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, one amongst New York’s few surviving old-school lunch counters. As a result of the worthwhile owners of Court docket docket Highway Grocers, a celebrated sandwich retailer in Brooklyn, they’d credibility to spare in meals circles. They might have reimagined the menu at Eisenberg’s—now often known as S&P Lunch, a nod to the soda fountain’s genuine title—any method they completely happy. Instead, they chose to take care of a lot of the outdated standbys, like tuna salad, matzo ball soup, chopped liver, egg lotions, and Lime Rickeys.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 (sometimes flavored, sometimes plain—additional on that in a second) that dates once more to Prohibition. “It was an very important 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 numerous standings. It’s that unusual light drink that is as well-known as its cocktail counterpart, the Gin Rickey. It’s considered one of many ultimate males standing, along with the egg cream, from the mid-Twentieth century glory days of the American soda fountain. And it’s considered one of many few OG non-alcoholic drinks to have survived prolonged enough to benefit from a model new life throughout the current mocktail progress.

You gained’t uncover the Lime Rickey all over the place. Its pure habitats are two in amount: The first is outdated joints with prolonged histories, loyal prospects, and daytime hours—areas like Sip’n Soda in Southampton, New York (primarily based in 1958); Tom’s Restaurant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 Its second home is new areas that take their cues from the outdated areas. 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 ultimate yr 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 elucidate their Lime Rickeys as “well-known.” Nonetheless no place touts the Lime Rickey as lots 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 time season season. One fan was the late Anthony Bourdain, who used to hold his daughter in for rounds of midday Lime Rickeys.

Parash said 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 gotten Lime Rickeys however?” It was a seasonal refreshment, served solely all through summer time season. Recently, however, he decided to start serving them year-round. And ultimate August, he launched a bottled mannequin of the shop’s custom-made cherry syrup so that people could make Lime Rickeys at dwelling. “I assumed this was one factor I’ll do to really carry on the customized of my grandparents, father, and uncle and have just a bit gratifying,” says Parash. “It took me a really very long time to imagine exterior the sphere. I’m realizing the mocktail aspect of it, too.”

The Lime Rickey was born of contemplating exterior the sphere. It obtained 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 finally earned the nickname “air-conditioning in a glass.”

There have been plain Lime Rickeys, sweetened with simple syrup. Nonetheless over time flavored syrups grew to grow to be the norm, along with Grape Rickeys, Cherry Lime Rickeys (commonplace in New York), and Raspberry Lime Rickeys (the prevailing mannequin in New England). How the regional sorts occurred no person seems to know. “That’s an excellent question,” says Dan O’Donnell, director of operations at Sullivan’s Citadel Island, a Boston-area eatery well-known for its rickeys. “Might have been easier to answer 70 or 80 years previously.”

And, merely as with completely different New York–Boston rivalries, no particular person seems notably throughout the completely different aspect’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. “Not at all had one,” says Parash of the raspberry mannequin, seemingly untroubled by the precise truth.

As with each three-ingredient drink it’s possible you’ll title, the precise establishing of a Lime Rickey is a matter of normal debate. The chief function is to achieve the exact steadiness of sweet and tart. “I’m an infinite fan of compacting the lime juice first, putting it on the bottom,” says Parash. “Then the ice. Then put the massive, prolonged spoon in, then the syrup, then the seltzer ultimate, stirring in an upward motion. It’s like an egg cream. The important thing to a superb egg cream is regularly stirring it whilst you’re doing it, making all of it come collectively.”

All people agrees that freshly squeezed lime juice is paramount. (In line with the S&P owners, Eisenberg’s made their rickey with—gasp!—lemonade.) As to the syrup, approaches fluctuate. Sip’n Soda claims the success of their rickey is owed to a secret ingredient. The S&P workforce 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 commonplace maraschino cherry juice. Sullivan’s syrup is a combination of some completely completely different raspberry syrups, says O’Donnell, “to get not merely the flavour, nonetheless the color correct.”

That color is significant, because of considered one of many likely causes the Lime Rickey has survived is its eye-catching ruby hue. “Nearly every completely different soda fountain staple has gone,” says Finkelstein of the Lime Rickey and its frequent menu companion, the egg cream. “Maybe they’re merely primarily essentially the most visually partaking ones.”