Fitzgerald

Gin, lemon, sugar, and Angostura bitters — DeGroff's Rainbow Room creation named for Fitzgerald, the bitters replacing orange liqueur to add clove-spice depth.

The Fitzgerald Cocktail was created by Dale DeGroff — widely regarded as the figure most responsible for the American craft cocktail revival of the late 20th century — at the Rainbow Room, the legendary restaurant and nightclub on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, where DeGroff worked as head bartender from 1987 to 1999. DeGroff named the drink for F. Scott Fitzgerald, the novelist whose 1925 masterwork The Great Gatsby captured the Jazz Age's glittering surface and moral hollowness with unprecedented precision, making Fitzgerald the literary voice most associated with the cocktail culture of the 1920s. The formula — gin, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters — is a stripped-down gin sour in which the Angostura's clove and spice aromatics replace the orange liqueur that typically elevates a sour's sweetness. The Angostura's role is transformative: where a standard gin sour reads as citrus-forward, the Fitzgerald's bitters give it a warm, spiced depth that makes it feel more layered and more complex than its four ingredients suggest. DeGroff's philosophy — fresh citrus, quality spirits, proper technique — is exemplified in the Fitzgerald: a simple formula whose quality depends entirely on its ingredients and its execution. DeGroff was named a James Beard Foundation Icon in 2009.