with reports from cities across America, and a special announcement from yours truly.
Odds and Ends…
THE LEDE. While on a recent weekend trip to Milwaukee, I had the chance to check out Dandan, the casual Chinese food concept from chef Dan Jacobs and Dan Van Rite. Jacobs has received quite a bit of attention of late as one of the contestants on the Milwaukee-based season of “Top Chef.” Jacobs was the only chef competing who hailed from Wisconsin. (The season finale is on June 19.) The restaurant, which opened on an isolated block of the Historic Third Ward in 2016, is described on the website as having “a Chinese soul with a Midwestern sensibility. Flavorful, respectful, playful and seasonal, it’s an homage to the foods of our childhood.”
I don’t know what sort of Midwestern childhood the two Dans had, but I never had Chinese food this good or sophisticated when growing up, first in Milwaukee and then in rural Waukesha County, in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike many American cities, Milwaukee had no Chinatown. Its cuisine was rooted in German, Scandinavian and Polish traditions. The only Chinese food I encountered as a kid was the occasional batch of Chop Suey my mother made. I had to move to New York to discover the breadth of Chinese cuisine. And if anyone visiting Milwaukee had asked me where to find the best Chinese food in the city, I would have been stumped. (Chinese food options have since improved in Milwaukee.)
DanDan is a sprawling affair, located in a former warehouse space with high ceilings. The decor is modern utilitarian with splashes of exposed brick and neon here and there. I don’t typically order cocktails in a Chinese restaurant, but DanDan’s line-up looked too good to pass up. The 1971 was a Boulevardier riff made of Maker’s Mark, Campari, Luxardo Sangue Morlacco (an Italian cherry liqueur), sherry and grapefruit bitters. Ric’s Got Flair was a bourbon sour made with hibiscus tea, St. Germain, lemon juice, and local Bittercube Jamaican #2 bitters. Both drinks provided the contemplative sipping experience needed to anchor us during the oncoming onslaught of spice and flavor. (Cocktail prices are $13-$15.) We perhaps over-ordered. But it certainly didn’t feel that way the next morning as I contentedly finished off cold Dan Dan Noodles while gazing out our hotel window. The Dan Dan Noodles—a classic spicy Sichuan noodle dish which also nicely plays off the owners names—had to be ordered, of course. DanDan’s version goes heavy on the noodles, nuts and ground pork and light on the broth, and does not skimp on the heat. Something about the dish reminded me of a Chinese version of Cincinnati chili, which is not a bad thing.
The meal started with egg rolls, Crab Rangoon and Short Rib and Foie Gras potstickers. The latter—the standout dish of the meal—reminded me of the over-the-top, gonzo riffs found at the late, lamented Mission Chinese in New York, and was as wonderfully decadent and borderline overwhelming. I could have eaten a dinner of those potstickers alone. Crab Rangoon is not a favorite dish of mine, mainly because I’m not a cream cheese person; but it a personal favorite of Mary Kate’s, so it had to be tried. We found it very good, on par with other Crab Rangoons, but were more impressed with the egg rolls, stuffed with a creative filling of cabbage, nuts and pork.
I am also not a great fan of sweet and sour dishes, but resisted my habit of always ordering Kung Pao Chicken to take the less-traveled route of Sweet and Sour Shrimp. It was the right choice. The dish perfectly balanced the yin and yang of the often-too-sweet dish, and the shrimp were plentiful and toothsome. And the General Tso’s Cauliflower, the most prominent vegetarian option on the menu, was nearly better than the traditional chicken version, and one of the better culinary applications I’ve seen of everyone’s favorite chameleon vegetable.
Based on our track record through a half dozen of the menu’s two dozen items, it’s hard to believe one could go very wrong no matter what the order. Here’s hoping DanDan is a part of many present Milwaukee childhoods.
The Upstairs Delicatessen, book critic Dwight Garner’s memoir about his lifelong entwined love of eating and reading, is recommended. What this space soon for an excerpt… I was a guest on author Andrew Friedman’s podcast “Andrew Talks to Chefs,” talking about my latest book, the writing life, the Covid era, my upcoming book, the book I want to write, the importance of a great lifetime partner, and more… The cocktail bar Cure (in New Orleans) turns 15 this year and Maison Premiere (in Brooklyn) turns 13, while Dear Irving (in Manhattan) turns 10.
If there is no Drink of Summer, Robert, then what will I drink?
Great! I'm free to drink a G&T.
(As an old guy who speaks the English of yesteryear, I can't help cringing at "prior to" for "before.")