The wood stairs creak beneath my boots as I climb as much as the second-floor bar of Los Galgos, an all-day joint that has watched Buenos Aires develop and alter from the busy nook within the San Nicolás neighborhood the place it first opened its doorways in 1930. Bartender Ariel Lombán, in a black vest and tie, stands on the opposite aspect of the bar. The bottles behind him comprise a notable assortment of nationally produced spirits, aperitifs and bitters. There’s Patagonian gin, pink and white vermouths and a protracted procession of amaros as darkish as espresso—the ensemble solid of a rotating menu of basic Argentine cocktails.
When he isn’t behind the bar, Lombán pores over newspaper clippings, archives and recipe books to piece collectively the historical past of Argentine drinks. He palms me a tall, leather-bound booklet with the names of native classics and their inventors, the protagonists of a glamorous midcentury Golden Age of town’s bar scene.
However I’m right here to seize an off-menu cocktail that, for locals, requires neither an outline nor an introduction to its creator: the Clarito, a charitable pour of extra-dry gin and a splash of white vermouth, perfumed with lemon peel. Stirred, by no means shaken, identical to Santiago “Pichín” Policastro made it again in 1935. It’s served in a coupe, clear apart from the glass’ cloudy, chilled exterior, with a crisp first sip that hits you want a slap throughout the face. The unique recipe requires a sugar rim, which has since been ditched in a shift that mirrors the best way palates have leaned drier in current many years.
Greater than a cocktail, the Clarito and its creator had been emblematic of a quickly reworking society: Policastro was a part of a rising employees’ motion that immediately had expendable revenue, trip time and televisions and radios that unfold standard tradition throughout the nation’s residing rooms. The employees had been principally second-generation kids of immigrants who arrived in large waves from Europe, with smaller populations coming from communities within the Caucasus, the Levant and East Asia. A brand new center class within the Argentine capital was asking itself the place it slot in, in a rustic reworked.
In ingesting tradition, the divide had been evident: Throughout Policastro’s childhood, his household possible drank wine at residence—and a number of it. Within the Nineteen Twenties, annual per capita wine consumption hit greater than 60 liters whereas the Buenos Aires elite loved elaborate cocktails in costly bars and eating places. Policastro fell in with excessive society, however by no means overpassed his mission to popularize cocktails past the higher class. “Within the Fifties and ’60s, bartenders had been stopped on the streets of Buenos Aires and requested for his or her autographs,” explains Martín Auzmendi, bartender turned restaurateur and meals and drinks author. “Pichín was on tv making cocktails with la Doña Petrona, our Julia Baby. He was part of the jet set, however he was additionally dedicated to bringing bar tradition from the elite to the plenty.”
As Policastro wrote in his recipe ebook, “It damage to listen to folks speak about cocktails just like the Dry and Candy Martini, Daiquiri and Alexander. I felt that even with such good liquors and drinks, we didn’t have a cocktail that belonged to us.”
He was simply 23 years outdated when he created the Clarito. At face worth, the drink doesn’t sound completely distinctive—it’s primarily an extra-dry Martini with olives swapped out for lemon—however it hid a burgeoning nationwide culinary id and the altering palate of the Argentine drinker. It was an instantaneous hit.
“Olives had a special position in our culinary id; it simply didn’t make sense to throw them right into a cocktail,” explains Auzmendi. “Pichín joked, ‘Why would I put a picada in a cocktail?’” (The picada, a standard noon or night snack of cheeses, cured ham and olives, is most frequently consumed with alcohol.)
In a profession that stretched practically seven many years, Policastro created lots of of drinks, a lot of which, together with the Clarito, had been compiled into his seminal 1955 cocktail ebook Tragos Mágicos, or Magical Drinks. Within the foreword, editor Tulio Jacovella champions Policastro as an artist on par with the likes of cellist Pablo Casals and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler, however above all issues, “a patriot.” At a time when excessive tradition was outlined by no matter was in vogue in Europe, Policastro aggressively promoted native. He was a radical, and that earned him legions of followers. Pichín, his nickname, is one in all affection: It interprets to “little man” in Spanish.
By the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, a brand new technology of bartenders had ditched the nationwide cocktail id that Policastro performed such a pivotal position in crafting to hunt extra outward inspiration. In the present day, the Clarito stays principally an off-menu order, a kind of secret language that garners curiosity and respect out of your bartender.
“In Buenos Aires, bartenders pay extra consideration to what’s occurring in Singapore or Manhattan fairly than what we are able to make ourselves. That’s simply starting to shift,” says Pipi Yalour, who has been working in bars up and down Argentina for the final dozen years. “However tastes have modified. Drinks are much less dry, they’re taller, and there’s a common pattern towards drinks which are extra fruity or refreshing and fewer alcoholic.”
Though it’s uncommon to search out one of many lots of of Pichín concoctions on a bar menu, the Clarito has made a robust return at each old-school and craft cocktail bars. When it does seem on a menu, the drink hardly ever options the unique sugar rim, although the remainder of the recipe stays just about untouched.
Later, I cease by La Favorita, a cantina that gives Argentine classics like vermouth and soda, fernet and Coca-Cola and the Clarito. Bartender Ani Varela debates the minute particulars that characterize the extent of private interpretations on the basic—like including a peel to the ultimate drink or simply perfuming the glass, or chilling the glass with chilly water and vermouth or ice. In her model, she provides a couple of drops of orange bitters.
“Bartenders shall be bartenders. We wish to make each drink our personal,” says Varela of her refined tweak to the recipe. “We haven’t had one other bartender like Pichín that was acknowledged internationally. His Clarito is a bit of historical past, and it’s good as it’s.”
