{From left, the Voo Doo Brew and Brain Freeze at Trops}
Some weekends, we long for a perfectly balanced cocktail, a pint of obscure craft beer or a glass of elegant wine. And some weekends, we want neon frozen booze bombs served in plastic cups and sucked through a straw. This is one of those weekends.
Leave the coat and tie at home and sidle up to the bar at Tropical Liqueurs, where any cocktail you order comes boozed up and blended. Trops, as it’s known to University of Missouri students, recently opened at 1800 S. 10th St., in Soulard and serves up more than a dozen varieties of house-mixed, boozy slushies.
Mizzou alums will recognize the Tiger Paw from their Columbia stomping grounds. A riff on a fuzzy navel, peach and orange flavors dominate thanks to peach schnapps, pineapple and orange juices and Bacardi 151. The Voo Doo Brew is a sweet, tangy blast of banana liqueur, vodka, sloe gin, fresh banana puree and lemonade. If it’s a tequila kind of day, the Brain Freeze will oblige with tequila, Puerto Rican rum, gin, blue curaçao and lemonade.
Can’t decide? Mix and match. Combine up to three slushy flavors in one cup. The Silver Bullet, a basic mix of Everclear, lemonade and Sprite gives a tangy punch to any of the menu items like the sweet and fruity Sex on the Beach. Order your custom boozy concoction in a modest 12-ounce cup (holding around two to three shots of booze) to an innocuous-sounding extra-large. In fact, it’s a 44-ounce monster packing of eight to nine shots in one massive cup. If you really don’t want to remember the night, additional shots can be added for $2.
Grab your sunglasses, flip flops and a chair under one of the umbrella-covered patio tables or inside in the 40-seat bar, order a slushy and sip the weekend away pretending you’re at a beachside resort – or back in undergrad.
This article appears in August 2015.