Scialom, Joseph (1910–2004), né Giuseppe Chalom di fu Isacco, became the most famous bartender of World War II when his drink the Suffering Bastard purportedly helped win the Second Battle of El Alamein.
An Egyptian-born, Paris-educated chemist fluent in eight languages, Scialom abandoned a pharmaceutical career in 1938 to tend bar at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo. Three years later Shepheard’s storied Long Bar became both an officers’ club for Britain’s Eighth Army and a press club for journalists covering the campaign against Hitler’s Afrika Korps. One morning in October 1942, Scialom’s Eighth Army regulars were mobilized to El Alamein after a marathon night at the Long Bar. From the front lines they cabled Scialom pleading for his signature hangover cure, the gin- and brandy-based Suffering Bastard: Scialom sent them four gallons in Thermoses via taxi cab; while it’s highly unlikely that this turned the tide in what would become the deciding battle of the desert war, Scialom’s journalist regulars seized on the story.
Scialom parlayed this press into a career as Hilton International’s corporate mixologist, which sent him from San Juan and Havana to London and Rome, followed by a residency in Manhattan that included the Waldorf-Astoria, the Four Seasons, and Windows on the World atop one of the Twin Towers. He retired in 1977 but lived to see the Towers fall on September 11, 2001, from a nursing home TV in Hallandale, Florida. He died there three years later, but his Bastard suffers on in bars around the world.
Recipe (Scialom’s Suffering Bastard): Shake well with ice 30 ml each gin and brandy, 15 ml lime cordial, and 2 dashes Angostura bitters; strain into ice-filled Collins glass and top with ginger beer; garnish with orange slice and mint sprig.
See also Angostura bitters and ginger ale and ginger beer.
Berry, Jeff. Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean. New York: Cocktail Kingdom, 2014.
By: Jeff Berry