Old Fashioned at Holland House
The Old Fashioned isn’t for everyone. It’s a whiskey drinker’s drink traditionally made — according to the International Bartenders Association — with just a few simple ingredients: sugar, bitters, whiskey and water. Some, myself included, will tell you that ice and an orange-peel garnish are key. Others will say it’s best with a splash of club soda. It’s most often made with bourbon or rye, though occasionally you’ll find a drinker who prefers it with scotch. I’d argue, however, that if you’ve got a scotch worth drinking, it’s a scotch worth drinking neat or on the rocks — any additional flourish is sacrilege.
As with the origin story behind any American institution, the exact locale and date of the Old Fashioned’s birth are shrouded in legend. Most agree that the term “cocktail” was born around the turn of the 19th century, and the Old Fashioned itself — along with a few siblings including the Sazerac and the Manhattan — came along at some point in the next few decades. Some credit the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Ky., as being the first establishment to officially use the name “Old Fashioned.”
Fact of the matter is, any bar worth its margarita salt is going to present you with a perfectly drinkable Old Fashioned when you order one. Whether or not you enjoy it will almost certainly be influenced mainly by the company you’re in, the atmosphere of the bar, the quality of the liquor, and whether or not your bartender knows what he or she is doing. Thus selecting “Nashville’s Best Old Fashioned” would be a bit of a fool’s errand — this is no definitive ranking or comprehensive list, but rather a quick tour of some spots where I’ve ordered and enjoyed an Old Fashioned.
An important note: You can order your Old Fashioned with any whiskey you like, but for the purposes of this piece, I requested mine (with a couple of exceptions) as they usually come, made with the house’s well whiskey. Another note: I’ve heard good things about the OFs at Patterson House, Old Glory, Rosemary and Beauty Queen, and Otaku South, but those will have to wait — one can only expense so many cocktails before the higher-ups start asking questions.
City House
If you’re making a stop at James Beard Award winner Tandy Wilson’s Germantown establishment, you’re almost certainly there to dine, and you won’t go wrong with a pre-dinner Old Fashioned. Made with Old Forester — appropriately enough, it’s America’s first bottled and longest continuously distilled bourbon — City House’s Old Fashioned was served to me on a recent Wednesday night garnished with an orange peel and a cherry, and light on the sugar. That’s the right way, if you ask me. At $10, it was exactly as good as it ought to be, and a wonderfully heady prelude to a top-shelf dinner. I got two desserts. (That last note isn’t relevant to the purposes of this story, but I thought you might like to know.)
Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge
Some folks might think the “cocktail” part of this Madison bar’s name is there ironically or playfully. It isn’t. The self-billed “’70s-inspired country bar” is good for billiards, rip-roaring rock ’n’ roll and country bands, and what may well be the best free jukebox in Davidson County. But when they say they make cocktails, they mean it. I was delighted to sip mine early one Sunday evening while a drunk fella scream-sang the words to “Gimme Shelter” on the barstool next to me. Dee’s Old Fashioned is made with either Four Roses Bourbon or Dickel Rye, both angostura and Peychaud’s bitters, lemon and orange peel, one great big cube, one muddled sugar cube, and a Luxardo Maraschino cherry. At $6.50, this one was indeed the best bang-for-buck OF I had — and the atmosphere is free.
L.A. Jackson
I recently stopped in at L.A. Jackson — the rooftop bar at the Gulch’s relatively new Thompson Hotel — for a friend’s DJ night and sampled the bar’s $12 Old Fashioned. Made with Rittenhouse Rye and a nice, easy blend of sugar and bitters, Jackson’s Old Fashioned was about as straightforward as they come, quickly but competently made. This one also came with my favorite ice form: one big cube, which I shall refer to as an “OBC” henceforth. The drink was fairly standard, but the tunes and the view were well above average.
Public House at Urban Cowboy
Lockeland Springs bed-and-breakfast Urban Cowboy is nice and swanky, and its bar and kitchen, Public House, is one of the finer recent additions to East Nashville’s scene. The food, though on the pricier end, is truly excellent. Like City House, Public makes its Old Fashioneds with Old Forester, and like Dee’s, Public uses — you guessed it — an OBC. Priced at $13 and mixed with house-made bitters and a splash of cognac, Public House’s Old Fashioned was one of the more balanced, and maybe even the best, cocktails I sampled.
Old Fashioned at the Oak Bar
The Oak Bar at the Hermitage Hotel
Rather than ordering my Old Fashioned with the well whiskey, I let my bartender at the Oak Bar downtown talk me into trying it with Buffalo Trace’s W.L. Weller. Weller is a good bourbon — not a great one — with lightly sweet, caramel-like notes, but it also raised the cost of my drink to $17. My companion ordered his Old Fashioned with Ransom Old Tom Gin rather than whiskey. Sacrilege, naturally, but it made for a nice, light summertime drink, and it was about $5 cheaper. Adjacent to the Capitol Grille, the Oak Bar is beautiful and ornate, known for its opulent Art Deco bathroom and the oaken walls from which it gets its name. It’s the kind of old-school place where you might expect to find salt-and-pepper power brokers sipping brandy in the corner. The Old Fashioned was perfectly satisfactory, but the main attraction here is the ambiance.
Holland House
Frankly, you could skip this whole damn list and just show up Thursday at Holland House for your very own six-stop tour of Old Fashioneds. The East Side cocktail-and-dining establishment offers a special Thursday Old Fashioned menu with three tiers: Economy, Business and First Class, each with a bourbon option and a rye option. I opted for the economy rye (James E. Pepper 1776, priced at $7 per drink), but the options run the gamut from Old Charter 8 Year ($6) to Woodford Reserve Rye and Jack Daniels Single Barrel Rye (both $12). Mixed with gomme (an emulsifying sugar-and-water syrup), standard cubes and the traditional sliver of orange peel, the Holland House Old Fashioned is simply made, and well made — a vehicle for the whiskey, with a nice little collection of options to choose from.
