On my birthday a few years ago, a friend who works in the wine industry bought me a bartender’s handshake shot at a bar.
“It’s a Ferrari — Fernet and Campari,” she said. The zesty, bittersweet citrus tamed Fernet’s menthol tidal wave in a way only a bartender could’ve known it would, making for an invigorating, surprisingly balanced one sipper. But more importantly, during the four-ish seconds it took us to toast and down them, I felt like I was in — like my connected friend had uttered some password that gave me a glimpse into the cool kids’ club called “What Drinkers in the Know Drink.”
Lest I reveal myself as an interloping poseur, I didn’t order a Ferrari until several years later, when it appeared on the menu at Cara Cara Club, a breezy aperitivo bar that opened this summer near my apartment in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. In fact, I’ve started seeing handshakes all over bar menus these days: Ferraris and M&Ms (Mezcal & Amaro Montenegro) at Desert Hawk in Chicago; seasonal sake bombs and soju and chili oil Chinese fireballs at Jackrabbit Filly in Charleston, S.C.; plus G.D.T.s (a.k.a. Gangster Daiquiri Time, a.k.a. Snaquiris) and rotating House Amaro shots at a Des Moines bar called — wait for it — The Bartender’s Handshake.
Now that the secret password and unspoken ritual shared among bartenders is on display for all to see — and drink — has the handshake lost its cool status? Or perhaps being in the know simply doesn’t matter anymore.
Regionality, Extremes, and a Bit of Flexing
Until recently, I’d always associated handshakes with the Old Style and Jame-O boilermakers I drank throughout my 20s at my neighborhood tavern, or the sadistic little rites of passage we Chicagoans use to torment visiting friends. (“A round of Malört shots for me and these tourists!”)
“Everything’s accessible; everyone’s in the know. If someone is posting about something you’re going to see it, whether you’re in that friend group or not.”
Joe Briglio, beverage director and partner at Cara Cara Club, agrees that regionality factors heavily into the form handshakes have taken up over time. In New York, the cradle of the craft cocktail revival, Snaquiris purportedly first took off at cool kid bars like Suffolk Arms and Dutch Kills around 2010, and picklebacks a few years earlier at hipster dives in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Chicago barkeeps have long bonded over the “punishment” of Malört and high-proof whiskeys, just as San Francisco bartenders in Italian-leaning North Beach wink-winked over nips of Italian Fernet-Branca. Handshakes reflected certain cliques or bartending family trees, evolving with subsequent generations.
“There is a bit of that, what’s the popular thing among a certain set of people or industry workers of a certain city, with sometimes just one person or a few dictating it,” Briglio says.
The rise of craft cocktail bars swelled the ranks of botanical and fortified nips on back bars, with low enough ABVs that a bartender could reasonably toss back one or two with visiting industry fellows throughout an evening without missing a step. Many gravitated toward bitter, quinine extremes as a byproduct of tasting spirits so often. But knowhow also brought the opportunity to flex just a little on those of us who found a well-stocked bar of off-menu options intimidating.
“I definitely did some of that ‘Oh, the general public likes this simple shit and we’re cool, so we want something harsh or more obscure,’” says longtime bartender Dave Murrin-von Ebers, who opened The Bartender’s Handshake in 2019. “But that was sort of the way the cocktail scene was — so goofy and ridiculous. You had to put on suspenders and a mustache to differentiate yourself or be taken seriously.”
Open the Gates!
Murrin-von Ebers has chilled out in the long years since, not just in terms of what he prefers to sip on (brighter and more balanced), but via a thorough rejection of gatekeeping. As the name suggests, he opened The Bartender’s Handshake as a post-shift respite for industry workers open seven days a week, but also, in part, to let us normies into the handshake club.
“We do sort of a blended bottle situation, where whoever’s got the task of making amaro that day gets to pick and choose a blend they like within reason.”
The success of shows like “The Bear” and this era of relentless visually oriented documentation on social media mean consumers are privy to all manner of industry Easter eggs nowadays, like drinking out of deli containers and using kitchen-speak — “Yes, Chef!” Many of us know what’s in an M&M because we watched a demo on TikTok.
“All those barriers are gone,” Briglio says. “Everything’s accessible; everyone’s in the know. If someone is posting about something you’re going to see it, whether you’re in that friend group or not.”
M&Ms are Briglio’s go-to handshake, now on the menu at Cara Cara Club alongside two other so-called 50/50 shots: the Ferrari (combining “two iconic Italian spirit brands”) and Rynar (“because rye whiskey and Cynar are very complementary”), he says. Briglio likes to think of them as the fancier boilermakers of the cocktail bar realm and a relative bargain at $7 apiece. More broadly, he’s enjoyed their evolution into shooters that can reflect a concept’s unique viewpoint. Printing them on the menu lets everyone in on the secret.
“That’s the danger we sort of took head on, of making handshakes not cool anymore,” says Murrin-von Ebers. The bar’s $6 handshakes include the Chokes & Smoke (a.k.a. Cynar and Banhez mezcal), G.D.T., and House Amaro, “one of few things on the menu that doesn’t have a recipe,” Murrin-von Ebers says. “We do sort of a blended bottle situation, where whoever’s got the task of making amaro that day gets to pick and choose a blend they like within reason.”
It generally includes some measure of Fernet, perhaps tinged with sherry or sweet vermouth to round out the bitterness. Other times, it’ll feature a smoothing ration of Amaro Montenegro, a brawny splash of bourbon, or a hint of gin to brighten it up and dry it out.
“See? You can still be cool by changing up the handshake every once in a while, but still keeping it on the bitter side,” Murrin-von Ebers says.
Of course, visiting bartenders are just as likely as ever to order off menu — “you know, just to keep it cool kids.”
