Which chain restaurants drinks do you want me to look at next? Curiada: bit.ly/ShopHTDSpiritsToday Twitch: bit.ly/2VsOi3d H2D2: bit.ly/YTH2D2 twitter: bit.ly/H2DTwit instagram: bit.ly/H2dIG Blog: bit.ly/H2DBlog Patreon: bit.ly/H2DPatreon Gear: amzn.to/2LeQCbW Dew-Garita: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bLp0E61wf5A.html Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Drinks Recreated!: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VKboM2sts9U.html Fixing this famous Key West Drink: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1_SHa3eXdHA.html
It's what he does, gets wasted at restaurants, starts humming the mission impossible theme and just steals their weird cocktails. It's all in my fanfiction.
I love that in the last 30 (probably?) years. The color "blue" has become a universal, international flavor. And everyone knows what you mean when you go "wow, that really tastes blue"
I am waiting for them to spray the same vitamin costal dust they use in cereal to make them "part" of a well balanced diet. With a good glass of milk and a bannana of course.
When you say "a lot of tweaks" do you mean going back to the drawing board? For real, I could see a cotton candy simple syrup in a more "grown up" drink being really fun!
@@OneDrinkThreeBars 100% agreed. Just had a sip of a buddy of mine’s and I thought my teeth would fall out. Fridays is not the fun type of cotton candy drink lol but I could see a drink like you described being a total nostalgia trip, if done correctly.
I worked at TGI Fridays when that abomination came out. That fucker made me hate life. So much cotton candy was wasted. Not to mention we didn’t make the cotton candy in house. We got a shipment of it on Monday or Tuesday. So by the weekend it was all matted and nasty looking from the humidity in the kitchen. And it took up a fuck ton of space in the dry storage closet. And god forbid the server didn’t pick it up from the service bar exactly on time because by the time it got to the table they might as well turn around because the guest was sending it back because there wasn’t any cotton candy left in their drink. Curse that drink and the coke head who thought it was a fun idea.
If by "tweaks" you mean carpet-bomb the concept into a blasted moonscape, then bring in bulldozers to level it out, I'm OK with that. Some drinks exist only because we don't have convenient airlocks to flush them, and possibly their creators, out of.
I remember always being out of gummy sharks for the shark bowl because us servers and bartenders would eat them all during long shifts:) Edit: also the gummy shark you ate was definitely stale, the gummy sharks never froze and in-fact was way better straight from the bar cooler
Shark bowl- 2 oz capt morgan 4oz zombie conetrate, gummy shark. Blue Hawaiian- equal parts tanquraey, Tito’s, Malibu, (some locations encourage using Bacardi too), with pineapple juice, float blue Caracao and a splash of Sierra Mist. Source- I’m a manager at an Applebees in Kansas. Edit- there is sweet and sour in the blue Hawaiian also. It’s 2 oz I believe same with the pineapple juice.
As a bartender in Applebee's in utah we also put our sweet and sour mix in the blue Hawaiian here but we are not allowed to pour ANYTHING over 2 Oz of liquor or the state will tale away our licenses
I worked at Appleee's in my 20s (nearly 20 years ago) and I can say that, at least back then, even the frozen drinks were mixed by hand, and not pre-mixed, nor did we have a "slushie" machine that frozen drinks came from. The ice was fresh and shaved for each drink as ordered, and alcohol poured as instructed. I have no idea how things work NOW, but that's how it worked back in the day.
The befuddlement of how ~blue~ the shark bowl tastes is very relatable. I once tasted a mountain dew flavor so blue and baffling I wrote a whole stand up style rant about it in my notes app.
@@QuackZack Probably just Mtn Dew and vodka which is honestly my go to combo if I wanna get hammered. Ain't no special cocktail but honestly masks the taste of vodka surprisingly well. Live Wire dew and vanilla vodka actually tastes like a cream sickle. Got absolutely wasted on that.
