The Pegu Club or the Pegu is a
gin-based cocktail that was the signature drink of Burma's
Pegu Club. Located just outside
Rangoon
Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Dev ...
, the club was named after the
Pegu
Bago (formerly spelled Pegu; , ), formerly known as Hanthawaddy, is a city and the capital of the Bago Region in Myanmar. It is located north-east of Yangon.
Etymology
The Burmese name Bago (ပဲခူး) is likely derived from the Mon lang ...
, a Burmese river, and its members were those Britons who were senior government and military officials and prominent businessmen.
History
First appearance (1923)
The cocktail first appeared in "Harry" of Ciro's 1923 book ''ABC of Mixing Cocktails''. The original used preserved lime juice instead of fresh. Later cocktail books, like ''The Savoy Cocktail Book'' would begin to omit the brand name
"Rose's" when specifying the lime juice. There's a lack of clarity when bartenders may have begun using fresh lime juice because of this ambiguity.
The Pegu Club is best served in a chilled glass and is considered a hot weather drink. Its taste is reminiscent of grapefruit and some bartenders will garnish it with a twist of grapefruit peel or slice of fresh grapefruit, although it is commonly served with a slice of lime to complement the lime juice in the drink.
Revival (2000s-present)
The cocktail experienced a revival in the early 2000s. Bartender
Audrey Saunders founded a bar by the same name on West Houston Street in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
.
[Fabricant, Florence. "Off the Menu." ''New York Times,'' Late Edition (East Coast) ed., Aug 31 2005, p. 2. ''ProQuest.'' Web. 1 Dec. 2021 .] New York City's
Pegu Club was credited with having "kicked the cocktail revival in New York City into high gear when it opened in 2005 and quickly became one of the most influential cocktail bars in the world."
[Simonson, Robert. "Pegu Club, a Pioneering Manhattan Cocktail Bar, Won’t Reopen." Apr 30 2020. Web. ''ProQuest.'' 1 Dec. 2021.] It closed in 2020, in part due to restrictions imposed in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
.
, after it closed, wrote that as "one of the best bars in New York, Pegu Club was also one of the seminal bars of the
craft cocktail movement
The craft cocktail movement is a social movement spurred by the cocktail renaissance, a period of time in the late 20th and early 21st century characterized by a revival and re-prioritization of traditional recipes and methods in the bar industr ...
. Countless bartenders worked here that went on to open their own spots that New Yorkers have come to love."
See also
*
List of cocktails
A cocktail is a mixed drink typically made with a distilled beverage, distilled liquor (such as arrack, brandy, cachaça, gin, rum, tequila, vodka, or Whisky, whiskey) as its base ingredient that is then mixed with other ingredients or garnishme ...
Notes
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*Ted Haigh, ''Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie'' (Quarry Books, 2009), pp. 226ff.
External links
Pegu Club drink recipe - Esquire
Cocktails with gin
Cocktails with bitters