The Lime Rickey Endures

In 2022, Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross took over a Manhattan restaurant space formerly occupied by Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, one of New York’s few surviving old-school lunch counters. As the successful owners of Court Street Grocers, a celebrated sandwich shop in Brooklyn, they had credibility to spare in food circles. They could have reimagined the menu at Eisenberg’s—now called S&P Lunch, a nod to the soda fountain’s original name—any way they pleased. Instead, they chose to keep many of the old standbys, like tuna salad, matzo ball soup, chopped liver, egg creams, and Lime Rickeys.

“Of course,” says Finkelstein, when asked why he rescued the Lime Rickey, a mix of lime juice, seltzer, and syrup (sometimes flavored, sometimes plain—more on that in a moment) that dates back to Prohibition. “It was an important thing at Eisenberg’s. And we love them. I couldn’t imagine a luncheonette with a soda fountain not having them.”

The Lime Rickey is a curious character, a drink that simultaneously holds multiple standings. It’s that rare soft drink that is as famous as its cocktail counterpart, the Gin Rickey. It’s one of the last men standing, along with the egg cream, from the mid-20th century glory days of the American soda fountain. And it’s one of the few OG non-alcoholic drinks to have survived long enough to enjoy a new life in the current mocktail boom.

You won’t find the Lime Rickey everywhere. Its natural habitats are two in number: The first is old joints with long histories, loyal customers, and daytime hours—places like Sip’n Soda in Southampton, New York (founded in 1958); Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn (1936); Mr. Bartley’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1960); and Lexington Candy Shop in Manhattan (1925). Its second home is new places that take their cues from the old places. These include S&P Lunch and Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in lower Manhattan. At the latter, head bartender Ray Fritz was inspired to add a Lime Rickey to the menu last year by his youthful work as a soda jerk at Longacre’s Modern Dairy, a soda fountain in southeastern Pennsylvania that dates back to the 1920s.

The former group tends to describe their Lime Rickeys as “famous.” But no place touts the Lime Rickey as much as Sip’n Soda. Among the headings on the restaurant’s website navigation bar are: “menus,” “history,” “shop,” and “lime rickey.” Mark Parash, the third-generation owner, says the soda fountain sells 150 of them a day in peak summer season. One fan was the late Anthony Bourdain, who used to bring his daughter in for rounds of midday Lime Rickeys.

Parash said people used to pop their head into Sip’n Soda in late spring, when the weather started to turn warm, and ask, “Do you have Lime Rickeys yet?” It was a seasonal refreshment, served only during summer. Recently, however, he decided to start serving them year-round. And last August, he introduced a bottled version of the shop’s custom cherry syrup so that people could make Lime Rickeys at home. “I thought this was something I could do to really carry on the tradition of my grandparents, father, and uncle and have a little fun,” says Parash. “It took me a long time to think outside the box. I’m realizing the mocktail side of it, too.”

The Lime Rickey was born of thinking outside the box. It got its name from the Rickey, an austere Washington, D.C., cocktail composed of whiskey or gin, lime juice, and soda water. It was invented by bartender George Williamson at Shoomaker’s bar and dubbed for a sport named “Colonel” Joe Rickey. When Prohibition knocked the legs out from under the barroom table, soda fountains found the Rickey adapted itself very nicely to the new abstemious model. Take out the booze and add sweet syrup and you had a refreshing beverage that eventually earned the nickname “air-conditioning in a glass.”

There were plain Lime Rickeys, sweetened with simple syrup. But over time flavored syrups became the norm, including Grape Rickeys, Cherry Lime Rickeys (popular in New York), and Raspberry Lime Rickeys (the prevailing style in New England). How the regional styles came about no one seems to know. “That’s a great question,” says Dan O’Donnell, director of operations at Sullivan’s Castle Island, a Boston-area eatery famous for its rickeys. “Might have been easier to answer 70 or 80 years ago.”

And, just as with other New York–Boston rivalries, nobody seems particularly interested in the other side’s preferences. It’s difficult to find a New York rickey seller who has ever tried a raspberry rickey, or a Boston one who has sampled a cherry. “Never had one,” says Parash of the raspberry version, seemingly untroubled by the fact.

As with any three-ingredient drink you can name, the proper building of a Lime Rickey is a matter of regular debate. The chief goal is to achieve the exact balance of sweet and tart. “I’m a big fan of squeezing the lime juice first, putting it at the bottom,” says Parash. “Then the ice. Then put the big, long spoon in, then the syrup, then the seltzer last, stirring in an upward motion. It’s like an egg cream. The secret to a good egg cream is constantly stirring it when you’re doing it, making it all come together.”

Everyone agrees that freshly squeezed lime juice is paramount. (According to the S&P owners, Eisenberg’s made their rickey with—gasp!—lemonade.) As to the syrup, approaches vary. Sip’n Soda claims the success of their rickey is owed to a secret ingredient. The S&P team experimented with various sweeteners before settling on a cherry Snowcone syrup. Blue Smoke makes theirs from a mix of Luxardo cherry syrup and standard maraschino cherry juice. Sullivan’s syrup is a blend of a couple of different raspberry syrups, says O’Donnell, “to get not just the flavor, but the color right.”

That color is important, because one of the likely reasons the Lime Rickey has survived is its eye-catching ruby hue. “Almost every other soda fountain staple has gone,” says Finkelstein of the Lime Rickey and its frequent menu companion, the egg cream. “Maybe they’re just the most visually attractive ones.”