Sidecar

The Sidecar's exact origin is disputed, but the earliest documented mentions place it around 1922, when it appeared in both Robert Vermeire's book Cocktails: How to Mix Them and Harry MacElhone's Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails. Both credited its introduction to Pat MacGarry, a bartender at Buck's Club in London, though MacElhone in later editions of his book claimed the creation for himself, having by then moved to run Harry's New York Bar in Paris. A rival Paris claim centers on Frank Meier, bartender at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, who was said to serve his own version there in the early 1920s.

The drink's name is generally traced to a motorcycle sidecar, said to have carried a regular patron, often described as an American army captain, to and from the bar where it was invented. David A. Embury, in his 1948 book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, credited its invention to that captain, placing him in Paris during World War I. Which bar and which telling is accurate remains unresolved among these competing accounts. The cocktail is also widely regarded as a descendant of the 19th-century New Orleans Brandy Crusta, which established the pairing of brandy, orange liqueur, and citrus decades before the Sidecar's own documented appearance.