One Drink, Five Ways: Bloody Mary

Five bars, five different takes on the classic hangover-fixer

Welcome to the monthly feature in which we investigate and rate the way one cocktail varies from bar to bar (to bar to bar to bar). Up this month: The Bloody Mary.

It begins in the morning (or the afternoon): Your skull feels as if someone is cleaving it with a rusty shovel. It's a hangover. And there’s one cure—a Bloody Mary, served stiff and garnished with a garden. (Call it hair of the dog or call it your daily serving of vegetables—we just call it genius.) According to legend, the Bloody was born in 1934, when NYC’s King Cole Bar ’tender Fernand Petiot tweaked a recipe originating at Harry’s Bar in Paris, resulting in his “Red Snapper,” a cocktail made with tomato and lemon juices, vodka, black and cayenne peppers and Worcestershire.

His success was copied countrywide, taking on the now-common colloquialism and flavorful tweaks, including garlic, horseradish, pickle juice—basically whatever’s in a fridge. (And we haven’t even begun with garnishes.) From shrimp-topped monsters to jalapeño-infused tequila pick-me-ups, here’s the Bloody Mary, done five hangover-killing ways. —Joshua M. Bernstein

Photos by Michael Harlan Turkell

Pictured: The Bloody Louis XVI at Paris Commune