I used to bartend at chilli's, they definitely have some weird drinks that would be fun. I thought their drinks were perfect for what they were trying to achieve, but were generally way to sweet.
@@gir5o1 Sorry for the late reply. Generally Chilli's makes their drinks to be easily accessible, which means sweet. If you like cocktails and balanced drinks Chilli's drinks aren't going to be your thing. The majority of people do not have a taste for good cocktails and a drinks that are very sweet are going to sell better. Chillis drinks are good drinks but not good cocktails for my taste, if I want a good balenced cocktail I'm not gonna get a Grand Coconut marg from chilli's, but if I want adult juice that makes me feel a little good I will defintly get the Chilli's marg. Hope that makes sense, Have a great day!
Applejack and mead are pretty easy to find (or even to make yourself for that matter, traditional applejack isn't made by distillation but by freezing hard cider and skimming the alcohol on top before it freezes and mead is basically just 1/3 honey, 2/3 water and some yeast) but you can't find bee venom for sale. Also, the mead would be the bee part anyways. The problem as I see it is that you would end up with a fortified apple mead and that just ain't a cocktail, it doesn't sound bad but it still will just be a mead. Sure, you could add some lime to it and maybe a little club soda and a few drops of ango to make it a cocktail... Hmm, that might actually work. You might be onto something.
Very interested to see your opinion on Buffalo Wild Wings drinks, I'm a bartender there and a lot of people like our drinks including the Blue Hawaiian and the Henny Hustle. But there are a lot of bad ones as well, I personally hate the Red Sangria the most
@@adams3627 It's probably exactly the same because they use the same suppliers. Like seriously, I used to work at an Applebee's and like... all the desserts and sauces were from a supplier. Most of the food is the equivalent of a microwaveable dinner. It's depressing.
An interesting take might be to be told just the ingredients listed on the menu (not amounts, taste profile, where it’s from etc.) and then try to recreate it blind. Then compare/contrast either how close you got it or how wildly far off it might be. I think that could be a fun series to watch.
Before the pandemic, I was at a TGIF and they had this... lavender, honey, lemon cocktail. I don't remember what it was called, but I really liked it, and I would love to see something like it on the show
Currently doing bartender training and oh boy, the "house special" cocktails sure are horrifically sweet and needlessly complicated. I'm glad the most ordered drink is just a mojito, not one of those abominations of syrup and crushed ice.
I... don't recall that being an issue some years back, but I admit I don't look at their cocktails selection anymore. (I came across one drink and decided it was "my drink" - some sort of 'Limoncello Lemonade' which at least went well with the meal at the time.)
@@kereminde It's more of an issue now, and I've had that Limoncello drink before...they appear to have discontinued it, or at least it wasn't on the menu last time I went some months ago.
@@KnightsaysNi "Not on the menu" doesn't mean much if they have a bartender who knows how to make it and still has the stuff to do so... ... it just means the server will have to figure out how to ring it in, and thus it becomes an issue for making sure it's rung in correctly. Pity, they keep discontinuing things I like!
Not that it matters when dealing with Applebee's drinks, there actually is a small distinction that must be made between a "Blue Hawaiian" and a "Blue Hawaii". Technically a Blue Hawaii is lemonade, blue curacao, and rum; whereas a Blue Hawaiian is pineapple juice, cream of coconut, blue curacao, and rum (and they taste remarkably different, the former being more tart and the latter being more creamy). When it comes to the LIIT versions of these drinks, I'm not sure how to really proceed though.
I love the idea. Reminds me a lot of Joshua Weissman's version called "But Better" where he takes random favorite foods from fastfood and restaurants and makes them better. Doing the same thing for drinks shows how you can experiment and make something great. Thanks for this!
My mind immediately went to Red Lobster with this premise, they got a ton of weird original cocktails, but that's already kinda covered with your Dew-Garita video. I know Buffalo Wild Wings has some weird Lemon slushy football glass drink. They've been out of the ingredients every time I wanna try one though. Dunno if that means it's good or....idk.
