VALENTINE'S MANUAL

famous bar up to the very day it closed. As in all the
best places, its chief specialty was American rye and
Bourbon whiskey. It is astounding that a people who
produced such a wonderful drink should ever have turned
prohibition!

The big Continental Hotel, at Broadway and Twentieth
Street, made a great reputation for years by its "whiskey-
sours." The Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man
named Black, who kept a place ten doors below Houston
Street on Broadway in the sixties—probably the most
famous mixed drink in the world in its time. The cock¬
tail made America famous and there were many varieties
of them—in fact, the variety was infinite—I remember
at the Hoffmann in the old days a gentleman would
come in and sit down to a table with his party and the
waiter would come over and order his particular for¬
mula for the party. We had many such private formulas
for mixed drinks in the Hoffmann and the bartenders
had to learn them by memory, too, so that the order could
be served quickly. But the most famous cocktails that
the public called for were, the "Old-fashioned" Whiskey
Cocktail, the Absinthe Cocktail, the "Turf-Club"—the
Gin Cocktail, the celebrated "Martini"—dry and other¬
wise, the Vermouth Cocktail, and, last of the great race,
the Bronx Cocktail. Absinthe did not become popular
till the late nineties. People were afraid of it, and many
fearful stories were told of its effects on French drinkers.
But it was too seductive to be barred—dis-barred rather
—and so, for the last twenty years of the golden age of
booze, I served it in a great variety of ways—the most
popular of which were Absinthe frappe. Absinthe Pan¬
ache, Absinthe California, and "drip" Absinthe. Let me
not forget, before I close my tally of the great places of

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