Tom and Jerry season came early this year at City Bar

Cheryl Savoie has fond memories of the City Bar’s Tom and Jerry drink.

Savoie, who is from Baton Rouge, La., would visit her grandparents, Lola and Eddy Hakola, every year during the holiday season.

“My uncle used to get tubs and bring (the batter) to my grandparents’ house and we’d always have them.” she said.

The traditional Christmastime cocktail is a variant of eggnog. Rum and whiskey are added to the batter at the City Bar and served hot in a mug.

After her grandfather passed away, Savoie came to Great Falls to organize his belongings over the summer. She was disappointed to find that the City Bar wasn’t serving the frothy drink.

“Being from Louisiana, I just assumed they’d have them year-round,” she said.

Savoie was directed to Brad Watson, the City Bar’s co-owner, and he promised to ship her some by Thanksgiving.

Tom and Jerry season at the City Bar, which normally starts 10 days before Thanksgiving and runs through New Year’s Day, started a week earlier this year due to popular demand.

“It’s part of my Montana memories,” Savoie said.

She has tried making the batter on her own, but “we have humidity down here and it’s not the same.”

Watson has the secret recipe down to a science. He has been making the drink since he was about 13.

“I remember making it with my brother, sister and cousins. I’d have egg whites and sugar stuck in my hair,” the third-generation business owner said. The City Bar bought the batter from Wolf’s Bakery in Great Falls before Watson’s father bought the recipe from the baker’s widow in the 1960s after the baker died.

Every time one generation becomes too old to continue making it, the next picks up the task. “It’s just an old-time drink holiday tradition,” Watson said.

They break the eggs first.

Crack, crunch, splat. Three grandmothers, clad in hairnets and aprons, meticulously separate whites from yolks in a small A-frame building next to the City Bar. They chat about family and tell stories of how they sometimes find eggs with two yolks.

“They’re like two eyes of sunshine,” said Marie Dubik, who is hired to crack the eggs. To her, the festive beverage is a way to afford Christmas for her family. “Children don’t always understand that bills have to come first, and after those there isn’t always much left.”

By seasons’ end, she will have helped crack more than 16,000 eggs.

Next, they combine ingredients.

Some hours later, after buckets of yolks and whites have chilled, a new team arrives to pour sugar and a secret ingredient into four mixers symmetrically aligned by the wall. This year alone, they will pour a ton and a half of sugar into those mixers.

Some of the help have been making the batter for 15 years — and all that combined experience makes a difference.

“It’s very easy to mess up,” Watson said. “One mistake and the whole batch is ruined.”

Once the mixers are through, the sugar and egg batter is spooned into quart-, gallon- and half-gallon containers then sold to eager customers in Great Falls and beyond — including Savoie.