"I've always been fascinated by the Wisconsin style of drinking," says Portland mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who serves an updated version of the Grasshopper at his subterranean cocktail bar Pépé Le Moko. For many Midwest drinkers, the quintessential Grasshopper is a blended dessert drink: a glorified milkshake that substitutes ice cream for regular cream. Photo: Dina Avila/Eaterīut ask many cocktail aficionados about the Grasshopper, and they're likely to get nostalgic for a version popularized decades later. We get a lot of great stories of third, fourth-generations coming to Tujague's, and the Grasshopper always comes up in that conversation."Ī blended Grasshopper under construction at Portland's Pépé Le Moko. "In the dining room, you get the 40- and 50-year-olds whose grandparents came, and their grandparents came. But for other diners, the drink evokes fond memories. "The younger customers who are 25 or 30, they come into the bar and grab one because they know that it was invented here," Latter says. "Those liquors you generally don't see in people's home bars." Tujague's currently sells "hundreds" of Grasshoppers every week, with its current recipe featuring a non-traditional float of brandy along with the three main ingredients. "The cocktail took off, and we have one of the oldest bars in the country, so I guess we sold a lot of them here because could just come here and grab one instead of buying all the different liquors for it," Latter says. "But I'm certain that from 1919 on, in one way or another, you could get a Grasshopper at Tujague's." The drink's fuzzy birthdate comes thanks to Tujague's equally fuzzy in-house historical record: Although Latter says he has photos of Guichet and his prize ribbons, printed menus didn't become a feature of the restaurant until a few years after Latter's father Steven took over Tujague's in 1982. "There wouldn't be a written record - especially during Prohibition," says Tooker, who is currently writing a book about the history of Tujague's. "From 1919 on, in one way or another, you could get a Grasshopper at Tujague's."Īlthough some accounts place the Grasshopper's origins in the late 1920s, New Orleans food historian Poppy Tooker has found newspaper articles referencing the drink dating to 1919. Guichet's combination of equal parts crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream took second prize in the contest, and Guichet proudly brought the drink - supposedly named a "Grasshopper" for its bright green color - back to New Orleans. According to lore, Philibert Guichet, whose family purchased the restaurant from founders Guillaume and Marie Tujague in the 1910s, invented the cocktail while in New York City for a cocktail competition "similar to what they have now for Tales of the Cocktail," Latter says. But French Quarter icon Tujague's, which opened in 1856, is the unlikely origin of the sweet and minty Grasshopper. New Orleans is the birthplace of cocktails boozy and bourbon-y, from Hurricanes to Sazeracs to Vieux Carrés. Tujague's bartender David Suazo pours a brandy floater into the Grasshopper. "It's not a really strong drink, so if you give your nine-year-old a sip of this mint chocolate chip drink, it's not like giving them a sip of bourbon," says Mark Latter, the present-day owner of Tujague's, the bar credited with inventing the Grasshopper nearly 100 years ago. "It's not like giving them a sip of bourbon." Neither contain actual cream and both hover around 50 proof, a relatively low-proof way to add color and depth to a clean slate of dairy. The Corsican-mint flavored crème de menthe (French for "mint cream") originated in the late-19th century crème de cacao, as a style of chocolate liqueur, dates hundreds of years earlier. (The ultimate guilty pleasure: a famous version of the blended Grasshopper served at Benedetti's Supper Club in Beloit, Wisconsin uses 3/4 a gallon of ice cream to create one drink.)īut remove the cocktail from the maligned category, and the combination of crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream emerges as simply a mix of historical liqueurs. Both images place the cocktail squarely in the "guilty pleasure" category among a certain subset of drinkers. Or conversely, many regard the Grasshopper as Grandma's go-to drink, slowly sipped as she fondly reminisces about cocktail parties in the 1950s. The Grasshopper's sugary punch means it's often the cocktail of choice among teenagers surreptitiously learning how to drink - the flavors already familiar thanks to all-ages slices of Oreo-crusted Grasshopper pie. The combination of equal parts crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream known as the Grasshopper generates an unnaturally verdant green that hints at the cocktail's unapologetic sweetness.
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