Fernet-Branca Is The Bartender's Secret Handshake

Why you should buy your local service industry person a shot of it

After spending as much time on both sides of a bar as I have, I’d just come to accept it as a fact that the default shots a bartender asks people they dub as tolerable, even good clientele to do was either whiskey or tequila. That’s why it came as a surprise in 2019 when I had a bartender ask if I wanted to do a shot of Fernet-Branca the night after another bartender in a different part of town had asked the same thing. It was a good surprise, mind you, but a surprise nonetheless. These days it’s not much of a shock anymore when somebody asks that question. When they ask if I want to do a shot of whiskey these days, now that’s a surprise.

A bottle of Fernet is always ready at home

Patrick Miller is the owner and distiller at Faccia Brutto Spirits who also spent time behind a few of my favorite bars in Brooklyn. He was first introduced to Fernet Branca in 2006 in San Francisco. “They consume a lot of it in S.F., and it's definitely an industry thing,” he says. Faccia Brutto has a variation of the bitter spirit with Fernet Pianta. The copy for the bottle mentions how it’s a love letter to his grandfather, Peter Pianta, as well as the line cooks he worked with in the past. His grandfather “would make tinctures for my grandmother when she needed some digestive aid and my line cook buddies, well, we needed relief after a long night of service.”

My first memory of trying the stuff was after a bartender friend at Minetta Tavern offered me a shot, promising that it would help with the digestion process after a long, heavy meal of lord-knows how many different takes on beef I’d eaten. That was around 2012, and he wasn’t wrong. I was thankful the next morning, but I wasn’t totally sold. I hadn’t gone bitter just yet. I’d say it was another year or two before I was always ordering Negronis and finishing meals at Prime Meats in Brooklyn with a little bottle of Underberg. In 2016 when Friend of The Melt Brad Thomas Parsons put out Amaro: The Spirited World of Bittersweet, Herbal Liqueurs, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas, that’s when I’d say I started really getting interested in all things Alpine or botanical. I’d go to bars and see bottles I wasn’t familiar with, and I’d almost always try whatever they were selling. Oh, it tastes like you just pulled my mouth across a forest floor, you say? Yes, I’d love to try that. Hints of old-west rootbeer, pine cones, and virgin snow? Bingo! Artichoke? Oh yeah, daddy-o. Load me up! It sure beat another boring take on some Prohibition-era cocktail that would give me the sort of sugar rush that would freak out a five-year-old who just snorted some Pixy Stix. But besides my friend at Minetta Tavern, I don’t recall anybody offering me a shot of it for a few more years. Or I can’t, at least. Your mind gets hazy around the time people start asking to do shots.

Ashlie Atkinson, a brilliant actress who you’ve seen in movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, BlacKkKlansman, as well as shows like Boardwalk Empire and The Gilded Age, is also a seasoned bartender as well as my former roommate. I trust what she has to say, and since she’s worked the bar at a few places—most importantly, the late, great, dirty, sometimes terrifying Hank’s Saloon—I felt like she’d have a good idea of when the Fernet started to flow. She doesn’t know exactly but mentions a bartender group text she’s on, and how a friend on it who also worked at Hank’s sent a text that Ashlie shared with me. Her friend said they’d first learned about Fernet around 2005, but it really started to ramp up “by 2014,” and that “Sales reps from San Francisco started hocking it to bartenders.”

So San Francisco started it. That seems to be definitive. And it makes sense how: I’ve seen how reps will try to get bartenders and service industry people excited about certain products with the hope that they’ll push it on customers. But something Ashlie says that echoes the message of an ad I saw in a 1933 issue of The New Yorker, as well as my friend who first gave me a glass of the stuff as a remedy for future stomach issues, gives me a better idea of how it stuck. “Bartenders are often hungover as hell and our stomachs are wrecked from drinking coffee for a late shift and then coming down with alcohol. So Fernet is spun as a sort of digestif,” she says. It’s not exactly wellness, but it’s about as close to “self-care” for bartenders as I’ve heard. You do even a shot or two through the night of whiskey or tequila, and you could feel that during or after your shift. Think about multiple shots. Fernet isn’t good for you, but it’s better than well whiskey. Or, at the very least, you can tell yourself it is. Your stomach probably won’t feel so bad.

