How to Make a Campari and Orange Juice Cocktail – Robb Report

“Life is bittersweet at best,” author and artist Jack Kirby once wrote.

Who could disagree? The fact that Kirby wrote comics and put that line in a ninja turtle’s mouth is immaterial. This simple construction, just five words, is both obvious and profound.

Kirby wasn’t thinking of the Garibaldi, but he could have been. That’s bittersweet too. With just two ingredients, it’s also simple, and deep with its lively texture and depth of flavor, although it wouldn’t be right to call it obvious when it comes to cocktails. Or rather, it was an idea whose time had come.

The Garibaldi is the house cocktail of Dante, a Manhattan institution that has sat on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village for over 100 years. In 2015, Dante changed hands and received a facelift — now looking, thoughtful The New Yorker, like “an Italian aperitivo bar designed by Wes Anderson” — but owner Linden Pride and creative director Naren Young strived to pay homage to old Italian neighborhood vibes while still looking forward to the future. It worked. In 2019 is the 50 best People voted it the best bar in the world.

The Garibaldi is Campari and orange juice, two ingredients have been mixed together for about forever, and we believe it was given the name Garibaldi in the late 80’s – Campari hails from Milan in the north and oranges are famous for growing in Sicily. in the south, and so it was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, one of the leading figures in the unification of Italy. It’s popular in Italy and in old Italian-American cafes like Dante, but has been viewed by the entire mixology movement as a dusty old relic not even worth talking about, more famous among Italian grandfathers than American bartenders.

Dante changed all that with a single innovation, in my opinion one of the most brilliant discoveries in the last two decades of the craft. It wasn’t about adding bitters or tinctures or vacuuming a homemade whatever, it was about changing the texture, the actual medium of the drink. The Garibaldi was flat as it was. Boring. Even dead. You could shake it, giving it life, but melting the ice would dilute the drink. It was fine, a nice low-shine thing for brunch or something, but even an amateur could think of a dozen more exciting things to do with Campari without batting an eyelid.

What Young and his team decided to do – that innovation mentioned above – is to cut off the peel and pith of the oranges and then juice the fruit to order in a high-speed Breville juicer. This appears to be a small change; it is not. At that time, nobody juiced citrus in centrifugal juicers, and when someone did, it was a hilarious mistake from a brand new bar concoction, the kind of thing you’d give the kid a gentle pat on the back and gently remind them never to do anything like that another stupid mistake. But Young saw an opportunity, as with Dante himself, to reinvent and revitalize this old Italian classic. Where regular orange juice is squeezed, Dante’s is pulverized – the whirring blades send out the juice as white and frothy as a breaking wave, and when stirred with Campari and some ice it makes a blissful and profound summer aperitivo, textured playful, vividly aromatic, dazzlingly simple and as bitter and sweet as life itself.

garibaldi

• 1.5 oz. Campari
• 4 oz. “Fluffy” orange juice

Pour liquids into a short glass with three ice cubes and stir. Garnish with an orange slice.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

Campari: Where Campari is absolutely necessary in things like the Negroni, there’s room to play here. I’ll admit I haven’t toyed with that variable too much, being so in love with this drink as it is, but I can’t think of a competitor to Campari that isn’t at least interesting. Stick to the bright red aperitivos – something earthy like Cynar or floral like Amaro Montenegro makes a completely different drink – but Cappelletti Aperitivo, Select Bitter, Luxardo Bitter and others will all be good and interesting here.

Fluffy Orange Juice: I’m tempted to tell you to buy a centrifugal juicer just for this drink, but I’ll admit that’s a bit much (although I’m assuming at least a third of you reading this have one in one cupboard or something and you should definitely break it out for Garibaldi’s). I’m happy to report that a good blender does almost as good a job – put the juice in the blender and blend on high for about 10 seconds. You can try to shake if you like, but don’t shake with ice or you’ll end up with orange juice that’s slightly aerated and very watery.

Honestly, Campari and regular orange juice are still pretty good, provided the juice is fresh. And when I say fresh, I don’t mean “not from concentrate,” I mean fresh since you’ve literally just juiced your oranges. When I was rude to the 1980’s version of the Garibaldi above, I assumed it was made from bottled orange juice, as I’m sure that was almost always the case. We’ve said this before, but of all citrus juices, orange is the one with the biggest difference between fresh and even a day old. Fresh orange juice is a revelation.