Recipe | The Long Island Bar gimlet

The legendary Toby Cecchini – a native Midwesterner and creator of the modern Cosmopolitan – earned his stripes in the 1980s, tending bar across New York City. He is the current owner of The Long Island Bar in Brooklyn, which opened in 2013, as well as the author of Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life and a regular contributor to major food and beverage publications. 

While researching bygone lime cordials for a New York Times piece in 2011, Cecchini became something of a purist on the matter of the Gimlet. Although he admits Gimlets with fresh lime were his default recipe for years, he ultimately believes – like many of his contemporaries – that the fresh lime Gimlet is more of a Non-Traditional Sour (a combination of spirit, fresh citrus and sugar). Cecchini’s research generated a new-found appreciation for the original Gimlet and inspired him to develop his own lime cordial that paid homage to the drink’s early days. 

On sharing the formula and process behind making that cordial for inclusion in this book, Cecchini said: ‘I’m very proud of this one, in that while researching the history of lime cordial for the Times, I literally had to reverse-engineer it, because I could find no real recipes out there for lime cordial proper. It took me quite some while to come upon the breakthrough of allowing the acid and sugar to do the requisite curing, without heating it at all, allowing it to retain a freshness not otherwise possible.’ 

The Long Island Bar Gimlet has become a true modern classic, thanks to Cecchini’s appreciation for what Rose’s Lime Cordial circa 1920 (prior to its acquisition by a multinational conglomerate) contributed to the cocktail and his success in reinvigorating the traditional recipe.

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Toby Cecchini, The Long Island Bar, NYC, 2013 

Ingredients

2 oz (60 ml) gin 

¾ oz (22 ml) lime juice 

1 oz (30 ml) lime cordial 

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Method

Add all ingredients to a shaker, then shake with ice and strain into a frozen coupe. Serve in a double rocks glass with ice. 

GARNISH: 2 lime wheels

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