Birth of a Cocktail: Penicillin

The most potent portal into modern cocktail history is a hole-in-the-wall on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s currently called Attaboy. But it’s the address’s former name that makes the tiny hall so hallowed among cocktail fans. For this was the original home of Milk & Honey, the neo-speakeasy from whose playbook dozens of other bars tore a page. It’s also the birthplace of more modern classic cocktails than any other bar in the world. The Gold Rush, a honeyed update of the whiskey sour, was created here. So were the smoky-sweet Penicillin, invented by the Attaboy co-owner Sam Ross, and the Greenpoint, a Chartreuse-laced Manhattan created by the co-owner Michael McIlroy.

From “11 Bars Where a Cocktail Was Born (or Raised)” by Robert Simonson for the New York Times, 2016; Photo by Farideh Sadeghin (@fsadeghin)

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