When Joan’s husband, Greg Harris, comes home drunk late one night and breaks the news that he didn’t get the chief residency in surgery he’d worked and hoped so hard for, he tells Joan he’s been drinking alone at the Dublin House, a neighborhood Irish bar on West 79th Street. Opened in 1921 during Prohibition, the bar looked like an ordinary residence on the outside, but had a full bar and restaurant inside.
The Dublin House Bar and Tap Room wasn’t a place for refined cocktails in the early 1960s, according to manager Paula Griffin. It was a favorite of sailors whose ships docked at the 79th Street boat basin; The Dublin House was literally the first place they saw when they disembarked. Sailors and iron workers building Manhattan skyscrapers came for a shot of whiskey and beer, often mixing the two into a mixture known as a Boilermaker and downing them in one long draw. The Dublin House has always opened at 8 a.m. because many of its customers liked to jumpstart their days with a shot or two or three. One of the only cocktails served there at the time was a Rusty Nail, but today the Dublin House also serves top shelf drinks such as martinis.
The Rusty Nail, a mix of whiskey and Drambuie liqueur (often with a twist and usually over ice), has a reputation as a dive bar drink and can be adjusted for sweetness by adding more or less Drambuie; the honey, herbal taste of the Drambuie balances the biting, hot taste of the whiskey.
Drambuie, according to its manufacturer, is an elixir of herbs, spices, and heather honey crafted with aged Scotch whiskeys and was created by Scottish Prince Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the mid-1700s. The concoction didn’t resurface for more than a century until James Ross, the owner of the Broadford Hotel on the Isle of Skye—a hotel still in operation—began mixing dram buidheach, “the drink that satisfies.” It was registered in 1893 under the name Drambuie.
Our Rusty Nail cocktail recipe comes to you courtesy of Dr. Greg Harris’ refuge of choice, the Dublin House itself.