There’s another thing Ashlie mentions that says a lot about why Fernet has gotten popular among people that serve you food and booze, about how it’s like letting people know you’re in a club. “It's uncool for bartenders to tell bartenders that they are also bartenders,” so Fernet acts like a secret handshake of sorts. And even if you aren’t a bartender but you’d like to do a shot with the person serving you drinks, it feels like a nice show of respect to order something a little less harsh. Unless, of course, they want harsh. Then that’s up to them.

Bad pic from a very long night of pasta and amaro in D.C.

I’ve found that location also plays a part in the amount of Fernet I’m offered. I’d say in Chicago I’m still likely to do a shot of whiskey, but if there’s going to be any bitter booze offered, then it’s going to be Malört. That also feels like its own sort of handshake, but I find most people that say yes to it almost always regret it if they aren’t ready. After a long, fabulous dinner at Officina that included trying selections from their impressive collection of vintage amaro, I was surprised when I found myself standing by the bar, conversing with the guy who poured everything and he asked if we wanted a shot of Fernet before we left. Was it old Fernet, I asked. “No,” he said. “Just Fernet.”

New Orleans always ended up being a place where I come away with some new knowledge of a bitter spirit or cocktail I hadn’t known about before, and I’ve had more than a few shots of Fernet down there; amaro has a foothold in places I’ve been to in New Jersey and Philadelphia, likely thanks to the Italian-American communities that have been there forever. And since they drink Fernet in the Bay Area, I figured down in Southern California it had to be the same thing. Right?

Come on. Haven’t you heard “Two States” by Pavement? It’s definitely not the same thing. So when I found myself sticking to tequila or mezcal in Los Angeles, I couldn’t tell if that was a Jason thing or a local one. Robert Fleming, owner of Capri Club, the Eagle Rock aperitivo-focused bar that is one of the best new(ish) drinking spots I’ve been to in the last year, told me it isn’t just me. Part of his bar’s success is because they’re doing something different. He says bitter cocktails are “definitely a new thing in Los Angeles,” and that my instinct to stick to spirits that maybe originated to the south in Mexico was likely influenced by my surroundings. “We’ve had a huge mezcal and tequila presence in L.A. for many years, and Margaritas have been wildly popular for a long time here. After the craft cocktail movement 15-plus years ago there was an array of mezcal-focused cocktail lists. After that, we seemed to move into an explosion of natural wine. Oddly enough, we have the best weather for Aperol Spritz and bitter aperitivo drinks, but one main reason we didn’t have them here in L.A. is because the city government was way too harsh with outdoor dining and drinking. That changed with the pandemic and more relaxed laws and now you see a lot more sidewalk dining and therefore will inevitably see more aperitivo.”

Look on the Capri Club menu, and it’s a lovely list of drinks including a martini and negroni, but there are also multiple spritzes, vermouth you can drink neat, and also a shot menu. Yes, that’s right: a bar that advertises shots. That is normally my sign to turn around and run since I’ve found that anywhere so into shots that they’d advertise what they have to offer is usually the worst sort of frat bar imaginable. But Capri is classy, it’s cool, it feels like a Chet Baker song should be playing at all times. Their shots reflect that: The Closer is an amaro and cafe moka shot and the Affumicato has mezcal mixed with the bitter rabarbaro, which, if the name doesn’t give it away, is made with dried rhubarb. But what about the Fernet?

“Fernet doesn’t have a huge following in L.A.,” Fleming says. He adds that “it’s always a hospitality drink of choice, but more often than not when someone asks for it, you assume they work at a restaurant or spent time in San Francisco or NYC.” He says Fernet is too strong for most people to drink as an entry point if they’re not used to amaro, but for the curious, Capri Club does offer two more shots that include it: the Fernana is fun, mixing banana liqueur with the bitter. The other is a shot I’ve enjoyed a few times on both coasts, the Ferrari: Fernet Branca with a red bitter, usually Campari, but not exclusively. “We serve a ton of Ferrari shots,” Fleming says. Part of the reason is there’s a house boiler-maker special called the Bobby Special that’s a cold mug of Peroni beer and a Ferrari shot for $10. But he also adds both Fernet shots are beloved menu items because they’re the perfect gateway for people who aren’t used to the stuff. He says they started serving them as something for customers to buy for friends, “but people realize how good it actually tastes and have latched on.”