Polo – Recipe from the ‘Old Waldorf Bar Guide’

Not after Marco, the adventurer, but after the game which in those days was little known except to the fashionable. That was before Meadowbrook had hurled its young men and its wealth into a comparative void in our National outdoor life. 

One-fourth Lemon Juice 

One-fourth Orange Juice 

One-half Rum 

Frappe

Meadowbrook Polo club is just outside Manhattan and established in 1881 is the longest continuously running Polo club in the United States, and in the darkest void of prohibition, 1928, a 3-day event between the United States and Argentina managed to attract a crowd of 100000.

I’m hoping like the rest of the country at the time these people were attracted to a large sporting occasion potentially not rigorously patrolled by prohibition agents, that also had something they could bet on at the same time, and imagine a bacchanal event far exceeding the debauchery that used to go on at the China White tent at the Cartier Polo years ago.

However, its drinks like this that make me despair of the Waldorf. Its essentially the same drink as a the Cubaine (26-07) only without the sugar to help support the juice it tastes too watery. I can’t imagine that a bartender glanced at this recipe before it was printed as it doesn’t take a lot of knowledge to imagine how it would taste.

Not worth trying unless you find yourself in a speakeasy trackside in the 1920’s.