The Lime Rickey Endures – Imbibe Journal

In 2022, Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross took over a Manhattan restaurant space beforehand occupied by Eisenberg’s Sandwich Retailer, actually one in every of New York’s few surviving old-school lunch counters. As a result of the worthwhile householders of Court docket docket Street Grocers, a celebrated sandwich retailer in Brooklyn, they’d credibility to spare in meals circles. They could have reimagined the menu at Eisenberg’s—now known as S&P Lunch, a nod to the soda fountain’s distinctive title—any method they joyful. In its place, they chose to take care of many of the outdated standbys, like tuna salad, matzo ball soup, chopped liver, egg lotions, and Lime Rickeys.

“In any case,” says Finkelstein, when requested why he rescued the Lime Rickey, a combination of lime juice, seltzer, and syrup (usually flavored, usually plain—additional on that in a second) that dates once more to Prohibition. “It was a vital issue at Eisenberg’s. And we love them. I couldn’t take into consideration a luncheonette with a soda fountain not having them.”

The Lime Rickey is a curious character, a drink that concurrently holds a lot of standings. It’s that unusual easy drink that is as well-known as its cocktail counterpart, the Gin Rickey. It’s one in every of many closing males standing, along with the egg cream, from the mid-Twentieth century glory days of the American soda fountain. And it’s one in every of many few OG non-alcoholic drinks to have survived prolonged ample to have the benefit of a model new life throughout the current mocktail enhance.

You gained’t uncover the Lime Rickey far and wide. Its pure habitats are two in amount: The first is outdated joints with prolonged histories, loyal shoppers, and daytime hours—places like Sip’n Soda in Southampton, New York (primarily based in 1958); Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn (1936); Mr. Bartley’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1960); and Lexington Candy Retailer in Manhattan (1925). Its second home is new places that take their cues from the outdated places. These embrace S&P Lunch and Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in lower Manhattan. On the latter, head bartender Ray Fritz was impressed in order so as to add a Lime Rickey to the menu closing 12 months by his youthful work as a soda jerk at Longacre’s Fashionable Dairy, a soda fountain in southeastern Pennsylvania that dates once more to the Nineteen Twenties.

The earlier group tends to clarify their Lime Rickeys as “well-known.” Nevertheless no place touts the Lime Rickey as quite a bit as Sip’n Soda. Among the many many headings on the restaurant’s site navigation bar are: “menus,” “historic previous,” “retailer,” and “lime rickey.” Mark Parash, the third-generation proprietor, says the soda fountain sells 150 of them a day in peak summer season season. One fan was the late Anthony Bourdain, who used to convey his daughter in for rounds of midday Lime Rickeys.

Parash talked about people used to pop their head into Sip’n Soda in late spring, when the local weather started to point out warmth, and ask, “Do you have Lime Rickeys however?” It was a seasonal refreshment, served solely all through summer season. Not too way back, nonetheless, he decided to start out out serving them year-round. And closing August, he launched a bottled mannequin of the shop’s custom-made cherry syrup so that people might make Lime Rickeys at dwelling. “I believed this was one factor I’ll do to truly carry on the customized of my grandparents, father, and uncle and have considerably fulfilling,” says Parash. “It took me a really very long time to imagine exterior the sphere. I’m realizing the mocktail side of it, too.”

The Lime Rickey was born of pondering exterior the sphere. It purchased its title from the Rickey, an austere Washington, D.C., cocktail composed of whiskey or gin, lime juice, and soda water. It was invented by bartender George Williamson at Shoomaker’s bar and dubbed for a sport named “Colonel” Joe Rickey. When Prohibition knocked the legs out from beneath the barroom desk, soda fountains found the Rickey tailor-made itself very correctly to the model new abstemious model. Take out the booze and add sweet syrup and likewise you had a refreshing beverage that in the end earned the nickname “air-conditioning in a glass.”

There have been plain Lime Rickeys, sweetened with simple syrup. Nevertheless over time flavored syrups turned the norm, along with Grape Rickeys, Cherry Lime Rickeys (trendy in New York), and Raspberry Lime Rickeys (the prevailing mannequin in New England). How the regional varieties befell no one seems to know. “That’s an incredible question,” says Dan O’Donnell, director of operations at Sullivan’s Citadel Island, a Boston-area eatery well-known for its rickeys. “Would possibly want been easier to answer 70 or 80 years up to now.”

And, merely as with totally different New York–Boston rivalries, no individual seems considerably throughout the totally different side’s preferences. It’s powerful to find a New York rickey vendor who has ever tried a raspberry rickey, or a Boston one who has sampled a cherry. “Under no circumstances had one,” says Parash of the raspberry mannequin, seemingly untroubled by the actual fact.

As with all three-ingredient drink it’s possible you’ll title, the fitting establishing of a Lime Rickey is a matter of ordinary debate. The chief goal is to appreciate the exact stability of sweet and tart. “I’m an infinite fan of compressing the lime juice first, inserting it on the bottom,” says Parash. “Then the ice. Then put the big, prolonged spoon in, then the syrup, then the seltzer closing, stirring in an upward motion. It’s like an egg cream. The important thing to egg cream is frequently stirring it when you’re doing it, making all of it come collectively.”

Everyone agrees that freshly squeezed lime juice is paramount. (In response to the S&P householders, Eisenberg’s made their rickey with—gasp!—lemonade.) As to the syrup, approaches differ. Sip’n Soda claims the success of their rickey is owed to a secret ingredient. The S&P crew experimented with quite a few sweeteners sooner than deciding on a cherry Snowcone syrup. Blue Smoke makes theirs from a combination of Luxardo cherry syrup and regular maraschino cherry juice. Sullivan’s syrup is a mixture of some fully totally different raspberry syrups, says O’Donnell, “to get not merely the flavour, nonetheless the coloration correct.”

That coloration is important, because of one in every of many attainable causes the Lime Rickey has survived is its eye-catching ruby hue. “Nearly every totally different soda fountain staple has gone,” says Finkelstein of the Lime Rickey and its frequent menu companion, the egg cream. “Presumably they’re merely primarily probably the most visually engaging ones.”