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There’s a cocktail on the menu at the Berkshire Room called the Old Money, and it’s fine. Actually it’s more than fine, it’s splendid: bourbon, Aperol, walnut liqueur, a nice little hint of allspice, all aged to perfection, like Maggie Smith. But if you really want to know what old money tastes like, I submit to you the Weston, an aristocratic mixture of bourbon, coffee, and pipe tobacco, which induces in the drinker a sensation I imagine to be something like sniffing Hugh Hefner’s smoking jacket, and I mean that in a totally complimentary way (the guy can afford nice stuff, you know?)—it’s one of the best drinks I’ve had all year. When Berkshire Room beverage director Ben Schiller left his previous gig with the Boka group earlier this year, he told the Reader about his plans (separate from his work here) to open an “old-man bar.” With this drink under his belt—and the Old Money, too, which it turns out Schiller’s been serving for years—he’s got a hell of a start.
15 E. Ohio, 312-894-0945, theberkshireroom.com
