Vintage American Cocktails

What Does The Tokyo Iced Tea Taste Like?

The Tokyo Iced Tea taste like a melon-flavored adios. It’s boozy, but the sweetness is not overpowering. Using Midori instead of orange liqueur gives the drink a nice light melon flavor instead of the adios’s citrus-forward flavor. Highbrow cocktail drinkers may turn their noses up to a drink like the Tokyo Iced Tea, but it’s pretty good and worth a try if you like long Island’s or Adios cocktails.

The History Of The Tokyo Iced Tea.

Many sources I looked at guessed that the Tokyo Iced Tea was an invention at TGI Friday, but I could not find anything backing that up. Even those publications said they had no proof and that it was only a guess that TGI Fridays invented the Tokyo Iced Tea since they were famous for selling long Island variations in the 1980s. Although the Tokyo Iced Tea resembles the Adios Motherfucker more than the Long Island Iced Tea. The earliest reference to the Tokyo Iced Tea I could find comes from the 2002 book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Asian Cooking.” The Recipe in that book is slightly different from the common one today as it uses raspberry liqueur instead of melon liqueur. The melon liqueur version we are used to today first appeared in the 2007 book “10,000 Drinks”. I also don’t believe there is anything Japanese or Asian about this cocktail. Searching for the cocktail in Japanese on google returned zero hits. The Long Island Iced Tea is well known in Japan, but not a single Japanese drink blog or cocktail website produced a single hit for Tokyo Iced Tea or anything resembling it.

Recipe Resources

Tokyo Iced Tea Article

• 2002 The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Asian Cooking – Wong, Yarbrough
• 2006 Delhi and Captial Region of India Travel Guide
• 2007 10,000 Drinks – Knorr

Original Long Island Iced Tea Recipe

• January 1989 Motor Boating & Sailing – Mariani