‘. . . CAN I BUY YOU A SNOW CONE?’
Bars put a boozy twist on childhood fave.
Between the presence of middle-aged rollerbladers, summer camps for adults and flocks of childless grown-ups queuing up to see movies about dinosaurs and animated yellow cylinders, embracing your inner child is totally trending.
As such, it should come as no surprise that slushy treats are popping up in restaurants and bars, and not just at the family restaurants.
That’s because snow cones now come in a tasty new flavour: booze.
Being a grown-up just got a little bit better, at least for those bellied up to the bar at the Miller Tavern on Bay St., slurping up a Tommy’s Margarita snow cone (with a signature touch of five spice), or at Miss Thing’s, a recently opened tiki bar on Queen St. W., where their spicy tequila Colada comes served over crushed ice in a hollowed-out coconut shell. (Garnished with a cocktail umbrella, obviously.)
Over at the Harbord Room, kidult cocktail fun comes in at least 31 flavours, where a choose-your-own-snow-cone adventure is offered up on a condiment tree that serves up to six.
“You can do anything over crushed ice,” says Alana Nogueda, the 26year-old bartender who came up with the kicky presentation for the Harbord Room’s boozy nostalgic treat. “We’re still experimenting, but I don’t know what cocktail I would not want to see on a snow cone.”
While we wait to see how Nogueda handles the inevitable requests for snow-cone versions of sturdy, spirit-forward classics (Old Fashioned slushy, anyone?), we’ll have to stay content with the ones that are currently flying off the bar shelf, namely, Negronis, Last Words and Daiquiris, the latter being the barkeep’s favourite. Nogueda recalls loving non-alcoholic crushed ice drinks as a child growing up in hot-as-hell Las Vegas and even has a tattoo of a hula girl with the caption “DAQS on DAQS on DAQS” inked on her calf. One of the most popular combos she sells at the Harbord Room is a Daiquiri triad — strawberry, banana and traditional lime, for a bargain price of $10 each.
“When people hear ‘Daiquiri,’ they think back to that overly sweet drink that gave you a headache last time you were on vacation,” explains Nogueda. “But this isn’t a sugary drink, it’s really just a classic cocktail in a way funner form.”
So much fun, in fact, that many of the Harbord Room’s customers don’t even wait till after they’ve finished supper to order them. Plenty of people are unashamed to order them as a pre-dinner aperitif.
Which makes perfect sense, given that one of the main perks of being a grown-up is that nobody gets to tell you when and if you can eat dessert.
Before dinner, after dinner — maybe even for dinner.