In Chicago, forget the cocktail; a beer and a shot will do

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chicago is a city of pubs and taverns with a robust drinking culture. During the holiday season, that might mean sipping on some warm Swedish glögg, or, as we heard in our last episode, grabbing a Tom and Jerry at Miller’s Pub. But what about a Chicago-specific cocktail? “People really want us to have a cocktail,” said Liz Garibay, executive director of the Beer Culture Center. “It's like, you go to New Orleans and there's a Sazerac. You go to New York, there's Manhattan.” So is there a quintessential Chicago cocktail? Curious City host Erin Allen talks to Garibay as well as Greg Shutters, owner of Cohassett Punch Liqueur to see what they think. Garibay says either way, the city’s drinking culture is shaped by its immigrant and working class roots. We talk with Garibay and Shutters about Chicago’s drinking scene, past and present.

Transcript

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0:32.2	What's up, Chicago? I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curious City.
0:38.0	It's the holidays.
0:39.4	A lot of us have loved ones visiting from out of town.
0:42.9	Besides gathering over a meal, some folks might want to go out for a drink.
0:47.7	Last episode, we talked about a cocktail.
0:50.2	Many Chicagoans love to return to this time of year, the Tom and Jerry. Getting into the history
0:55.7	of that drink made me wonder, is there a quintessential Chicago cocktail? I mean, you would think
1:01.9	there is, right? People really want us to have a cocktail, right? It's like you go to New Orleans and
1:07.8	there's a Sazirac. You go to New York, there's Manhattan. This is Liz Garibay from the Beer Culture Center.
1:13.8	And if you don't know in the world of Chicago drinks and just storytelling and history in general, she's a name.
1:20.3	Everyone comes to Chicago and says, oh my gosh, what's this Chicago drink?
1:24.1	And my answer is there really isn't one.
1:26.5	We're going to hear more from Liz in a little bit,
1:28.4	but first I wanted to get into my conversation with someone who says, no, we're not a cocktail
1:33.3	city per se, but Chicago, even in the early days, you know, despite not having the same kind of
1:40.6	cocktail cred as a New York or New Orleans or even San Francisco.
1:45.2	We had some very high-end cocktail establishments, even in the pre-prohibition days.
	...

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