Veteran Bartender Dale DeGroff Reveals How New York City's Rainbow Room Sparked a Cocktail Revolution

'King Cocktail' shares the late '80s cocktail menu that changed everything.

Dale DeGroff, known as “King Cocktail,” is widely credited with sparking the modern cocktail revival in New York City. DeGroff’s work began in the late 1980s while he ran the bar program at the famed Rainbow Room, 65 stories above Rockefeller Center.

“Hey, I was trying to be an actor,” says DeGroff, noting that his bar career took off between auditions.

Related: Communal Table Podcast: Dale DeGroff and Julie Reiner

In 1987 Joe Baum, the head of Restaurant Associates, hired DeGroff to helm the bar for the second iteration of Rainbow Room’s four-room, 10,360-square-foot fine dining concept. Baum insisted on a classic cocktail menu that used fresh ingredients. That was almost unheard of, during the ‘80s, especially in Midtown Manhattan.

“We were a rum and Tab (the original diet cola) town then, and here we were opening a bar with no soda gun,” says DeGroff. He was instructed to pick up a copy of the 1862 book The Bartender's Guide: How to Mix Drinks by Jerry “The Professor” Thomas and figure it out from there.

Improv was in DeGroff’s wheelhouse. Armed with an annotated edition of the book reprinted from the 1920s, he indeed figured it out. DeGroff’s tenure at the Rainbow Room lasted nearly 13 years. Being in charge of such an iconic bar for that long comes with its fair share of stories.

It all began with fresh juice

One of the hallmarks most associated with DeGroff’s time at the Rainbow Room was to nix bottled sour mix for fresh-squeezed juices, considered innovative at the time.

As DeGroff began to understand how busy the bar was going to get, he became nervous. How was the bar going to juice all that citrus, he thought. Baum’s response? “Hey, how busy do you think those guys (meaning bar men from Jerry Thomas’s era) were? If you’re too busy, I’ll find someone who can do it.” That never happened, of course. The Rainbow Room became known for fresh, citrus-forward cocktails like Margaritas, Whiskey Sours, and Pisco Sours.

Orange bitters shortage

DeGroff’s debut menu featured cocktails that paid tribute to New York City nightlife institutions, such as the Algonquin and the Stork Club, drinks that traditionally called for orange bitters. At first, he used DeKuyper Orange Bitters, but he quickly ran out of it.

“I thought I could get more,” he says. But orange bitters, or any other sort of flavored bitter, didn’t take off for many years. DeGroff instead used the aromatic versions of Angostura and Peychaud’s.

A rotten break on opening night

DeGroff broke one of his thumbs when he accidentally jammed it into a door during the early hours of service. After a trip to the emergency room, Baum allowed him to stay and direct, even if he couldn’t make the drinks himself. Injuries aside, “It took a good six months to become a good bar,” he says.

Nonalcoholic cocktails

Aside from reviving the classics and re-introducing fresh ingredients, the Rainbow Room cocktail program was ahead of its time in other ways. Zero-proof cocktails were on the menu from day one. Boozeless menu stalwarts included the Lime Rickey, Rainbow Punch, Lemon Daisy, and Horse’s Neck. The nonalcoholic drink list expanded over the years with the addition of the Rainbow Smash and Virgin Royal Hawaiian.

The New Year's Eve conga line

“On that first New Year’s Eve, the lights went out at midnight,” says DeGroff. Baum’s status as a nightlife impresario was sealed when an impromptu conga line assembled among the well-dressed revelers. It formed in the main dining room, then snaked through the back door, through the pantry, and into Rainbow & Stars (the nightclub/cabaret space). From there, it continued on through other service doors, into the Pavilion, sashayed through the Promenade lounge, and ended on the dance floor of the ballroom.

Shimmy. Shake. Rinse. Repeat.

The conga became a New Year’s ritual at the Rainbow Room. Unfortunately, according to DeGroff, so was inventory duty. The party would finally disperse around early breakfast, and then stock was recorded on New Year’s Day afternoon, with no break for sleep.

DeGroff says he wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

Early Rainbow Room classics

Here are some of the cocktails on the menu at the Rainbow Room’s legendary bar program in the early years. Many may seem old hat today, but between 1987 and the mid-1990s, these nightcaps exuded iconoclastic style.

Negroni (opening menu)

The ultimate dolce vita aperitivo is available everywhere and in every way now. In late ’80s New York City, however, the Negroni was an obscure drink outside of classic Italian restaurant settings, and most palates were not accustomed to its bittersweet potency. DeGroff is one of its early mainstream champions. He says that the Negroni wasn’t an instant hit, perhaps because it was served with very little dilution.

