A drive to all 50 states would take a long time — especially when you factor in Hawaii. But a new Williamsburg bar is offering an alcohol-soaked road trip that will allow patrons to circumnavigate the states from the comfort of their bar stools.
Kilo Bravo, which opened this month on N. 10th Street, has created a cocktail for each state and hopes that its customers want to come along for the ride.
“The goal was to come up with creative ways to identify the bar brand without being cheesy,” said owner Kate Buenaflor. “To give a bar an identity without being too gimmicky is a challenge.”
Some of the drinks are actually official state cocktails, such as the Cape Codder or mint julep, but Buenaflor did not want to stick to the same formula for each.
“That would have been boring,” she said. “Some of the ingredients in the drinks are from the state or some of them are named after sports teams. We did something different for each one.”
For example, since Ohio is known for its blue-collar workers, the Kilo Bravo cocktail is called the BlueCollar Sidecar. It features brandy, Cointreau, lemon, blue curacao, and sugar. The New Jersey cocktail, called the Turnpike, is an overloaded Long Island Ice Tea. For New York, Buenaflor eschewed the Manhattan in favor of the Bronx cocktail, which features gin, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, and orange juice.
Of course, it would be dangerous to try to tackle all 50 states too quickly. As an incentive to take it easy, Kilo Bravo is giving patrons a full year to try all 50 drinks. At $10 a state, that is $500 in drinks. So if a customer finishes all of the drinks in one calendar year, they get a free three-hour open bar for their friends and special drink discounts.
But the challenge is tougher than it sounds — Buenoflor acknowledges that some of the state drinks are not all that appetizing.
The patrons agree.
“If someone is proud of their state, they probably do not want to bring their friends in to try the New Jersey,” said John Condon, who is slowly working his way through the states. “But this is a great place to come and try some experiments.”
Kilo Bravo (180 N. 10th St. between Driggs and Bedford avenues in Williamsburg, (347) 987–4379, www.kilobravobar.com).
