Drinks
This Bartending Legend Wants You to Drink Less
Jim Meehan, from the cult speakeasy PDT, has been pushing cocktails for more than a decade. Now he wants us to dial it back.
Photographer: Joanna McClure for Bloomberg Businessweek
In the mid-aughts, America was on the tail end of its obsession with the Cosmopolitan and on the cusp of a classic cocktail renaissance. The country was reacquainting itself with the gin martini and the Old-Fashioned, drinks in heavy rotation on the hit TV series Mad Men, which premiered in 2007.
That same year, I opened a speak-easy-style bar in the East Village called PDT (short for “Please Don’t Tell”). And then the global financial markets crashed. As the glut of capital that fueled sprawling clubs and lavish restaurants in Manhattan dried up, customers’ focus shifted from decadent décor to the quality of what was on their plates and in their glasses.