5 O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE

Hey Bartender! I’ll Have a Rum and Coke

There are drinks I make at home, and drinks I order when I’m out. This is the latter kind 🥃

What’s your go-to, top-of-mind drink order? For me it’s a classic rum and Coke! (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Picture this — it’s the before times and you’re sandwiched in a loud crowd at a packed bar. The bartender is incredibly busy and keeps moving further away from you. The bartender arches their eyebrow at you. It’s time to order something, anything, and fast. The crowd is surging, the sand is trickling through the hourglass and you gotta put in your order — what do you yell at the bartender? What’s your go-to, top-of-mind drink order in the heat of the moment?

For me, that has always been a classic rum and Coke. I was born and raised in Trinidad, where rum is part of our history, the traditional liquor of the islands. Coca Cola became the other half of this classic combination since Americans came to our shores. As Troy Patterson so eloquently said in his Slate essay on the drink, “The rum and Coke is the West Indian equivalent of the gin and tonic — a highball symbolic of empire. Rum, a liquor essential to the geometry of the Atlantic slave trade, met Coke, the consummate quaff of American capitalism.”