So last night, my coworkers and I had a get-together at Dave & Busters, which is basically a Chuck E. Cheeze for adults.
And as we’re flipping through the drinks menu, it occured to me that a lot of this stuff has more sugar than a Pixi Stik. What gives?
(I personally had a grasshopper. Yeah, I know, but I don’t think it’s nearly in the same catagory as some of this crap)
Observe:
-Candy Shop
You’ll love our candied combo of DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker, Smirnoff Watermelon Twist, Sprite®, soda and cranberry juice garnished with fresh lime and a cherry.
-Snow Cone
DeKuyper Watermelon Pucker, Malibu rum, Three Olives Cherry vodka, blue curacao, Sprite® and pomegranate syrup over shaved ice. Got the shivers yet?
-Banana Split
We blend 99 Bananas flavored schnapps with white crème de cacao, a scoop of ice cream and Strawberry Bacardi® Premium Mixer for a taste you’ll love a bunch.
-Pink Monkey Freeze
Mix Stoli Ohranj with banana liqueur, add butterscotch schnapps, strawberries and ice cream for a monkey of a mix.
Am I completely out there, or does it seem that you’re more likely to get a sugar high than a nice little buzz? And yeah, I like my ice cream drinks-I suppose I shouldn’t talk. But all that sugary, puckery, lollipop stuff makes my stomach squirm. At least give it a little cream to “mellow it”, if that makes sense.
Some people like that stuff. You can order standard drinks there as well. The sugary stuff is not as standardized as traditional cocktails so it makes sense that they have those explicitly listed. Also, those adults who don’t normally drink may be tempted by sweets rather than more traditional offerings. The sweet and tart flavor masks the alcohol flavor for those who want to have a drink without tasting the alcohol. My mother is in this category of drinkers. In days gone by they would order a screwdriver, now, there are many other offerings.
Not all non-alcoholic cocktails or kiddie drinks are sugary, nor do all kids prefer to drink the sweetest drinks. My daughter loves filthy virgin martinis which are made with black olive brine with a black olive in it. She tends to like her sweet drinks only mildly sweet. She once converted a virgin mint julep into a basil julep and enjoyed every drop <shudder>.
Dave & Busters is an arcade for adults. Those drinks sound perfectly in line for that. I know RogueGF would like several of those. There are definitely people who don’t like the typical beer, wine, or two part mixer thing.
I live on Mountain Dew, and I love Pixie Stix – not to mention Skee-Ball! – so of course I am Dave & Buster’s target market. And I would drink any one of those things. Repeatedly. For whatever that might be worth.
I always figure that those are gateway drinks for people who enjoy the intoxicating effect of alcohol but who don’t like the taste. Like wine coolers and Jagermeister. I’ve reached the age where my “adult” beverage drinking is 95% confined to three things, red wine, extra dry martinis, and single malt scotch.
I’d be willing to bet money that those drinks are mostly ordered by women - same goes for sweet alcopops in this neck of the woods. IME, some women are brought up not to appear to like the taste of ethanol, and drinks like that really disguise the taste.
I’m more a “bourbon neat with a glass of water, please” type of guy so that stuff doesn’t appeal to me at all.
However, there definitely is a market for drinks that have little to no flavor of alchohol but still get you buzzed. I offer up all the silly “martinis” that most restaurants, including mine, offer these days. Cosmos, Appletinis, Mochatinis, etc. They may be tasty but they sure aren’t real martinis.
For as sweet and kiddie sounding as those drinks are, they’re actually pretty stiff drinks. Look at them, they’re basically flavored martinis. I’ll bet the proof on some of those drinks is 70-80. They’ll get you loaded in a hurry. And since you’re really not gonna taste the alcohol in some of them, you can drink and spend money all night on them.
shudder indeed. No offense, lee, but your daughter has issues.
Seriously, it’s not so much that these are cocktails. I’d think they were a little much even if they were non-alcoholic. It’s just, I like my drinks rich and creamy. Grasshoppers, Irish coffees, Bailey’s, etc. Sometimes a mudslide. It’s sweet, but it’s thick and soothing. Or tea with whiskey when I’m sick.
Not full of sugar and overly sweet and puckery. Yech.
(I don’t really drink all that often. Doctor’s orders. sigh)
ETA: Joey P, I don’t doubt that. I was merely being facetious (sp?). Those things’ll definitely get you hammered faster than normal, because you can’t taste the booze, so you keep drinking them until you fall over.
Arrested adolescence. It’s been a problem in the USA since the baby boom. Sugary wine, sugary cocktails, sugary hamburger rolls, for godssake. One of the reasons I choose to live in NYC, one of the last bastions of adulthood.
Years go when I was in my early '30s, I was drinking a martini in a bar in Phoenix, Arizona (not too bad a martini, either), and the cornfed blondie girl on the next barstool with the sundress and the buff BF and the glassful of Boysenberry Daiquiri leaned over and STARED at it and said “Do you really LIKE that?” and I got the impression she’d only ever seen a real drink in the movies.
Ukelele Ike it has gotten nothing but worse. Just last Saturday night I met a professional bartender who honestly thought that an extra dry martini meant one with extra vermouth. I weep for the future.
But it tastes good with cream soda.
Really.
I swear.
I wouldn’t drink the drinks that were listed in the OP (I don’t like watermelon, sour apple flavor, or banana), but I do tend to like drinks in that general area of drinks. I tend to like sweet - things with sugar in them taste good. Alcohol mixed with sugar tastes good. (Though sometimes, I do want just “scotch, neat”)
BTW, I’ve never had a drink that masked the taste of alcohol - you can always taste the alcohol. No matter what you throw into the shaker, the alcohol comes out loud and clear, so drinking a snow cone means you’re drinking watermelon/cherry/pomegranate, with alcohol.
The Pucker Flavors are only 30 proof (15% ABV) and the most potent ingredient in any of those mixes is flavored vodka which is 70 proof. Considering each drink is more than half nonalcoholic and that the most potent ingredient accounts for perhaps 20% of the volume, these drinks are no where in spitting distance of 70 proof. Assuming the alcoholic portions drinks are all in equal parts, the proofs would range from 60 to 40 proof for just the liquors. Add in the mixers, which I’m sure would be very generous to assume they come in a half the total volume, and a optimistic estimate would be between 20 to 30 proof for the cocktails, not including ice melt. Considering the drinks are most likely served in anything from a 5 oz martini glass to a 9 oz collins glass, the overall alcohol content would be less than a typical glass of wine and more likely closer to that of a 12 oz light beer.
You certainly could get drunk on them, but I wager that anyone with a tolerance of any sort would get a stomach ache before they got a buzz. They are more dessert than intoxicant.
