{"id":245054,"date":"2025-05-17T09:44:32","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T09:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/alcohol\/the-lemon-drop-cocktail-recipe-got-a-modern-makeover\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T09:44:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T09:44:32","slug":"the-lemon-drop-cocktail-recipe-got-a-modern-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=245054","title":{"rendered":"The Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe Got a Modern Makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With so many flavorful spirits at their disposal, it\u2019s easy to see why a bartender would overlook vodka on the backbar. The spirit, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">defined by the U.S. government as \u201cneutral alcohol,\u201d has long been the butt of bartender jokes. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But whatever the U.S. government, or some 2009-era topknot-sporting, bowtie-wearing, insecure rookie bartender (yes, I do mean my 27-year-old self) might think, vodka is not completely useless.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Darryl Chan, bar director for Little Fino in Brooklyn, New York, deftly deploys vodka in the Strega Drop, a riff on a perhaps unfairly maligned Lemon Drop. \u201cI hate saying it,\u201d he says of the drink, a holdover from the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/punchdrink.com\/articles\/original-tinis-pornstar\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019tinis era<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cbut it\u2019s a guilty pleasure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditionally made with vodka, lemon juice, triple sec and simple syrup, the Lemon Drop is, from a structural perspective, basically a vodka Sidecar. Chan, however, rebuilds the Lemon Drop into what he calls the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/punchdrink.com\/recipes\/strega-drop\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Strega Drop<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by first swapping out the traditional triple sec for Strega, an Italian liqueur flavored with dozens of herbal ingredients such as saffron, cinnamon and mint. He then supplements the lemon juice with yuzu plus a lemon-lime cordial, all in the service of throwing in \u201ca bit more angles\u201d than the classic Lemon Drop has.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When reimagining an aromatically and structurally simple drink like the Lemon Drop into a more elaborate concoction, there is always the risk of doing too much and ending up with an indistinct soup that\u2019s less than the sum of its parts. Chan finds that sometimes this more-is-more approach leads to elements canceling each other out. He avoids this with a shrewd inclusion of just a half-ounce of vodka. \u201cTo be honest, the vodka didn\u2019t come into play until a bit later on when I was like, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All right, this just needs some more backbone. We need this to hit a little bit harder.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As for what kind of vodka is best suited to this drink, Chan advises something \u201cneutral, middle of the road.\u201d And that\u2019s precisely the point: In a drink like the Strega Drop, vodka is critical <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of its neutrality. An aspect of the spirit that many see as a liability is actually its strength, the way Chan applies it. Here, vodka gives the drink\u2019s other ingredients room to express themselves without compromising texture or throwing off aromatic balance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back when I was just starting out as a bartender, the cocktail community carried itself with a bit more seriousness than it does now. I saw this as part of the broader effort to establish the credibility of the profession. With that credibility comfortably established, however, the bar world has once again embraced the playful drinks of the so-called dark ages\u2014something that Chan is happy to see. Drinks like the Lemon Drop have \u201cmade a lot of people happy,\u201d Chan says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to shy away from them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With so many flavorful spirits at their disposal, it\u2019s easy to see why a bartender would overlook vodka on the backbar. The spirit, defined by the U.S. government as \u201cneutral alcohol,\u201d has long been the butt of bartender jokes. But whatever the U.S. government, or some 2009-era topknot-sporting, bowtie-wearing, insecure rookie bartender (yes, I do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12029],"tags":[8990,4448,9773,34846,1434,5521,5642],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-245054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alcohol","tag-cocktail","tag-drop","tag-lemon","tag-makeover","tag-modern","tag-recipe","tag-rescuing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe Got a Modern Makeover - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=245054\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe Got a Modern Makeover - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With so many flavorful spirits at their disposal, it\u2019s easy to see why a bartender would overlook vodka on the backbar. 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