You’ve probably never tasted these cocktails
The boomerang is delivered from one barkeep to the next, rather illegally, by patrons
Want to know what’s in a boomerang cocktail?
Well, it’s a little like what they say about having to inquire about the price: if you have to ask about the boomerang, you probably aren’t going to get one.
That’s because they aren’t really meant for customers but, instead, bartenders.
The patron is just the messenger, who delivers a cocktail (or shot and/ or beer) in some kind of MacGyvered go-cup to the next bartender on their cocktail crawl.
However, unless this transaction is taking place in Las Vegas, New Orleans, Key West or one of a handful of other places where go-cups are legal, takeout booze is fairly illegal. That’s why the bartenders asked not to be named for this story.
Legal or not, it’s a pretty popular practice these days. One west-end bar owner says he’s on the receiving end of about a dozen boomerangs every week.
“The best kind of boomerang is when you send one out and it comes back that night,” he says. “The worst kind is when somebody is working on some new cocktail and they ask you later what you thought of it. It’s like, I think it was in somebody’s purse for an hour and a half.”
The practice, which started as a simple gesture, has gone viral and since into practical joke territory.
“When we first opened, we were still figuring things out and we’d run out of, say, oranges, so there was a lot of borrowing back and forth with the bar down the street, but it would always come with a boomerang,” recalls an owner whose bar recently celebrated its first anniversary.
“It started with shots, then elaborate cocktails and then they started wrapping stuff up in layers of packaging and duct tape, so it would take us a half-hour to open it. It all ended with us just dropping off an entire keg of beer in the middle of their bar one night.”
At the Harbord Room, former bar manager Evelyn Chick and owner Dave Mitton upped the ante by putting their own legit twist on the boomerang. There, the bartenders make batches of the cocktail legally (as in, not made with the bar’s liquor), bottle and label them, then give them away to bartenders when they travel to other cities.
“It’s a little bit different than the original boomerang in that it’s more of a gift, to say please come by the bar when you’re next in Toronto,” says Mitton. “Plus, it’s a whole lot easier to travel with than a zip-lock bag full of liquor.”
It takes the thrill of law-breaking out of the boomerang, of course, but the flip side is that it’s one of the few boomerang cocktails a patron can at least order, since Harbord Room bartenders know how to make the Old Boy, for example, along with other drinks that have made their way across North America to bars in Los Angeles, Vancouver and New York.
Some take issue with this fancy, boomerang-gone-straight version, pointing out that it should be spontaneous.
Others say the entire boomerang movement has lost its way as it’s been interpreted here in Toronto.
“I don’t think the function of the boomerang is to get bartenders drinks,” says the same bar owner who takes issue with lukewarm purse cocktails. “It’s to tell the next establishment down the line that the mule is someone to take care of. It’s a calling card that says: ‘Hey, this person is to be trusted, because I’m breaking the law with them. And we sent them to you for a reason.’”