Catching up With the Cosmo,
A Modern Cocktail Standard

The Cosmo is uabiquitous as 'the pink drink sitting on the bar, all dolled up in a Martini glass, the object of much attention still, after a decade in the cocktail limelight.
    Millions upon millions of them have been sold at bars and clubs and resort hotels since Madonna is reputed to have had one of the first ones made by mixologist Dale DeGroff at his bar in Manhattan, N.Y., back in 1996. And as everyone knows, the poster girls for the Cosmo, the women of “Sex and the City,” took the pretty-in-pink drink over
the top.
    It was the cocktail of the 1990s, and the Cosmopolitan remains a femme fatale force driving brisk cocktail sales in the new millennium. To be sure, some of its trendy luster may have worn off in the decade since it first appeared on the scene, looking an awful lot like a Martini, but the Cosmo still is very much alive and well and moving into its second decade of popularity on-premise.
    Reports of its imminent death, rumored occasionally, are news to Chael Griffith, a bartender at the busting Eastside Grille in Montgomery, Ala., and to Isham Reavis, general manager and still occasional bartender at Seattle’s artsy Capitol Club.
    “It is a drink that looks good. It is a drink that tastes good,” Griffith says. “And people want to be a part of that.”
    Reavis, who manages one of Seattle’s better-known Martini bars and restaurants, adds, “We are the kind of venue for it, and it has become one of the standards. People ask for Cosmos as a name drink. It is definitely one of the cocktails with proper names.”

All About the Women
    No longer strictly a New Yorker, the Cosmo’s fame has spread to medium-sized metropolitan areas. However, it is still, for the most part, all about the women.
    “We never go through a night when we don’t sell at least three or four Cosmos,” says Griffith, “and with our clientele on Friday and Saturday night, it is 10 times that. We always sell a Hpnotiq Martini, and we always sell a Cosmo.”
    Unlike some bars and lounges that have finessed the cocktail recipe in a variety of ways, the Cosmo at Eastside Grille is true to the original, beginning with the color. “Our Cosmos are pink,” Griffith says. “I’ve drank them red,” he adds. “But I, as well as the other bartenders, make sure that ours are as pink as possible.”
    Likewise, the recipe, a holy trinity of vodka, Cointreau or Triple Sec and cranberry, is just what Carrie Bradshaw would get if she ordered it at Scout. “We’re pretty standard,” Griffith says, except that the vodka of choice is almost exclusively Vox.
    Indeed, the cosmopolitan nature of Eastside has drawn the attention of some poster girls in real life who frequent the bar regularly and talk it up to the city at large.
    “There is a group in town. They call themselves ‘The Cosmo Girls’ and they go around town to different establishments and try out all the Cosmos.”
    Griffith reckons that the Cosmos at Eastside have won the approval of this eye-pleasing young cabal of cocktail groupies, given that they mention the club and the Cosmos regularly on their local radio show. “They are a fun group, and you are always proud when they show up.”
    At the Capitol Club in Seattle, a Martini bar and restaurant frequented by a young and sexy crowd drawn to the arts district for its culture and its upscale social outlets, the Cosmo has found a ready patron base. Reavis and the rest of his bartending staff take their Cosmos seriously, along with a number of other unique Martini house cocktails with names such The Nod, The Kismet, The Morea and The Casbah, an artful variation on the Cosmo made with vodka, Cointreau and pomegranate juice.
    “We are not downgrading it to punch,” Reavis says. “ It is a serious drink for serious drinkers.”
    In a bar where it is rare for the house to sell more than 20 of anything on any one night, the 15 or so Cosmos that move on a typical Friday evening at $8 each make it a drink that can easily hold its own. If anything, the Cosmo’s hold on the cocktailing public only seems to have strengthened and deepened in its decade of bar stardom. NCB