Iced iced baby

The controversial nightclub that spawned the Long Island Iced Tea may have faded away after its founder’s death in 2007, but the legacy promises to be around forever.

Should you be having a Long Island Iced Tea when you’re on a date? Opinion is wildly divided on the subject. If your idea of a hot date is to carry your girlfriend home, ask for an LIIT, but if you are hosting a party and you would like it, out of a sense of nostalgia for your college days, to be a headbangers’ ball, generous rounds of LIIT should get it rocking.

The LIIT dates back to the late 1970s. It originated at the Oak Beach Inn in Suffolk County, New York, which was once the hangout of the fashionable set from New York City, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut. As the saying goes, when the sun went down, things really hotted up at Oak Beach Inn. One such hot night, the club’s bartender, Robert (Rosebud) Buttu invented the Long Island Iced Tea.

The controversial nightclub, better known as the OBI since its birth in 1969, has been the subject of a book co-authored by its late founder, Robert Matherson. Named Scandal at Oak Beach Inn: Political Corruption vs. Long Island’s Hottest Nightclub, the book is based on Matherson’s account of political corruption in Long Island and his run-ins with Robert Moses, his bête noir, who was very well-connected with New York’s political establishment. The Martin Scorsese film, Goodfellas, hints at one of the OBI locations being the target of an act of arson that had been engineered by the mob, although even Matherson stopped short of making the charge.

Matherson, who died in 2007, had moved to Key West, Florida to avoid further controversy. The LIIT, however, became an international favourite—it’s still the top mover at any TGIF outlet—and it has the distinction of being the cocktail with the highest concentration of alcohol (28 per cent).

The original LIIT recipe consisted of 15 ml each of vodka, tequila, white rum, triple sec and gin (poured in that order), topped up with 15 ml of the sour mix and a splash of cola and as many cubes of ice that can be fitted into a highball glass. The sour mix, a pearly white liquid with a distinct flavour, is made from almost equal parts of lemon and/or lime juice and sugar syrup shaken vigorously with ice. You need the Vitamin C in the fresh lime juice to cope with the alcohol overload.

The Quirky
At Rick’s, the favourite watering hole of Delhi’s elite at the Taj Mahal Hotel, the bartenders have reinvented the LIIT by replacing the cola with cranberry juice, about whose virtues I had written last month. It’s called Blaine’s Iced Tea, a tribute to Rick Blaine, the cynical cafe owner played by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. The commonest variation to the theme, though, is the Purple Rain, an LIIT where Chambord, the black raspberry liqueur from the Loire Valley in France, replaces the triple sec.

The Indian
Musk melons, according to Amit Kishore Das of Rick’s, define the Indian summer, so what can be a better Indian touch to an LIIT than the addition of a hint of this cooling fruit. Triple sec is the ingredient that gets binned and is replaced by 15 ml of the Japanese melon liqueur, Midori. Das pours all the ingredients in the order laid down for the classical LIIT, then tops up with a ‘molecular melon foam’ developed at the bar. You may find it hard to replicate the foam, so just go ahead and add a juicy slice of nicely chilled musk melon.