Drink of the Week: A-Pocky-alypse

Note "ready to eat" pancakes in foreground. These were incorporated into a flip. (C. Fernsebner)

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The bartenders at Drink, in South Boston, are friendly enough that they have indulged, on several occasions, Bostonist and our entourage when we posed a series of "garnish challenges," wholly unreasonable demands to match a cocktail to something outlandish or much less classy than their usual Luxardo cherries or Cynar ice cubes. Circus Peanuts or beef jerky, for example.

Bartender Sam Treadway has an especially patient composure and a talent at matching the unpalatable to the delicious. So, when we heard that he was going to be taking a hiatus from behind the bar for a few weeks, we cooked up a series of garnish challenges, four of them, in what we hoped would be an epic garnish death match. We were not disappointed.

By consensus, the most surprisingly successful cocktail was the A-Pocky-alypse, which married the bitter, sweet, and savory extremes of Men's Pocky with Rittenhouse rye, black tea, Fernet Branca, chocolate mole bitters, Angostura bitters, and a demerara simple syrup made with cardamom and clove. "I don't like to give cocktails genders," Treadway said, "but I'd say that there's nothing in this drink that isn't manly."

Treadway had planned out a whole menu of drinks to match our garnishes, but the Monster Mash was a brilliant, serendipitous afterthought: Treadway arranged our set of penny-candy teeth in a tiki drink of Old Monk rum, Batavia Arrack, pineapple and lime juices, and a ginger simple syrup. It was the fourth drink of Bostonist's night, which meant that the gaping monster mouth got a lot of tongue.

C. Fernsebner and J.D. McLawschoolpants contributed to this shenanigan.