Quick service tip before the story: the full ingredient list is right here, ready to order. Here's how this cocktail came to be.
The Ramos Gin Fizz was created by Henry Charles "Carl" Ramos in New Orleans, 1888, at his Imperial Cabinet Saloon. Ramos was famous for the impossibly silky, cloud-like foam of his drink and for the small army of "shaker boys" he employed to get it right. Reports of the era describe as many as 35 shaker boys lined up behind the bar, passing the cocktail down the line and shaking for up to 12 minutes each.
Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long loved it so much that in 1935 he brought a Roosevelt Hotel bartender to New York to teach the Hotel New Yorker staff how to make it properly, and held a press conference about it. The Ramos survived Prohibition in memory alone and came back with the cocktail revival as an IBA classic.
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