Robert Simonson

Robert Simonson is a journalist and historian who writes about cocktails, spirits, bars and bartenders, both past and present. He writes primarily for the New York Times, where he has been a contributor since 2000, but is also regularly published in Imbibe, Saveur, Lucky Peach, Whiskey Advocate, New York magazine, Food & Wine, Eater and Punch, where he has been a contributed editor since 2017.

Simonson's first cocktail book, "The Old-Fashioned: The World's First Classic Cocktail," was published in May 2014 (Ten Speed Press). "A Proper Drink" (Ten Speed Press, 2016), was the first comprehensive cultural history of the modern cocktail renaissance. He was a significant contributor to "The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails," released in October 2015. His next book, "Three-Ingredient Cocktails," published by Ten Speed Press in September 2017, was nominated for a James Beard Award. His latest book, "The Martini Cocktail," was published in September 2019. His writings have been nominated for a Spirited Award a total of eleven times, and two IACP awards. He won the Spirited Award for Best Cocktail Writer in 2019.

Also a travel writer, his work appears frequently in the Travel section of the New York Times.

In February 2016, with Martin Doudoroff, he released the app "Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance," which collects, for the first time, in one place, all the recipes for all the modern classic cocktails of the current era. In 2019, Doudoroff and he collaborated once again on "The Martini Cocktail" app. In 2018, he collaborated with Cocktail Kingdom, the barware purveyor, on a set of vintage Old-Fashioned glassware.

Prior to his career as a liquor journalist, he wrote extensively about theatre for many years, for the New York Times, Variety, Time Out New York, The Village Voice and others. He was the editor of Playbill.com from 1998 to 2006. He wrote four books about the theatre and a couple dozen plays between 1995 and 2012.

A native of Wisconsin, he has lived in New York for nearly three decades--most of those years in brownstone Brooklyn--with his son and wife.