The private dining space inside Eat Street Social has been reborn again as the Torpedo Room. The temporary Tiki bar had been on hiatus through the summer, but this week it returns with Periscope Pop Up featuring a mostly new menu of Midwestern-inspired Tiki cocktails.
All of the drinks I had the pleasure of sampling were delicious, but the Funky Rhino is an excellent place to begin your odyssey. The wide, low glass with an ice cube that looks like the Hope diamond is perfumed with the dusky scent of black walnuts that are singularly sourced for Bittercube. (The bitters company who are part owners of Eat Street Social—creators of this cold-weather sanctuary). Rum is infused with these ground walnuts and mixed with arrack, sorghum syrup, and Eat Street Social’s Mahalo bitters. The arrack is a distilled spirit made from the sap of coconut trees. “It would be the same as if we fermented maple syrup,” Nick Kosevich explained as he mixed one up. Someone needs to get on that.
He refers to this cocktail as the Old Fashioned of the cocktail list. Within the low, wide glass are all the dark brown flavor notes with more intriguing layers of spirit flavor, laced with a syrup sweetness from the sorghum.
Sorghum syrup is a regionally beloved sweetener that despite a one-time push by the industry, never fully caught on around the country. It’s got a little bit lighter than molasses flavor, but funkier. The funk is very subtle in this drink, just a bit of a something different flavor rather than an average flavor.
The Torpedo Room hours will vary, but will often be Wednesday through Friday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Check their Facebook page for updates.