“It got more bitter as it warmed up,” he says. It was later changed to the more traditional rocks presentation, and an option was also offered with vodka.

Americano (opening menu)

DeGroff says that this bitter, classic Italian highball was more of an immediate hit than the Negroni. Like the Negroni, Americanos had little precedent in formal dining venues stateside. “This one stayed on the menu, likely because the dilution helped get palates accustomed to the bitter flavors,” he says. The Rainbow Room garnished its version with a flamed orange peel, another nod to the past.

“Aperitif, sherry, and vermouth drinks should be served in stemware,” says DeGroff. “But the Americano Highball should obviously be in a highball glass.”

Pisco Sour (late 1980s)

A majority of the Rainbow Room’s guests were from out of town. DeGroff recognized that if your bar aims to please, the drinks list better be welcoming. When he added a Pisco Sour to the menu, DeGroff says he was surprised to discover that older American customers recognized it. Baum supposedly watched in silence while the drink was prepared in its debut. “If Joe saw something and kept walking, it was high praise,” says DeGroff.

Mojito (early 1990s)

A note from DeGroff to Joe Baum dated 6/16/1990 reads: “Mr. Baum, I would like to add an additional cocktail to the ‘Classic List’ (a section which was added to the main menu that year), the Mojito … I’m sure you know the drink. It has a long history in Cuba, and I’ve had luck hand-selling the drink, especially among Europeans, at the front bar. I’m very high on this cocktail. It’s a real attention-getter.”

Cosmopolitan (early 1990s)

“This kid downtown was getting attention for this drink,” says DeGroff. “Obviously, it was going to be a hot drink uptown, too.” That “kid downtown,” as many know, was Toby Cecchini, who originated the Cosmopolitan at the Odeon in Tribeca. The rest is history, in stiletto heels.

Singapore Sling (early 1990s)

By the time it was featured in the “Tributes” section of the Rainbow Room menu, the average Singapore Sling was far from its originator’s vision. During the 1970s, it was reimagined as a foofy tropical concoction. However, when the drink was originally conceived in 1915 at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore by head bartender Ngiam Tong Boon, it was a tall gin refresher sans pineapple juice, little paper umbrellas, and other extraneous accouterments.

“The recipe varies from book to book, and I was unhappy with many of them,” says DeGroff. “Robin Kelley O’Connor, the Bordeaux wine expert, faxed me this recipe from Raffles while staying there in 1990. I have never tasted a better version. It’s spicy, not too sweet, with a beautiful pink color and a layer of foam from vigorous shaking with pineapple juice. I’m making it my business to teach this recipe to every young bartender I know. It’s a gem in your repertoire.”

The Fitzgerald (early 1990s)

This cocktail may seem a classic, but The Fitzgerald is a DeGroff original, (also included in my book Signature Cocktails). Here are the notes that DeGroff sent to Clarkson Potter when he submitted the original manuscript of The Craft of the Cocktail in 2001:

“The Gin & Tonic has always been the traditional cocktail hour standard for summer gatherings. Several years ago, while working the Promenade Bar at the Rainbow Room, a customer challenged me to create a new summer drink, saying he was tired of the G&T, and asked me to do something more exciting with gin to get him through the summer. I made a Gin Sour, but I spiced it up by adding Angostura bitters and called it the Gin Thing. Well, it became quite the thing that summer, so I put it on my cocktail menu. One guest who enjoyed the drink was a fiction reader for the New Yorker named Valerie, who insisted I give the drink a classier name. Since the Hemingway Daiquiri was on the menu at the time, she thought F. Scott Fitzgerald should get some equal representation, so she suggested The Fitzgerald. I found out much later that what I had made already existed, a drink called the Bennett Cocktail, made with lemon juice instead of lime juice. Oh, well…great minds, and all that rubbish.”

Between the Sheets (opening menu)

DeGroff says that few people had heard of the Between the Sheets, a 1920s-era drink, by the mid-1980s. He suspected “something was catching on” in 1990 when he visited a new, casual, “saloon-like” Greenwich Village restaurant that had the cocktail on the menu. Though DeGroff has not confirmed it, the eatery may have been Grange Hall, and the bartender was perhaps Del Pedro.

More than a decade later, Pedro worked at Pegu Club, founded by DeGroff protégé Audrey Saunders, before he opened Tooker Alley in Brooklyn. Like the Rainbow Room, Grange Hall was way ahead of its time.