NGL, while your channel has gotten me fully into mixology, and I have more sophisticated taste thanks to it, I still go to these chain restaurants once a week just because it's a nice way to de-stress and enjoy being waited on, including getting these drinks. It is as you describe: they are meant to be accessible, and thus they are often uncomplicated to a fault. But honestly, I don't mind something so simple and manufactured haha. I didn't make it myself and I enjoy it still (even if not as much as my own creations), and that's all that matters to me. Alas, as far as I know, this was discontinued, but: There was a drink I really liked from Buffalo Wild Wings called a Strawberry Kicked Coronarita, which was a sweet strawberry margarita with a literal beer bottle flipped upside-down into it. I remember when googling recipes that the concept of having a beer flipped into your drink makes it a variant of a Bulldog? I don't know for sure, I didn't research it much beyond that, but it was an interesting concept, and, in that mode of turning my brain off to be able to enjoy all this stuff, I found it to be a fun and tasty drink. And I'd love to see your take on it.
i've been contemplating doing a series on my channel or something like this since i had a drunken conversation with an apple bees bartender. Apparently they WILL NOT use any more than 2 ounces of spirit AND Liqueur in any drink. I asked about the Long Island Iced Tea he said they use quarter ounce of everything. i said "that turns up less than 2 ounces still" he replied "doesn't matter, thats what were told to do. Were not allowed to serve more" ANY of their drinks can be improved, love the series already and the show. PATRON THIS MAN!
Reminds me when they were doing a 2 or 3 dollar LIIT special. We went there thinking it'd be kinda fun to get f---ed up and eat some mediocre food, except it was pretty obvious how little alcohol they had. Had to drink like 3 or 4 of them to get the same buzz I would get from a proper LIIT. We left pretty disappointed. And I'm pretty sure they had even less alcohol than their normal ones too cause they were smaller than they shoulda been.
I'm willing to bet this is probably just so that they can standardize the recipes across every American state while still adhering to every local liquor law. They probably just take whatever state has the most restrictive laws regarding alcohol and base everything around that.
@@FumbleSquid that was such a fleece. Hey come get these supposedly strong drinks for cheap! *recieves slightly brown and only vodka tasting drink* I had them cut me off at 3 weak alcoholic drinks. Mind you there was at least an ounce only in the first 2
@@abraxis7292 Thankfully we found a local bar that is cheaper, has way better food, and has proper drinks. Never going back to anything like Applebee's for a drink, or food for that matter.
Ok I LOVE the term ‘stealth spirits’. I would love a list of more elevated stealth spirits drinks. If that’s not a contradiction in terms. I’m not a big or frequent drinker and dislike a strong alcohol profile but would like to expand my horizons.
A year late (lol) but I feel like most tiki drinks fall into that catagory. Lots of fruit juices, sugar, and flourish but not super strongly alcoholic tasting (at least to my tastes). Of course, A lot of these drinks are absolute brain blasters, but some don't really taste all that alcoholic. That being said, basically anything that is very sweet, sour, or has a lot of fruit juice probably won't taste strongly of booze. Alternatively, just looking into low proof cocktails. Most of them try to be pretty high-class, but they don't actually have that much alcohol so they typically don't taste like it.
Somehow I think that helping you remember your childhood summers, 7 eleven slurpees, and children’s candy might have been exactly the feedback Applebees was hoping for…
Excited for this series ! I wish sometimes chains didn't change their menu so often because I got a drink at a ruby Tuesdays years ago that was so tasty and I cannot remember what it was even called. I remember it had cucumber slices ad elderflower spirit though. My dad always tastes my drinks when we go out together and he declared it "so refreshing it should come with a free beach"
The "Shark Bowl" immediately throws my mind back to a place I used to work. Family owned restaurant on the Columbia River, in Portland Oregon, called The Deck. Having been a cook there for a few long summer seasons, they absolutely sold the pants off of Shark Bites. They'd mix up full pony kegs of the cocktail spirits and use the sour mix and grenadine to finish. Served in big pint mugs, it was about as sedating as a long island iced tea, but even sweeter. Much like the Zombie, we'd limit service to two per person.
