LATE last year, at a party on the Upper West Side celebrating the publication of “In the Land of Cocktails,” the book’s co-author, Ti Adelaide Martin, rolled out one of the night’s cocktails, a Ramos Fizz, in dramatic form.
A NEW OLDIE The Avgolemono, a k a Pink Lady.
Trailed by a group of Shaker Boys, a chorus line of white-shirt-and-suspender-clad men rattling cocktail shakers that Ms. Martin and her co-author, Lally Brennan, had hired to evoke their native New Orleans, Ms. Martin gave a brief history of the Ramos Fizz, a classic drink that derives its signature frothiness from shaken egg whites. Anticipating stiff reaction to the raw eggs, Ms. Martin exhorted the crowd: “Come on! Rocky did it!”
Rocky Balboa seems a decent mascot for the current drinking season (if not the week in politics). Suddenly, eggs are everywhere. Just a year ago, a bartender in the meatpacking district lamented that while she longed to add a flip to her cocktail list, she feared it would be impossible to sell a drink that listed eggs as an ingredient. (“I can’t leave it off, though,” she said. “What if someone’s allergic to eggs?”)
But what a difference a year makes. At Olana, a restaurant that opened on Madison Avenue in February, two of the restaurant’s seven signature cocktails feature eggs: the Pear Sidecar, in which egg whites meet pear brandy, and the Apricot Cobbler, a similar drink featuring apricot brandy. A recent addition to the cocktail list at A Voce, a flatiron district restaurant, is the Agrumi Fizz, in which a mix of gin, limoncello, orange liqueur, and egg whites gets topped with a float of Chianti.
And Julie Reiner, who gained fame with her drinks at the Flatiron Lounge, is branching into Brooklyn with the Clover Club, expected to open next month, a bar so devoted to egg-based cocktails that it’s named after one.
Why all the eggs? “They blend the drink, and add body to it,” said Alki Stathopoulos, the general manager of Kellari Taverna in Midtown. A hard-shaken egg white adds foamy texture to a cocktail.
A certain ewww factor, plus fears of salmonella, put a decades-long damper on eggy drinks, but bartenders, following the lead of the classic cocktail revivalists who’ve been reaching back into the 19th century for inspiration and ingredients, now seem confident that drinkers have outgrown their squirms. As for salmonella, New York City’s Department of Health doesn’t seem too fearful — so long as customers are informed, a spokesman said, adding that raw eggs are legal.
Mr. Stathopoulos unveiled two-year-old Kellari Taverna’s first cocktail list on Tuesday. Its star: the Avgolemono, a drink from the 1950’s (known then as the Pink Lady) that Mr. Stathopoulos renamed for a traditional Greek egg-and-lemon soup. It’s a bewitching lather of gin, applejack, lemon juice and egg whites that derives its rosy color from dashes of grenadine. A pink drink, in short, that even Rocky Balboa could love.
AVGOLEMONO Adapted from Kellari Taverna
½ ounce applejack
1 ½ ounces gin
½ ounce grenadine (about 4 dashes)
Juice of ½ lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
1 raw egg white.
Fill a tall mixing glass 2/3 full with ice. Add all the ingredients and shake vigorously for 30 to 60 seconds to form a good froth. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and serve immediately.
Yield: 1 serving