I fear that Canada may be in peril of losing one of its national treasures; the Bloody Caesar. Don’t panic; I mean in name only. The Bloody Caesar is the most popular cocktail in Canada. (So why are we so unfairly associated with the McKenzie brothers and a brewski?) But, have you tried lately to order a Bloody Caesar in any bar where the staff is under the age of 30? Good Luck! You will probably end up with either one of those “Duh?” looks or a Bloody Mary.

It’s bad enough that bartenders in the States seem to take some sort of sadistic pleasure in telling Canadians that they don’t know what we are talking about when we order a Bloody Caesar, before preceding to serve us a Bloody Mary anyways.  But you’d hope that in Canada, especially in Calgary, hometown of this cocktail, you wouldn’t have to explain what a Bloody Caesar was. I guess “Bloody Caesar” just doesn’t work like “Caesar” on tent cards promoting Caesar Sunday.

In just the past few weeks, we’ve had the Caesar conversation with a young thing at a popular restaurant in Vancouver. We decided to make it quick and easy: “We’d like two Caesars; not the salad.” She didn’t get that. We explained that we were Old School, and once upon a time, you said “Bloody Caesar” for the drink, and if you said simply “Caesar” you might end up with a salad. To be fair, she feigned interest in our little history lesson. I wonder what she said to the bartender!

The origin of the Bloody Caesar is well-established. In 1969, The Westin Hotel in Calgary was opening Marco’s, an Italian themed restaurante. Bartender Walter Chell was challenged to come up with an innovative cocktail that would compliment the Italian cuisine and after much experimentation, came up with the modified Bloody Mary. He may have been inspired by one of the feature dishes, Clam linguini in red sauce, when he added clam nectar and oregano to the drink.

Clam nectar is not as strange an addition to tomato juice as one would first think. Clam and other shellfish nectar were often used to season seafood sauces and soups. The nectar, or liquor, is the naturally occurring juices of the shellfish. Recipes often recommend that you catch any juice while shucking the clams, strain it, and add it back into the cooking broth. You can also buy it commercially. Clam liquor also refers to the broth that the shellfish are cooked in.

At the time, there was not yet any commercially available tomato-clam juice, but Duffy-Mott, an American company which had newly expanded into California and had recently become owners of a seafood company, found itself with a lot of tomatoes and clam nectar on its hands. They developed a line of blended vegetable drinks, all with the trademark suffix “amato,” and came up with Clamato. (They also later created Beefamato and Nutramato

If this seems an unlikely coincidence, a quick look at any older cookbook will show recipes for non-alcoholic cocktails with this combo. My own 1951 copy of Joy of Cooking has a version of clam-tomato cocktail, although they do use ketchup in place of the tomato juice. It is seasoned with Tabasco, lemon, horseradish and Worcestershire sauce. Sound familiar?

Some reference articles suggest that Chell was hired by Mott’s as a consultant on their new brand, while others say that Chell used Clamato. It is more likely that the chicken came before the egg, and after the success of the Bloody Caesar in Canada,   Mott’s found a good market and marketing tool for their new product and became the Kleenex of the tomato-clam cocktail world.

Why the Bloody Caesar became our most popular drink and yet escaped the attention of the States, even with the annoying numbers of insistent visitors who every year must ask the same bartenders for a Caesar and get the same answer, is a mystery; albeit, they do make better Marys (generally) than in Canada.

A look at variations on the Bloody Mary in bartender manuals will show that among the variety of additions to the classic Tabasco and Worcestershire, you can also add beef broth or clam juice. They actually do make Bloody Caesars; they probably just don’t like to admit it because it was a Canadian invention.

The classic Caesar recipe has been mucked with over the years; usually involving a pickled green bean instead of celery. This fad started with the Cajun invasion in the ‘80s. I can’t remember where, but I swear we were someplace that put a cocktail shrimp in our Bloody Caesar, or maybe that was a Mary; it was an unexpected treat either way. We recently found jumbo olives in our Bloody Marys in Vegas; that was quite odd.

There have been attempts to ruin the Bloody Caesar with atrocities like the addition of rye or gin. These are not flavours that go well with the seasonings of Clamato. They just don’t. Vodka is used because it is flavourless, and if you are imbibing at brunch, another innovation from the early ‘70s, you want to retain the notion that you are imbibing a healthy breakfast beverage.

Somewhere in the ‘80s, the Mott people went back to their American roots: apples, and a British company, Cadbury Schweppes, bought out the Mott’s Clamato line which is now produced in Canada, bringing our drink truly home.

You can now buy bottled Mott’s Bloody Caesars.  Smirnoff’s, not to be out done, has come up with their own version of the “Classic Caesar.” They use anchovies and clam broth for that special flavour we love.

Jordan and I have asked many an American bartender why they don’t just stock Clamato to keep the Canadians happy; they just shrug and make you another Mary. I guess it is just going to remain one of those innate differences between our two great countries. Meanwhile, Jordan and I will continue our mission to educate the young bartenders of this country about the true name of the Bloody Caesar, suffering the occasional smirk and wrong drink order.