Skip to main content

EAST AWARDS: Best Cocktail

Tue, 07/09/2024 - 17:16
Christine Sampson

It's a rough job but someone has to do it: East has taken one for the team and taste-tested the season's most delicious-sounding beverages in search of the ultimate, definitive cocktail for the summer of 2024. We found it at Townline BBQ, where Wainscott and Sagaponack meet.

It's a fresh, icy, special-attraction called a strawberry mezcalita, made with Dos Hombres, the mezcal brand cooked up in 2020 by the actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame. The starring ingredient is a vinegar shrub made with strawberries grown in the kitchen garden at Nick and Toni's, the roadhouse's tony older-sister restaurant in East Hampton. It also has fresh lime juice, a little agave, a shot of chili-pepper liqeur called Giffard Pimente D'Espelette, and a skewered garnish of dried strawberries (which we recommend swizzling into the drink for rehydration purposes).

We consider the price, $15, fair for the East End, especially given the stellar quality of the ingredients. With the strawberry crop nearly gone, gone, gone-o, we pronounce this the moment for the strawberry mezcalita.

 

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.