When I was 21 or 22, delicate and clueless, I ordered a Bloody Mary at a Chicago bar in the company of people I considered actual adults. It was 9 or 10 p.m.—I do not remember the exact details, except that everybody laughed.
But recently, Bloodys have begun to crop up on well-curated cocktail menus at the kind of dark and moody bars and restaurants that don’t bother with brunch. “I really love the lightness and brightness of a nighttime Bloody Mary,” says Nialls Fallon, a partner at New York City’s Eel Bar, a Basque-inspired restaurant that begins slinging Bloody Marys when it opens at 5 p.m. People are surprised and delighted by their presence on the menu, nestled between the Martini and the classic G&T, he reports. “I’ll hear them say, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna get a Bloody Mary!’” It is impishly subversive: A Bloody Mary in the evening says you are the kind of devil-may-care drinker who cannot be cowed by arbitrary rules. “If you tell people when they’re supposed to have something, eventually, people are going to be like, Why?” says Jackson Cannon, of Equal Measure in Boston. “Why do I only have an Aperol Spritz in the afternoon? Why do I only have a Mimosa in the morning, if that’s what I want?” Why can you not have a Bloody Mary after dark?
You can. You should. Depending on where you are in the U.S, it is possible you already do: In Wisconsin, says Milwaukee native Nikki Schultz, a bartender at Thunderbolt in Los Angeles, the all-hours Bloody is a way of life. “It’s a brunch beverage, sure. A hangover cure, sure. But it’s also kind of a mini meal in the Midwest. And when I say ‘Midwest,’ I do specifically mean southeastern Wisconsin.” The only news here, from her perspective, is that discerning cocktail bars across the country appear to be catching up to one obvious fact: Bloody Marys are delicious.
But while the brunchtime Bloody Mary is thick, bordering on chunky, aggressively garnished, and served in (generally) a pint glass with (potentially) a straw, the new sundown variations are restrained, even elegant. At The Tusk Bar in Manhattan, bar manager Tristan Brunel describes the base of his Bloody riff, the Hail Caesar, as “almost like a dashi,” an intense umami blend of soy sauce, fermented chiles, horseradish, fresh garlic and cilantro, strained, cut with Clamato and the spirit of your choice, and served in a distinctly nighttime sour glass. With peated Scotch—Brunel’s preference—the effect is “almost consommé-like.”
Smoothness is essential to the evening iteration; vodka, generally, is not. At Thunderbolt, Schultz—who is partial to using mezcal—gives her Bloodys an added layer of savory sophistication by incorporating the pot liquor from the restaurant’s collard greens; at Eel Bar, the Bloodys get their kick from pickled Basque pepper juice and Spanish paprika. “This is, like, the older-sister version of the younger, drunk Bloody Mary,” says Sarah Morrissey, bar manager at reopened legend Le Veau d’Or in New York City, where the relatively classic Bloody hinges on exceptionally delicate Alain Milliat brand tomato juice. “It’s kind of the perfect vegetal, salty aperitif.”
“The savory cocktail moment is here,” declared Eater’s Jaya Saxena last year, pointing to the onslaught of new entries to the category with high-end grocery store ingredients. Of course the Bloody would be popping up on nighttime menus—it is the most vegetal, most food-like, most savory cocktail there is, and it’s been in the classic canon the whole time. There is another force at work: The Bloody Mary goes exceptionally well with food, and not just any food, but the kind of snacky, seafood-forward, small-plate-high-flavor menus that are currently en vogue. It is an ideal match for raw oysters or fried mussels, for pintxo or anchovies or salty chipolatas. Even so, admits Brunel, the evening Bloody can be a harder sell. “Culturally, we’re so attuned to, like, That’s something you get at brunch,” he says. But that is a mistake.
It isn’t that the Bloody Mary is a brunch drink, it’s that the Bloody Mary is, above all else, a drink of leisure. You do not down a Bloody Mary; often, you linger over one. “Bloodys are about taking time,” says Schultz. “When you have a Bloody, you’re really having this one drink.”
