Pour Yourself a Drink: The Pendergast
Not many—any?—classic cocktails come from Kansas City, Missouri. And it always pained Ryan Maybee, bartender at Manifesto, that he couldn’t toast the town with a libation of its own. So he concocted a drink to give the so-called Paris of the Plains a shout-out.
A moody mix of bourbon, sweet vermouth, the herbal liqueur Benedictine, and spiced Angostura bitters, Maybee’s Pendergast is named for infamous Kansas City politician Tom Pendergast. In the 1920s and 30s, Pendergast was a polarizing figure of many contradictions: According to a special library collection at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, he was a “master administrator and power broker” who exploited and bartered for loyalty, votes, favors, and payoffs, the collection reads. ”He manipulated elections and undermined prohibition, but he also kept Kansas City working during the Depression.”
"It tells a story; has some soul," Maybee says of the drink in the Saveur video above. “It’s Kansas City in a glass.”
Watch the video to see how the drink is made, and follow along with the recipe here.
