Ordering This Drink Is Always A Red Flag For Bartenders
Chock full of spirits and tastier than it has any right to be, this cocktail might take the cake for the most booze for your buck. But why does it have bartenders everywhere groaning at mention of its (sort of misleading) name?
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00:00Sweet and refreshing, a Long Island iced tea can work as a creatively inspired pairing
00:06for just about any assertively spiced cuisine, including American barbecue, Indian, and Thai.
00:13But as much as this cocktail might complement an order of smoky ribs,
00:17paneer tikka masala, or pad thai, the truth is that for many of its fans,
00:22the allure has nothing to do with gastronomy. Rather, this cocktail is known for quickly
00:27taking the drinker from zero to inebriated.
00:35This sure doesn't taste like an iced tea.
00:37It's from Long Island.
00:40In fact, it's arguable that the Long Island iced tea is one of the least likely cocktails to be
00:45paired with food at all. That might explain why Brooklyn's casual trendy restaurant Wen Wen
00:50offers a stealth version for pairing with its foodie-endorsed Taiwanese dishes, per Thrillist.
00:56And when we say stealth, we mean that at Wen Wen, this drink goes by another moniker entirely,
01:02the Shy Boy. According to Wen Wen's beverage director, Morgan Robison,
01:07the Shy Boy tweaks the classic's five essential distilled spirits — which are vodka, gin,
01:13rum, tequila, and triple sec — by swapping in smoky mezcal and cherry and bitters-tinged
01:18Amaro Montenegro for the classic's more neutral tequila and orange-flavored triple sec.
01:24Nevertheless, Robison has made it clear he wants the Shy Boy to stand in as an
01:28elevated version of the classic. Indeed, we've heard it suggested the Long Island iced tea's
01:34rowdy reputation may have some bar proprietors feeling less than jazzed about including it by
01:40name on their menus. Moreover, it would appear a good number of bartenders would rather not
01:45even serve them. In fact, when someone orders a Long Island iced tea, some bartenders actually
01:51consider it a red flag. Although the Long Island iced tea is regarded by some as an express train
01:57to intoxication, it's also very much a legitimate cocktail. In fact, you'll find it on the core
02:03curriculum at bartending schools. But that's not to say the Long Island iced tea doesn't
02:08fall squarely within the category of drink orders that raise the red flag for bartenders.
02:13As Wen Wen's Robison explained to Thrillist,
02:16For the most part, the Long Island iced tea is for people who are here to drink,
02:21and think, this is the fastest way to get to where I'm going.
02:24There's not anything wrong with that, necessarily. It's just that some bartenders have learned from
02:30hard-won experience that patrons who want to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible
02:36tend to do precisely that, and often quite obnoxiously.
02:40You might want to pace yourself.
02:43I drink tea all the time. I think I know what I'm doing.
02:46In a roundup of Reddit comments, it was clear bartenders don't regard the drink order highly.
02:52One bartender said of a customer who orders a Long Island iced tea,
02:56Usually someone who wants to get drunk for cheap and is going to complain that the drink is not
03:01strong enough. Adding insult to injury, it's not as if making a Long Island iced tea doesn't require
03:07considerable time and effort. Most Long Island tea recipes contain no fewer than eight separate
03:13ingredients — not including the ice. Five of those are spirits, and since customers sometimes
03:19request by name, that can make the experience even more work-intensive for the bartender,
03:24depending on how their spirit shelves are organized.
03:27A single serving of Tasting Table recipe developer Michelle McGlynn's Long Island
03:32iced tea recipe consists of half-ounce of each of the essential five distilled spirits previously
03:38mentioned. These are shaken with or poured over ice into a tall glass and topped off with a half
03:44ounce of lemon juice and two ounces of cola before being garnished with a lemon wedge,
03:49while a sprig of mint or basil — or any zesty herb, for that matter — is optional.
03:54Altogether, the Long Island iced tea has more than twice the alcohol of what the
03:59National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism considers to be one standard
04:04alcoholic beverage — that is, one and one-half ounces of distilled spirits.
04:09And I will have a giant Long Island iced tea."
04:13But for many fans, the, quote,
04:15"'magic' of the Long Island iced tea is that despite the total absence of any tea at all,
04:20the end result of this prominent and motley assortment of distinctly flavored spirits
04:25tastes quite a lot like iced tea with lemon. In fact, the drink's five-alarm alcohol punch
04:30is barely detectable to the naked tongue, even less so after the first round."
04:36That's a boon to those who enjoy alcohol's effects more than its taste,
04:40but as fun as that might be for those drinking, it can be considerably less so for the bartender
04:45whose job it is to do business with them and, in some cases, tell them when it's time to stop.