Which Drink Got You Into Bartending?

Molly Gajdosik, assistant manager at Gigantic in Easthampton, Massachusetts, was recently named one of Punch’s Best New Bartenders of 2025. But back in 2020, while in pandemic lockdown, they were just getting into making cocktails. “I bought myself bartending kits with the stimulus check,” they say.

When Gajdosik found the Iron Ranger, a tiki-inspired drink created by San Diego bar owner Erick Castro, that was a turning point. They’d first seen the recipe in a TikTok by Justin Sajda and were intrigued by its simplicity. Made with bourbon, falernum, lemon, pineapple, simple syrup and Angostura bitters, the Iron Ranger is fairly pared back for the often maximalist tiki genre. “I liked that it was a tropical-style drink I could make with bottles I already had on my bar cart, which was pretty much all bourbon at that point,” they say. “I had yet to really branch out into other spirit categories, let alone have 4 different types of rum at home.”

Castro says that was precisely the point when he developed the drink. “There’s a lot of people out there who love a refreshing tropical cocktail, however, might not necessarily be in the mood for rum,” he says. “It’s so rare to find [a classic tiki drink] that has bourbon or whiskey.”

The Iron Ranger was a gateway. Today, Gajdosik primarily focuses on tropical cocktails. At Gigantic, they’ve researched the genre’s classic recipes and infused some of the flavors into other drink templates, like their take on Sherry Cobbler, made with rum and pineapple. Their wholly original cocktails, like the Tierra Verde, also incorporate some of the hallmarks of tiki, like passion fruit syrup and blended spirits. 

These days, when Gajdosik makes the Iron Ranger, they sometimes acid-adjust the pineapple juice, exchange the sweetener for a richer Demerara syrup, add an extra float of Angostura bitters and flash blend the whole thing to “give it a nice fluffy texture.” Now, five years after they first tried the cocktail, it seems they’ve welcomed a little maximalism.