Player Piano

Equal-parts drinks are a challenging puzzle that bartenders still love to tackle, even though as experiments they are far more often failures than successes. While many bartenders have tried their own spin on the Last Word or Corpse Reviver #2, few have arrived at a sour as crushable as this bright cocktail from Philadelphia bartender Colin Shearn, created during the heyday of the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Co. just off Rittenhouse Square.

It is a recipe, named for Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, that on paper doesn’t really seem like it should work in equal parts. But Shearn specialized in a kind of paradoxical magic that made this drink the perfect combination of rhum agricole, elderflower, Aperol, and lime. Shearn lets the floral elderflower, which is a notorious show-stealer, swim along with herbaceous bitter orange and citrus. These three ingredients used in tandem were a trick Shearn and his coworkers used more than once later on and would usually be referred to in shorthand back-of-house as the “douche bag split.” That was pretty demonstrative of the self-disparaging and general ribbing vibe that was part of what made that era at the Franklin so special.

You could try this fruity drink with bolder Campari in lieu of Aperol. It doesn’t work quite as well, but it might please those craving bite and bitterness. And of course, I personally just really love messing with Shearn’s drinks.