Lemon Drop Pudding Shot

Bright lemon pudding with citrus vodka for a tangy-sweet pudding shot inspired by the classic lemon drop cocktail.

The Lemon Drop was created in the early 1970s by Norman Jay Hobday at Henry Africa's bar in San Francisco — and in creating it, Hobday also inadvertently established one of the most influential concepts in modern bar design. Hobday opened Henry Africa's in 1969 on the corner of Broadway and Polk Street with almost no money for renovation, decorating instead with abundant plants and hanging ferns from the ceiling. What emerged was the first fern bar: a bright, warm, plant-filled social space explicitly designed to be welcoming to women at a time when most American bars were dark, male-dominated rooms. The concept spread across the country within a decade, directly inspiring the casual dining chains — TGI Friday's, Houlihan's — that defined American bar-restaurant culture through the 1970s and 1980s. The Lemon Drop cocktail was Hobday's most enduring creation, designed with the same philosophy as the bar itself: a vodka sour served in a cocktail glass with a sugared rim, sweet enough and elegant enough that a woman would enjoy holding it, potent enough that it was actually a serious drink. He named it after lemon drop candies — the sugar-dusted yellow sweets with a sharp citrus center — whose sweet-sour profile the cocktail deliberately replicated. Hobday sold the bar in 1985 and it closed the following year; he legally changed his name to Henry Africa and continued in the San Francisco bar industry until his death in 2011. The Lemon Drop is now an IBA recognized cocktail.