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Cosmo's inventor forever linked to 'Sex and the City'

By Mary Jane Park, Times Staff Writer
In print: Friday, May 30, 2008

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ST. PETERSBURG — It's the signature adult beverage of girlfriends Carrie Bradshaw, Miranda Hobbes, Samantha Jones and Charlotte York on the HBO hit Sex and the City, now on the big screen. And St. Petersburg resident Cheryl Cook, a producer and technical director with event, design and decor company conceptBAIT, gets much of the credit for the cosmopolitan. It's a combination of Absolut Citron, a lemon-flavored vodka; a splash of triple sec; a drop of Rose's lime juice; and, as she will tell you, "just enough cranberry juice to make it, oh, so pretty in pink."

Back in the mid 1980s, New Yorkers were flocking to Miami's South Beach, where Cook was a bartender at the Strand. Patricia Field and Rebecca Field, the women who became the costume designers for Sex and the City, Cook says, "were regular customers of mine, so they watched me make millions of those."

Cook, who has an 8-year-old gray male cat called Cosmo, says she picked the name because a colleague at the Strand had been featured in a Cosmopolitan feature about female maitre d's and kept a copy of the magazine at the restaurant.

1 You were the creator of the cosmopolitan?

"I was a bartender in South Beach. It was right when martinis were making their comeback, and everybody was ordering them to be cool, but then they'd drink them and make a face. A liquor rep came up with a bottle of Absolut Citron and asked me to come up with a drink. I used Absolut Citron, a splash of triple sec, a drop of Rose's lime juice and just enough cranberry to make it, oh, so pretty in pink. I served it to a friend of ours, and it was so visually stunning that, literally, in a matter of minutes, everybody had one, and then everybody in the whole restaurant wanted one."

2 Shaken or stirred?

"I've always been a stickler for stirring. That's what a martini spoon is for. It's meant to be spun without bruising the liquor. And don't use metal. Use a glass pitcher."

3 I hear you're celebrating your 50th birthday on Sunday.

"We're all going to see the movie, and I'm supposed to make everybody cosmos. I can't even drink them. I have to put them in a tall glass and add cranberry juice."

Mary Jane Park can be reached at mjpark@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8267.