Sometimes patrons ask us how we come up with many of our
signature cocktails. While the histories of many of the older Bryant’s drinks
are shrouded in mystery, perhaps forever lost to time and accessed only through
mere speculation, we know most of the stories and inspirations behind the newer
additions to the Bryant’s “menu.” And they’re all incredibly interesting and
diverse. We have drinks inspired by experiences at MIT, ones that are homages
to a local rock band’s songs, and ones even named after current and former
employees. July’s Cocktail of the Month, the Flamingo, invented by one of our
former bartenders, Erik Chandler, is a tequila-based hurricane style drink with
grapefruit and orange flavors that initially found its inspiration in its
creator’s upbringing in Florida, when he remembers having orange and grapefruit
trees in his backyard*.
However, the creation and naming of any cocktail isn’t
necessarily that simple. Indeed, a lot of factors ultimately contributed to the
Flamingo coming into being. The summer of 2015, when the drink was invented,
saw the passing of Don Featherstone, the creator of the plastic pink flamingo
lawn ornament, an icon of kitsch that was commonplace in the front yards of
Erik’s south Florida neighborhoods. 2015 also saw the return of the flamingo to
the Florida Everglades, migrating there en masse in winter for the first time
in nearly a century. The flamingo, though, has had a symbolic presence in south
Florida for a long time, with a flock residing at the Hialeah Race Track, as
well as providing the name for a legendary Miami hotel and a fashionable Miami
Beach neighborhood.
Certainly you don’t have to be from Florida to appreciate
flamingos; there’s a local connection to these majestic birds as well. Some of
you probably remember when over 1000 pink plastic flamingos briefly adorned
Bascom Hill on the UW-Madison campus in 1979, a stunt perpetrated by the Pail &
Shovel Party who were celebrating their reelection to the student governing
body. To honor this prank, Madison made the plastic flamingo its official city
bird in 2009!
All this and more are contributing factors in the creation
of this drink (we didn’t even get to mention how much we like to hear one of
our favorite musical groups—the Flamingos—on our amazing McIntosh stereo). The
flamingo is undoubtedly a distinctive bird, and we hope you think, like we do,
that’s it’s a pretty distinctive drink too.
Stop in between 5pm and 8pm Sunday through Thursday and get
a Flamingo for just $6 all month long.
*Erik would like to thank co-workers Maggie Mendelson and
Fada Shelbourne for their constructive criticism and positive feedback while
creating this cocktail.
