There is a particular kind of paralysis that hits at a bar with a proper cocktail list. You recognize three names, you are not confident about the other eight, and ordering something you do not like costs fourteen dollars and a certain amount of pride. So you order the thing you always order.
The list is not trying to catch you out. Here is what is on most of them.
The classics, honestly described
- Old Fashioned — whiskey, sugar, bitters, orange. Spirit-forward, meaning it tastes like whiskey with the edges rounded off. If you do not enjoy whiskey you will not enjoy this, and no amount of orange peel changes that.
- Manhattan — whiskey and sweet vermouth. Richer and rounder than an Old Fashioned, slightly herbal from the vermouth. Underrated in cold weather.
- Negroni — gin, Campari, sweet vermouth. Properly bitter. People either adore it or push it away after one sip; there is very little middle ground.
- Boulevardier — a Negroni made with whiskey instead of gin. Warmer, softer, and a good bridge if you find a Negroni too sharp. This is the one people ask about most and order least.
- Espresso martini — vodka, coffee liqueur, real espresso. Sweet, cold, and caffeinated. It came back into fashion a few years ago and never left, and it is doing an enormous amount of work on Buffalo bar tabs after 10pm.
- Mule — spirit, ginger beer, lime, served over ice. Refreshing, easy, and endlessly adaptable, which is why every bar has a house version.
- Margarita / daiquiri — spirit, citrus, sugar. When made properly with fresh juice they are excellent; when made from a mix they are dreadful. A bar that squeezes citrus will be proud to tell you.
A Boulevardier is a Negroni that has calmed down. Order it if the Negroni was too much.
The Buffalo one
The Loganberry Mule is our regional contribution and it needs explaining to anyone from out of town.
Loganberry is a sweet, dark red fruit drink deeply tied to this region — specifically to the old Crystal Beach amusement park across the lake, which closed decades ago and which every older Buffalonian remembers. The drink survived the park. It is sold locally, and it turns up in ice cream, in soda fountains, and increasingly behind bars.
Put it in a mule with ginger beer and lime and you get something that is genuinely local, genuinely good, and completely unavailable outside Western New York. If you are visiting and you want to drink something you cannot get at home, this is the answer. More regional vocabulary in our WNY food glossary.
How to order well
Describe the direction, not the drink. "Something bitter and stirred" or "something citrusy and not too sweet" will get you a better result than picking a name you half-recognize. Bartenders like this question.
Know the two axes. Almost every cocktail sits somewhere on spirit-forward versus refreshing and sweet versus dry. Name your corner and you will land somewhere you enjoy.
Season matters more than you think. Stirred, spirit-forward, brown-liquor drinks suit January. Long, cold, citrus-driven drinks suit a rooftop in July — which is most of why the list shifts through patio season.
Zero-proof is a real category now. Not a consolation. A properly built non-alcoholic drink has the same structure — acid, sweetness, bitterness, dilution — and is worth ordering on its own terms.
After about 11pm most bars simplify, and this is sensible rather than lazy — a twelve-ingredient build at last call slows everyone down. Espresso martinis, mules, and highballs are what a busy late bar makes well. Related: what is actually open late in this city, which is a shorter list than the 4am last call suggests.
Our bar
Fourteen taps and a cocktail list that runs from the classics through the espresso martinis to the Loganberry Mule, plus a zero-proof section that is not an afterthought. It is all on the menu, and if you want to go by draft instead, the beer list has its own guide.
If the drink is the second half of an evening for two, the date-night guide covers the first half. Bar until midnight midweek, 2am Thursday through Saturday, on our corner of Main Street.