Cocktail Trends: El Gin Tonic?

Cocktail trends come and cocktail trends go, and sometimes they even come back again before you even know they went. According to today’s Times, rum is on the up and up, meanwhile, it seems like just yesterday that tiki bar Waikiki Wally’s opened, then closed, in the East Village.

But you really don’t realize how ridiculous cocktail trends are until you see them at work in another culture. In Barcelona right now, the coolest possible drink to order is not something involving bitters, chartreuse, absinthe, or even rye, it’s a good ol’ gin and tonic, pronounced “GIN TOH-neek.” That’s right Mom and Dad: Your taste in drinks is big in Barcelona.

D. and I noticed the excitement about gin and tonics there this past weekend, when they appeared on many cocktail menus, often in their own special section. Traditionally a beer and wine culture, Barcelona seems to have gone off the tracks a little when it comes to picking the next trendy cocktails: college favorites like sex on the beach are a mark of cocktail sophistication there. (A sex on the beach is even on the menu at the hip Hotel Omm.)

At Bar Ideal in the Eixemple, an old-school cocktail bar that looks like a university dean’s parlor room, about six Spaniards in a row ordered “gin tonic” from the even older-school waiter. At nearly every cocktail bar, the phrase “gin tonic” sounded around the room like the old refrain “Ketel One and soda” several years ago in Manhattan. Then we came across this window signage in the Born, above, that indicated the possible tipping point of gin and tonics in Barcelona.

We rattled the staff at the marble-topped bar at Mudanzas in the Born by ordering a bourbon on the rocks, a really uncool drink here that outs you as an American tourist, or at best, a Brit. And eventually, at Gimlet on the Carrer del Rec, where gin was in before it was even in, we caved and ordered a gin and tonic like everyone else.

If that rum prediction does come true and the zombie does become the new sidecar, it’s too bad that we were all too distracted by the latest newest thing to keep going back to Elletaria and keep it in business. Their zombie, served in a glazed tiki mug and so potent that the restaurant started enforcing a limit of one per person, was probably the best in town.

NYT: Staging a Rum Rebellion

Spanish pronunciation correction amended.