Eastside
The Eastside is the modern classic that tastes like a garden: gin, lime, mint and cucumber, shaken cold and strained silky, out of the early-2000s New York revival and most often credited to George Delgado at Libation on the Lower East Side. It reads as a gimlet that walked through a greenhouse. The mint and cucumber are muddled fresh into the sour frame, the cucumber cooling exactly where the lime sharpens, and the drink lands green, cold and improbably refreshing at full cocktail strength. Names shift by neighbourhood between Eastside, East Side and Eastside Gimlet; the drink underneath is constant. It is also the modern bar’s great gin ambassador, the drink bartenders reach for when a guest says they do not like gin, and the one that most reliably proves them wrong. The botanicals do not vanish. They simply get a garden to stand in, and the glass tastes green before it tastes of juniper.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Ingredients
60ml
The frame the garden stands in: London Dry for structure, or a cucumber-led contemporary gin to double the theme. A shy gin disappears under the greenery entirely.
25ml
The gimlet inheritance, and the sharp line the cucumber cools. Squeezed to order, because it is the only thing here providing acid.
20ml
The balance for the lime and the greenery both. Twenty millilitres is calibrated against fresh cucumber, which brings a faint sweetness of its own.
3 slices
The cooling half of the signature: muddled fresh, its water and green skin flavour doing what no liqueur can. Cut it to order, because tired slices taste of fridge.
6 leaves
The aromatic half, pressed gently with the cucumber and then strained out. Bruise it rather than crushing it; torn leaves turn the drink bitter and grassy.
Instructions
Muddle the cucumber slices and mint leaves gently in the shaker with the syrup.
Add the gin and lime juice with ice.
Shake hard for 12 seconds.
Double strain into a chilled coupe and garnish with a cucumber ribbon.
Expert Tip
Double strain without fail, because the drink’s silk depends on leaving the garden’s debris behind in the shaker. Cucumber breaks down under muddling into fibre and mint tears into flecks, and both are unpleasant to meet halfway down a coupe. Muddle both gently and to order: press the cucumber just enough to release its water and the mint just enough to bruise, because hard muddling on mint releases chlorophyll and turns the drink bitter and grassy. Cut the cucumber fresh for each round as well, since slices that have sat for an hour taste distinctly of fridge and there is nothing else in the glass to cover for that. Shake hard, twelve seconds, then strain twice.
Behind the Eastside
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The drink belongs to New York’s early-2000s revival, with George Delgado at Libation the most cited author and the Lower East Side the name’s home turf.
It spread through the decade’s menus under a small family of names and travelled as fast as any drink of its generation, which is unusual for a riff rather than an invention. Its cousin the Southside supplied the template it grew from, and the Eastside’s entire contribution is one vegetable. That turns out to be enough to make a different drink.
Cucumber and Mint
The pairing works because the two do opposite jobs. Mint perfumes the top of the drink, arriving on the nose and the first sip, while cucumber cools its body from inside, the vegetable’s water lightening the sour frame in a way no liqueur reproduces.
Both go in fresh, per drink, and both take a gentle hand. Cucumber wants pressing just enough to release its water; mint wants bruising rather than crushing, because torn leaves put chlorophyll into the glass and chlorophyll is bitter and grassy and does not strain out. Cucumber cut more than an hour ahead tastes of fridge, and there is nothing here to hide that behind.
Against the Southside
One garden wall separates them. A Southside is gin, lime, sugar and mint, and it is essentially a mint gimlet: sharp, bright and herbal, with the mint doing all the work in the aromatic register.
Add cucumber and the drink changes temperature. The vegetable brings water and a cool, faintly green flavour that sits underneath the mint rather than beside it, softening the lime’s edge and lengthening the finish. The result is rounder and reads as considerably more refreshing at the same strength, which is why the newer drink has largely overtaken the older one on modern lists.
The Gin Conversion
No modern drink converts gin refusers more reliably, and the mechanism is worth understanding. Most people who say they dislike gin dislike juniper arriving on its own, as a perfume note with nothing around it.
Here the botanicals read as part of a garden rather than as a bottle. The cucumber and mint give the juniper company in the same flavour family, so what arrives is greenness with structure rather than a floral note in isolation. The gin is fully present and doing the work; it simply stops announcing itself. A cucumber-forward contemporary gin doubles down on the effect, and a classic London Dry keeps the drink honest.
How to Serve It
Very cold, silk-strained, early in the evening or deep into the summer. It is the modern aperitif the Southside was for an earlier century, and it does the same job at the front of a meal.
A cucumber ribbon is the right garnish, sitting inside the glass rather than perched on the rim, and it wants cutting thin enough to curl. Serve it to the table’s gin sceptic without announcing the base spirit, and collect the conversion afterwards, which works often enough to be worth relying on.
Make it at home
The Spirit
GinA flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an Eastside and a Southside?
Who created the Eastside?
Why is it good for gin sceptics?
Do I have to double strain it?
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Southside
Nobody owns the Southside’s origin story, which is half its charm. New York claims it for the 21 Club, the speakeasy where it was the house pour for the well-dressed end of Prohibition; Long Island claims it for the Southside Sportsmen’s Club, where mint from the kitchen garden met gin after the shooting; Chicago claims it for the South Side itself, where mobs allegedly softened harsh bootleg gin with lemon, sugar and mint. All three stories involve gin that needed forgiving and mint that obliged. What emerged is the Mojito’s cooler-headed cousin: gin, citrus, sugar and mint, shaken and strained into a coupe rather than built long over ice. Without soda and crushed ice diluting the frame, the drink is more concentrated and more elegant, the mint reading as perfume rather than salad, the gin’s botanicals and the herb finishing each other’s sentences. It survived Prohibition for the simplest reason: it never needed bad gin to justify itself. With a good London Dry the Southside is one of the finest simple gin sours in the canon, a drink that dresses for dinner where the Mojito dresses for the beach.
Gimlet
The Gimlet is the Royal Navy in a coupe. In 1867 the Merchant Shipping Act made lime rations compulsory aboard British ships, and in the same year Lauchlin Rose of Leith patented a way of preserving lime juice in sugar without a drop of alcohol. Rose's Lime Cordial went to sea, the officers' gin went into it, and somewhere between Portsmouth and Bombay the Gimlet was born. The defining decision is the cordial. A true Gimlet is gin and lime cordial and nothing else, and its character is exactly the cooked, marmalade-edged lime that preservation produces: smooth, rounded and faintly nostalgic, closer to silk than to citrus. Fresh lime and sugar make a bright and blameless drink, but they make a different one, and the traditional position is that the cordial version is the Gimlet and the fresh version is its modern variation. Proportions are the drinker's prerogative in the naval spirit. The classic pour ran as heavy as half and half; the modern palate prefers the drier three to one given here.
Gin Sour
The Gin Sour is the sour family’s plainest statement and one of its oldest: spirit, lemon and sugar, the template Jerry Thomas codified in 1862 applied to the botanical spirit, predating most of the famous gin drinks that descend from it. Every White Lady, Bee’s Knees and Clover Club is a Gin Sour that learned a second language. Its plainness is the point. Three ingredients expose the gin completely, which makes this the sour that teaches botanicals: a juniper-led London Dry gives the classic spine, while a citrus or floral gin turns the same spec into a different afternoon entirely. The optional egg white borrows the Boston Sour’s silk without changing the argument. It sits in the canon as the missing link drinkers skip past, ordering its descendants without ever meeting the ancestor. Made with a good gin and honest lemon, it explains in one glass why the template conquered the world.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits