Cocktail recipe
Caesar
Canada's bracing brunch ritual: vodka, clam-tomato savouriness, lime and spice behind a salty rim.
Ingredients
- 45 ml (1½ oz) vodka
- 120 ml (4 oz) chilled Clamato (clam-tomato cocktail juice)
- 15 ml (½ oz) freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 tsp (5 ml) prepared horseradish
- 3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
- 2 dashes Tabasco or similar hot pepper sauce
- 1 g celery salt + 1 g fine salt for the rim
- Freshly ground black pepper, 2 turns
- Garnish: celery stalk and lime wedge
- Ice: fresh cubes
- Allergen note: clam/shellfish; Worcestershire may contain anchovy/fish
Preparation
Rub a lime wedge around half the rim of a tall glass and dip it in the celery-salt mixture. Fill with fresh ice. Add vodka, lime juice, prepared horseradish, Worcestershire, hot sauce and black pepper. Pour in the chilled clam-tomato juice, then roll gently between two mixing glasses or stir thoroughly from the bottom to disperse the horseradish evenly. Finish with a crisp celery stalk and lime wedge. The garnish should enhance the drink, not eclipse it.
Glassware
Tall highball glass
History
Walter Chell is widely credited with creating the Caesar at Calgary Inn in 1969 for the opening of the hotel's Italian restaurant, Marco's. The familiar inspiration is spaghetti alle vongole—pasta with clams—translated into a savoury drink. The deeper story is more interesting than an uncomplicated invention myth: clam-and-tomato vodka drinks existed before 1969, and accounts differ about whether Chell's earliest version used freshly prepared clam juice, Clamato, oregano, or today's hot sauce. The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails cautions that an original written Chell recipe has not surfaced publicly. What Chell demonstrably helped establish was the distinctive Canadian Caesar identity, whose rise was amplified by commercial clam-tomato mixers. Claims that a diner coined the phrase “Bloody Caesar” are best treated as appealing anecdotes rather than confirmed transcripts.
Mixology View
The Caesar is not simply a Bloody Mary with an ingredient swap. The clam-tomato base creates a different savoury register and a distinctly Canadian social ritual. We favour a disciplined, balanced house serve over novelty garnishes—and we tell Chell's story without erasing earlier predecessors. Link Bloody Mary as its parent-style comparison, not as the same drink. Mixology’s signature modern house recipe deliberately includes prepared horseradish for a sharper savoury lift; it is not represented as Walter Chell’s documented original formula.