Fear and Loathing in Singapore
Raffles Singapore Sling
-1 oz gin
-½ oz Cherry Heering
-¼ oz Cointreau
-¼ oz Bénédictine
-½ oz lime juice
-4 oz pineapple juice
-⅓ oz grenadine
-1 dash Angostura bitters
Shake with ice. Strain into a highball. Top with soda. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and cherry.
Elevated
Cognac-based orange and the original cherry liqueur bring the Raffles recipe closer to its source. The garnish earns its place.
-1½ oz London dry gin
-1 oz fresh lime juice
-¾ oz pineapple juice
-¼ oz Grand Marnier
-¼ oz Cherry Heering
-¼ oz Bénédictine
-1 dash Angostura bitters
Shake with ice. Strain into a highball. Top with soda. Garnish with fresh pineapple fronds and a Luxardo cherry.
What You're Tasting
Tropical up front, the pineapple carries the cocktail. The gin runs underneath, quiet but present, and the Bénédictine pulls the whole thing to something more botanical. The citrus stays true to its tropical background. It's more layered than it looks, which is appropriate. This drink was designed to not look like what it is.
The Story
"Twenty-four hours ago we were sitting in the Pogo Lounge of the Beverly Heights Hotel, in the patio section of course, drinking Singapore Slings with mezcal on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of Our Lord nineteen-hundred and seventy-one."
It is no strange occurrence for a story to survive history, and this drink is living testament to becoming half recipe and half rumor. The Singapore Sling belongs to the order of tropical cocktails that have been inherited, recolored, and retold. Before it appeared beside mezcal in Thompson's hallucinatory desert retelling, it had already passed through another kind of fever in the colonial heat of Singapore, where empire, labor, vanity, appetite, and social restraint all moved through the same harbor.
By the early twentieth century, Singapore's harbor had been under British colonial influence for nearly a century, as the British East India Company established their free trading port, importing and exporting the exotic cargo for the empire. The labourers, known in the colonial language of the time as Kulis, came from all walks of life, including local natives, Indians, and Chinese. Throughout the workday, they would work, most of them barefoot, transporting large hand-woven baskets up the gangplanks leading to the merchant vessels. Baskets filled up with local goods, ranging from pineapples to the carcasses of alligators to be brought to a taxidermist to prepare for a mantelpiece in some wealthy duke's estate.
It was an era of life and trade, and the colony had built itself up around that labor. European colonial architecture rose tall above the streets as if for the empire to watch over the upper class horse-drawn carriages and lower class rickshaws. The barefoot Kulis pulled these rickshaws past colonials dressed to the nines, as British-loyal Sikhs directing traffic held order in the chaos. The Kulis ran their personal marathons through heat, pushing their hearts to the point of death at times. The city with all its shops filled the air with languages heard from all parts of Asia, with the banging of pots and the smell of meals being prepared.
While the lower class worked endlessly, the upper class made its way through the cast iron Scottish-designed entryway of the Raffles Hotel, a name derived from Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, the man credited with establishing Singapore as the free trade post that it was for that time. The young British men of the empire settled in with gin and whiskey as they watched the women walk by, convinced they were the grace brought to the undeveloped culture they resided in. The women had adapted their dresses to the tropics, trading boned corsets for loose silks and linens. They walked through the arches and into Long Bar, nestled in the heart of the hotel.
Ngiam Tong Boon, lover of libations and women alike, had built his reputation at the bar. The Singapore Sling was a variation of the slings in its time, though this one held its own secret to it. Ngiam had dressed the cocktail in grenadine, letting the pink hue of the syrup hide the promiscuous spirits that lay beneath. This allowed the colonial women, who were prohibited from drinking in public, to walk around the bar with what looked like an elegant punch drink in hand. One by one, like a serpent in the garden, Ngiam served the women who approached the bar for this drink of knowledge. The Singapore Sling became the social contract, allowing women to drink openly, in a colonial society trying to hold on to customs and courtesies underneath the tropical heat, only to be left to their own devices in a new world. This was a moment in time that captured a unique cocktail legend.
Whether Ngiam invented the drink exactly as the Raffles Hotel remembers it, or merely gave an old sling a new name, a legend remains a legend. The Singapore Sling is a cocktail built on concealment with gin hidden beneath pineapple, desire behind etiquette, and history stained with grenadine. The recipe may have been lost, rewritten, or conveniently rediscovered, but the legend lives on. By the time Raoul Duke orders it with mezcal in the Beverly Heights Hotel, the drink had already outlived the colonial empire it was made in. It was never only a recipe, but a myth disguised as a pink drink.