recipe: False promises and simple cocktails…

I’m fortunate enough to have one telework day during the week and have generally been taking advantage of the opportunity to go out for an early breakfast. As there’s an IHOP right across the way from me, it’s a good bed for someplace open super-early in the morning. So I’d just sat down, ordered some coffee and noticed this on my table…

“Squeeze more joy” into my day, IHOP? Really? When you offer me something called a “mimosa” that is nothing of the kind? (And I suppose the word ‘squeeze’ is meant to make us think the juice is fresh-squeezed, but I’ll let someone else charge that windmill.) There is no joy in a cocktail ordered without alcohol.

Yes, non-alcoholic cocktails–it hurts to even utter the phrase–do exist, often called “kiddie cocktails” which I think shows an extreme lack of responsibility and taste. I mean, who would give a kid a cocktail in the first place? Or even anything resembling one? We don’t want children emulating behavior like smoking, but we’ll mix up a Shirley Temple or a Roy Rogers and serve it to them without thinking twice.

As it is, I’ve had to wait until my work hours were completed and pour myself a proper mimosa just to recover from this morning’s incident. Not that I really need an excuse to have anything with champagne in it, truth be told. There are many variations on this one… some places serve it in flutes, wine glasses or even pint glasses (personal fave, that), some use OJ or other fruit juices, but I tend to like the classic, with maybe a slight variation.

Mimosa

While this may be a cocktail most pour and mix by eye, not recipe, it is an official International Bartenders Association cocktail. Even so, they call for equal parts, where I prefer to err on the side of champagne.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces orange juice
• 4 ounces Brut champagne
• (optional) ½ to 1 ounce elderflower liqueur

Instructions

1. Fill champagne flute with orange juice and top up with brut champagne.

Simple, right? Something that seems very difficult to mess up!

So please… The #inebriati refuses to recognize any such thing as a “non-alcoholic” mimosa. Call it juice and Sprite, call it a Shirley Temple Orange–as opposed to Black–if you must, but if someone sits down for a place serving breakfast and sees a “mimosa” advertised on the menu, don’t mess with their heads. It simply won’t do.