Don't Eat Grapefruit for Breakfast—Put it in Your Drink

Give your Greyhound good posture with gin.

Published OnSeptember 25, 2015

Since we’re gin people, we’re making classic cocktails (and riffing off them) with Tanqueray No. TEN.

Today: Give your Greyhound good posture with gin.

I was a latecomer to grapefruit. (Though, as evidenced in the cooking with kids episode on our podcast Burnt Toast, I came late to everything food-wise—if it wasn’t peanut butter and jelly.)

I found the citrus fruit bitter and astringent, and I wasn’t allowed to blizzard sugar over its top. And even though I thought the spoon with the sawtooth edges was pretty special, mine always seemed dull, ineffective, and half-assed. Who wants to fight with breakfast?

I didn’t find out the solution to my problem until much later, when I’d become well-acquainted to cocktails. (I came early to gin, by which I mean promptly at the age of 21.) Here’s the learning: Don’t eat grapefruit for breakfast. Juice it and put it in your drink.

All of that sharp acidity belongs in a cocktail, reminding it to sit up straight: shoulders back, chest out, chin angled 45 degrees down and a half turn to the side. (We all have to show the world our best face—in this, we are no different from our drinks.) With a pour of gin in a Greyhound, it has even better posture, and sits taller still if you rim your glass in salt. (Call that one a Salty Dog when you serve it—and serve it often.)