Did they buy up big on food, then? I understand 'responsible alcohol serving' and totally support it, but what was in it for the restaurant to serve these rather than smaller drinks?
I love the more freeform stuff you've been doing as of late Greg i am not a drinker at all but still love your show i vicariously try these drinks through you, so keep on finding and making weird drinks to enjoy and suffer with.
Looking forward to more of this! I know its hard to nail down ideas that you feel are worth making, but I feel like this one is spot on. We all have a chain restaurant drink that we love/hate. Getting to see them highlighted, and then reworked is fun.
Oh, do Chili’s. Please do Chili’s. I can’t wait to see what craziness is wrought from that. I love this episode idea, and I have to say, that Iron Chef-style “Use this ingredient in a cocktail” idea that was floated at the end of the episode also sounds really awesome, though I’m curious as to how much that concept could be stretched. Multiple cocktails an episode? Mixers only, or base spirits and garnishes too? Might lend itself to a shorter format, but I would love to see whatever comes of the brainstorming!
agree the iron chef idea is awesome, i want to see greg take a big bite out of a bell pepper. i guess for greg it would be a handful of maraschino cherries or something
Greg, I need this in my life as a series! I have always considered Friday's to be benchmark for bar's. There is one in every city and they have a greand they have a great mixed drink program so so they are always consistent no matter if it's a gimmick or not. When I fly into a new city I will stop at the Friday's 1st to determine how expensive alcohol is and if I should be eating and drinking somewhere else. Keep it up 💯
I always heard that the excessive sweetness was to stimulate appetite and increase food sales. This goes for 'cocktails' all the way to fountain drink sodas with a modified syrup/carbonation ratio favoring the syrup.
@@johnr797 I find that it varies wildly from restaurant to restaurant. Sometimes through sheer neglect, the ratios of syrup to carbonation to ice gets off in one direction or the other; so of course, some restaurants intentionally manipulate these ratios to either cheat the customer, or to stimulate more sales in their more profitable food choices by triggering insulin responses. The weird thing is that typically with cocktails bars it's the opposite. They have food items to stimulate drink sales, by increasing the length of stay. Profit margins are so high, that getting even one additional cocktail order out of a customer is the name of the game. I imagine with Applebee's, they know they are going to sale you some food if you have bothered to go there, and the sugary cocktails are designed to make sure you order more than you would have with iced water as your beverage. So much so that they are willing to take a hit on their cocktail profit margins with daily happy hours and whatnot.
Chilli's captain's castaway is one of the few restaurant drinks I like, I wouldn't mind knowing how to make a better version (also yeti thermoses are freaking amazing, never tried ice in them but they keep my drinks wicked cold without it)
Two ideas 1; contact yeti about a "camping bar" I would buy a compact to go bar kit for outdoors, you could sell them 2; you should do "assisted alcohol" drinks like the "wormwood" is supposed to assist the alcohol in absinthe or the opium assisted the alcohol in laudnum (not suggesting you consume laudnum) like caffeine or taurine assisted alchohol.
I'm glad you decided to keep the drinks candy like as their originals are, just better. There's enough complex and fancy stuff out there. Sometimes you just want boozy candy
The blue hawaiian is equal parts Titos, Malibu, Tanqueray, pineapple juice and then the rest is sour mix with blue curacao floated and a splash of sierra mist.
I’d actually love to see a series where you take a look at different cocktails menus, and recreate the most unconventional drinks - I know that when I (used to) go out, part of my drink decision would be based on whether it was something that I wouldn’t be able to make at home.
