The Dead Rabbit - Wine & Spirits Magazine

The Dead Rabbit


Jack McGarry of Milk & Honey London and Sean Muldoon of the Merchant Hotel in Belfast had two things in mind for a place in New York: an 18th-century tavern and a pre-Prohibition-style cocktail bar. They chose a building just down Water Street from Fraunces Tavern, where Washington gave his farewell address to the Continental Army in 1783. And they borrowed the name from a gang that ruled the street in the mid- 1800s. On the first floor of The Dead Rabbit, they designed a taproom, a place to have a beer or a “pop-inn”—essentially an improved boilermaker, using Chartreuse or Cointreau in place of the usual whiskey—along with some hearty pub fare (think ploughman’s sandwiches and steak-and-porter pies). Upstairs, they focus on mixed drinks inspired by 19th-century recipes. Punches, sours, fizzes, cobblers, cups, flips, nogs, fixes, daisies, slings, juleps, smashes, bishops and fizzes—72 drinks in all. The menu upstairs includes the pâté of the day—a nice side to a Stone Fence. That amounts to an orchard fruit cocktail grounded with Calvados and spiked with Chartreuse Verte—an addition that sends it into a delicious botanical stratosphere.


This review appears in the print edition of the April 2016 issue.
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This story appears in the print issue of April 2016.
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