The Toronto Traveler

Believe it or not, there actually is a World Cocktail Week! It’s celebrated by the Museum of American Cocktail in New Orleans and it will be celebrated from May 8th to 13th as the best mixologists around will create their best confections in New Orleans in order to dazzle and tickle the taste buds.  Thanks to my excellent associate over at The DC Traveler, b5media’s Travel & Culture Channel will be celebrating this event through a collective blogging effort of which this post is a part.

Toronto actually does have a real cocktail named after it, although apparently it happens to be more popular in the United States than in Toronto.  I only heard about it when doing the research for this post, but maybe some of you have come across it before.  Here’s what it takes to make a Toronto:

- 2 ounces of rye
- one quarter ounce of Fernet Branca
- one quarter ounce of simple syrup
- two dashes of Angostura bitters

Directions: Place all the materials together with ice, stirring together and then straining into the cocktail glass once stirring is complete before flaming a disc of orange zest into the cocktail, dropping it in afterwards.
Of course, people that know the city well might come up with a different recipe for the quintessential tongue-in-cheek Toronto cocktail and that might look something like this:

The Toronto Toddy

- 1/3 cup of imported tea
- 1/3 cup of bitter tasting beer, flavoured by a disappointed Leafs fan
- 1/3 cup of sweet-sounding promises from local politicians
- a dash of arrogance
- two parts multiculturalism
- two parts envy from the other Canadian cities (wink)

Mix together well, but don’t sweat it if there are still chunks floating around in it when you’re done.  There’s always the next one!
Whatever cocktail happens to be your preference, make sure you check out the other blogs in the channel to see what they come up with for World Cocktail Week.

Photo Credit: Flickr

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