The Chicago Cable Car Cocktail: A Rails-Inspired Twist on a Classic Recipe

Meredith Francis

April 13, 2026

Two yellow cocktails in coupe glasses sit atop a bar while Liam Davy stands behind the bar out of focus

Hawksmoor Chicago beverage director Liam Davy created a twist on the Sidecar while Geoffrey Baer filmed an interview for "Riding the Rails."

Riding the Rails premieres on Monday, April 13 at 7:00 pm on WTTW and streaming on the PBS app and at wttw.com/rails.

While filming Riding the Rails, host Geoffrey Baer inspired Liam Davy, beverage director at Hawksmoor Chicago, to shake up something special. The result was the Chicago Cable Car, a bright, citrusy twist on the classic Sidecar – tailor-made for a show about the history and nostalgia of rail travel in Chicago – made with two locally-produced spirits.

Baer visited the Hawksmoor because the British steakhouse’s Chicago outpost lives inside the former LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse, built in 1887. The setting of the interview, in which Geoffrey interviews cable car expert and historian Greg Borzo, is particularly fitting. Cable cars predated electricity in Chicago. The powerhouse held a massive steam engine that pulled a long iron and steel cable, which ran continuously beneath the tracks on the street. Cable car drivers used a grip handle to latch onto the moving cable, which pulled the car forward. To stop, they released the grip and applied the brakes. On the first day of cable car service in the city, Chicagoans were proud.

“They were mystified because it made hardly any sound,” Borzo told Baer in Riding the Rails. “There was no horse in front. There were no electric cables of any kind. And it seemed like this train was just floating down the street.”

Cable cars reached their peak in the 1890s, by which time there were 13 powerhouses, 80 miles of rails, and some 3,000 cable cars in Chicago – the largest cable car system in the country at the time. By 1892, the city’s cable car network reached from just south of Diversey Avenue on the North Side to 71st Street on the South Side. Borzo said all kinds of Chicagoans used cable cars, from working class laborers to wealthy folks.

The LaSalle Street Cable Car Powerhouse was designated a Chicago landmark in 2001, and it also housed Michael Jordan’s restaurant before Hawksmoor moved in.