The first drink of the night was a Bourbon Sidecar: 2 oz. Maker’s Mark, 1 oz. Cointreau, 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice, shaken with ice and strained into a cocktail glass. Cointreau added nice sweetness and an orange hue to the well balanced cocktail.

To accompany cocktails, Lawry’s provided small versions of some signature sides, including mushroom caps filled with creamed spinach.

Tiny baked potatoes – fingerlings, purple and red French fingerlings – were hollowed out and filled with sour cream and bacon bits, then topped with chives.

The French 75 combined 2 oz. Plymouth Gin, 1 oz. Cointreau, 1 teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice, all shaken with ice, then topped off with chilled champagne. Master dutifully posed the sweet drink with a bottle of Plymouth and a Lawry’s menu card. Way to represent.

Toad in the Hole was topped with finely chopped Prime rib and gobs of sour cream. The savory pastry brought back good memories of my cousin Connie’s Yorkshire pudding, which I ate every Christmas as a kid.

The snack table also held dishes of mini meatballs in tomato sauce, jumbo shrimp cocktail, potato chips sprinkled with Lawry’s seasoned salt, and salty, puffy gougeres.

The Honolulu Cocktail is front and center, a drink credited to the Brown Derby in the 1930s. It combines 1½ oz. Plymouth Gin, 1/2 oz. lemon juice, 1/4 oz. orange juice, 1/4 oz. pineapple juice, 1/2 oz. sugar and a dash of bitters, shaken with ice. This was probably the sweetest cocktail of the night, almost completely masking the presence of alcohol.

In the interest of research, I sampled a fourth cocktail – Between the Sheets – 1 oz. Jim Beam Black, 1 oz. Dekuyper triple sec, 1 oz. Cruzan light rum and a single squeeze of lemon juice and sweet & sour, shaken with ice. According to Master, the cocktail was first served in 1928, “a variation of a sidecar. It was a no-no to mix spirits. Speakeasies just wanted to get people drunk, so why not mix drinks?” After sipping this cocktail, it makes no sense that mixing was once controversial.