Thirsty Yet?
DRINK/DIY
We figured you would be, so we asked our favorite new hangout, The Dinky Bar & Kitchen in Princeton, to mix us up a stern cocktail that could hold up to a bitter chill and was low-maintenance enough that we couldn’t screw it up when we went to replicate it at home later on. This is what they offered up. The Coffee Cocktail looks like a latté and tastes like one, too. But you’ll notice the total lack of coffee. Magic. At least, it was in 1887, when this recipe was published in the reprint of Jerry Thomas’ seminal tome, How to Mix Drinks.
And that’s what we love about The Dinky: Everything old is new again. Which seems to be the predominant theme among this set of pages. The bar sits across the street from the McCarter in a 1918 stone building that housed a Dinky train station for the better part of a century. There’s still plenty of the original character there to encourage a deeper exploration of an impressively wide-ranging drinks menu that reaches from sake and hard-to-find ciders to smartly crafted cocktails like this one. Basically, there’s no going wrong. Here, either.
The Dinky’s Coffee Cocktail
1½ ounces port
1 ounce brandy
½ ounce simple syrup
1 whole egg
1 dash Angostura bitters
Freshly ground nutmeg, for garnish
Combine the ingredients, shake hard, then strain into a wine glass. Garnish with nutmeg.
Photography by Josh DeHonney
