The embarrassing drink you should never order on a first date

This cocktail spells disaster (Credits: Getty Images)

Dating is a nightmare, isn’t it?

Spending all that money on someone, you might have to escape mid-way through the evening. What if you’ve got zero in common?

Or they give you the ick. What if you know within the first moment of meeting them that there’s not a pig’s chance in hell of fancying them?

The dating process is rife with pitfalls, but sadly, it’s a necessary evil if you want to meet someone. So don’t make it potentially worse by ordering the wrong drink.

And by the wrong drink, I mean a Long Island Iced Tea.

Look, we’ve all been there. The nerves kick in, so your instinct is to reach for the strongest drink to take the edge off and get the conversation flowing. You might even plan to get there early and neck one before they’ve arrived.

The thing is, everyone knows that’s why you’re ordering it. It’s giving desperate loser vibes.

‘It’s a bit of an atrocity’

Firstly, it contains equal parts vodka, rum, gin, tequila and triple sec, with a dash of Coke and lemon juice.

That’s a wider variety of spirits than pretty much any cocktail on the planet, not to mention crazy flavours that clash if they’re not put together properly. It’s like the drinks you used to make when you raided your parents’ drinks cabinet.

Please, rethink your choice (Picture: Getty Images)

Elliot Ball, who owns top bars in London and Bristol, says, ‘On paper, the Long Island Iced Tea is a bit of an atrocity. Most people who are ordering it are doing so on the completely incorrect assumption that it will get them more drunk.’

Elliot believes that if your objective in ordering a Long Island Iced Tea is to get hammered, then that’s not the way to do it.

‘Looking for the most alcohol possible is not a good basis to order a drink, it’s your classic “getting drunk is fun, but being drunk isn’t a situation”. People almost always overshoot on that, with quite messy outcomes, especially if you’re on a date.’

And then there’s the calories, 780 per drink, to be precise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not promoting diet culture or calorie counting. But if I’m going to drink one of the world’s ‘most fattening drinks’, as it’s been coined, it had better be spectacular.

Ironically, in most bars, you’re not getting much more actual spirit than other cocktails, given ratios are 10/12.5ml of each when made in a bar.

Elliot says: ‘Given that many people’s motivation for ordering a Long Island Ice Tea is to get drunk, it’s not actually in the interests of the bar operator to make it the strongest drink on the menu. That’s why you’ll find they don’t usually have as much as you think in them.

‘That’s partly because the person who actually wants loads of alcohol in their drink knows what to actually order (Negronis for example) to get more booze. Whereas most people who order Long Island Ice Teas don’t actually enjoy the flavour of alcohol but want the effect.’

If you’re free pouring them at home, though, it’s going to be a different story.

A Negroni is likely to be more potent – and less obvious (Picture: Getty Images)

In any case, the Long Island Ice Tea screams that you’re nervous and want to fast-track the evening. It also tells your guest that you might be getting embarrassingly louder in around 20 minutes.

Invented in 1972 by a man called Bob ‘Rosebud’ Butt at the Oak Beach Inn on Long Island, the first LIIT was formulated simply by taking all the clear spirits in his bar and mixing them together. Allegedly, a colleague tried it and said it tasted a bit like tea, he added Coke and said, ‘Now, it looks like tea too’.

As the creator, Butt maintains that the best Long Island Iced Teas should be stealthy; so balanced they taste almost like a soft drink. The idea being, you go on to order another and another, then you flip into blackout drunk territory and have to piece the evening together. Not a good look on a date, or ever.

Far better to opt for a Cuba Libre, if you want something not a million miles away and less uncouth. It’s made with one spirit instead of five. It’s basically a rum and Coke with a squeeze of lime, which sounds more exotic when called by its cocktail name.

Or swap out the rum for tequila for a Mexican Batanga, and be sure to salt the rim for a sweet and savoury, or ‘swalty’, experience.

But, if you genuinely like the flavour of a Long Island Iced Tea, here’s how to make a good one at home, according to Elliot.

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