For fifteen years, DeGroff managed the much-celebrated Rainbow Promenade Bar in The Rainbow Room. His vision and commitment to crafting the highest quality cocktails set the stage for the contemporary cocktail renaissance and influenced a generation of mixologists. Before his triumphant return to New York, DeGroff honed his bartending skills at the famed Hotel Bel-Air, where he cultivated a unique style and a preference for fresh, premium quality ingredients that would later be adopted by many. 

As DeGroff prepared the cocktail menu for The Rainbow Room’s grand re-opening in 1987, he hoped to capture the essence of an earlier era in the city’s history. He combed through vintage and antiquarian bartending books searching for inspiration. DeGroff struck gold when he was given a copy of Jerry “The Professor” Thomas’s groundbreaking tome, How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon Vivant’s Companion. First published in 1862 and filled to the brim with classic cocktail recipes, the bartending book struck a chord with DeGroff and set the tone for the Rainbow Promenade Bar’s throwback aesthetic.

DeGroff’s cocktail menu at the Rainbow Promenade Bar featured 24 cocktails–later pared down to 14 favorites–that harkened back to the turn of the century and New York’s gilded age. The menu was a master class in craft cocktails that included Sazeracs, Singapore Slings, Between the Sheets, and the Hemingway Daiquiri, all mixed by hand with fresh ingredients and premium liquors–no mixes allowed. 

While one of the bar’s most popular offerings was the quintessential eighties Long Island Iced Tea, another toasted the early days of Broadway. Sweet, tart, and pretty in pink, the Flora Dora cocktail was put on the menu by DeGroff in honor of the chorus girls in Broadway’s hit 1899 musical by the same name. The Flora Dora is made by mixing 1 ½ oz gin, ½ fresh lime juice, and ½ oz crème de framboise liqueur, straining it over ice in a highball glass, and topping it with four oz. of ginger ale for a spicy kick.

Though he retired from the Rainbow Promenade Bar in 1999, DeGroff’s contributions to the world of modern mixology continued apace. Twice honored with the prestigious James Beard Award, DeGroff has authored two award-winning cocktail books, The Craft of the Cocktail and The Essential Cocktail. DeGroff is also the founding president of New Orleans’s The Museum of the American Cocktail (MOTAC), a division of the nonprofit National Food & Beverage Foundation and the largest mixology archive of its kind. In 2008 Tales of the Cocktail honored DeGroff with the Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015, the New York Times named DeGroff “one of the world’s foremost cocktail experts.” The modern cocktail movement owns everything to this cocktail legend.