Grasshopper

Green crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream — Philip Guichet's 1928 Tujague's New Orleans creation, mint-chocolate in a vivid green dessert cocktail form.

The Grasshopper was created at Tujague's restaurant in New Orleans, one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in the United States, which was established in 1856 on Decatur Street in the French Quarter by Guillaume Tujague, a Gascon immigrant from southern France. Philip Guichet, a bartender at Tujague's, created the Grasshopper and entered it in a New York cocktail competition around 1928, where it won second place — the competition exposure contributing to the drink's subsequent spread through American bar culture. The formula — equal parts green crème de menthe, white crème de cacao, and heavy cream — is a dessert cocktail of striking visual identity: the green crème de menthe's artificial coloring produces the vivid grasshopper-green that gives the drink its name, combined with the white opacity of cream. Crème de menthe's mint oil concentrate and crème de cacao's chocolate flavor create the classic after-dinner mint-chocolate combination in liquid form. The Grasshopper became a particular fixture of the American South and Midwest in mid-century supper club and fine dining culture, where an after-dinner dessert cocktail was a standard component of the formal evening meal. It experienced a broader revival through the craft cocktail movement's rehabilitation of pre-war classics.