I’m sure this is said a lot, but I love seeing Greg’s personality come to life in these videos! I binge watch a lot of these episodes and these recent ones have been great! That’s not saying that the older videos aren’t good, I binge watch those too. I just love seeing the evolution and growth! Cheers everyone! 🍻🤙🏽
Future episode suggestion: The game "2064: Read Only Memories" has a section at a bar, at it looks like every named drink has a given recipe. Would be cool to see a video/series based on the sheer number of cocktails in there
So, not exactly the same, but Greg *has* done a video on related-but-not-by-the-same-developer game VA-11 Hall-A (the definition is because a character from VA-11 Hall-A turns up in ROM, and vice-versa - in fact, one drink in the former can only be found in the latter).
My favorite thing about this channel is that when you taste a drink and break it down, you get so into explaining it that you come off ass actually drunk even though you haven't actually drank enough. You just got a super excited personality that you just don't see in people much anymore.
For some reason it dawned on me that Greg hasn’t done a “World’s Most Expensive Cocktail by Volume” video. Seems like it would be a real clickable video.
Every time I went to Applebee’s as a kid I always wanted to order that shark drink. It looked like a big blue slushy with cute little shark gummies, which was super appealing! My mom always had to remind me I couldn’t get it because it was alcoholic, but it’s interesting to learn that I probably wouldn’t have been able to taste the alcohol because it’s so sweet and sour haha. Thanks for fulfilling and improving my childhood dreams!
"Loudly blue flavored" "Blue Hawaiian Long Island" that is too many islands. Couldn't they call it like, a Longboard, or an Archipelago, or something besides "we made two different heavy drinks and then threw them together like it's a jungle juice party"?
That intro was EVERYTHING. Funny, witty, unique to your style, hit all the points. You are bringing the game back, my man. So looking forward to more of these. 💜
I'm 10seconds in and I can already tell you that you need to do more of these episodes. And also, it's not to say their drinks are bad either, but there should always be a premium version of said drinks
I'm curious how he'll do the blue Hawaiian LIIT, my thought was to use a hibiscus tea and a pea flower simple for color change, then whatever tropical booze is suitable to hide in there
I hope this series does well because, while I don't really care about chain restaurant drinks, I do love the idea of making improved and sorta classed-up versions of trashy/college/party drinks.
Greg, this is epic! You are onto something fun here and I definitely want to see more of this Series. Please continue this. Curious to see what you can find at chains like Olive Garden, The Cheesecake Factory/Grand Lux Cafe, Red Lobster, or even a Denny's and IHOP where they tout Boozy Adult Shakes. Granted, I'm worried about you consuming this much sugar, and the risk this has of diabetes, but at the same time you are doing us all a huge service and this is epic to witness. So, with that I say, "God's Speed Greg...God's Speed good Sir".
That second drink you made ended up not too far off from a Blue Hawaii. Original was made with a split base of rum and vodka, and I know I've seen a fancy version on Punch magazine I think that used rum and coconut-washed gin instead.
The whole shark bowl thing reminded me of something on the drink menu at Joe's Crab Shack which I never ordered, but it looked totally nuts. A shark bite, unmistakably, but the grenadine came from a little shark...thing. If your shark is vomiting blood _into_ the water, that shark probably needs to consult a doctor.
I remember Applebees did a $1 long island special, and during that time I needed to get dinner between two work shifts and decided to order 2 thinking they were going to be weak AF because Applebees… I was wrong. No where near drunk, but closer than I should’ve been for being on the clock 🤣😂 good thing it was radio lol
As a fan of pretty much any $5 special, I applaud this series. Chili's seems like a must, but also going to toss Cheesecake Factory out there as something to try. They have some good ones (the bourbon and honey) but some are... A little out there (at least in my memory). Might be a tad fancier than you're shooting for, but thought I'd mention it.
wow, never woulda guessed that the applebee's drinks were hellspawn. I thought it was only the food, service, atmosphere, and pricing. turns out the whole deal is a hellscape
I get the feeling it goes better with the food. That seems to be a "theme" of sorts, that the drinks on their own weren't that good... but while eating, they seemed balanced out by the food.
The drink you ended up with after adding the ango to the blue Hawaiian liit should be called a "green eyed monster". Serve in a tiki mug with a flaming lime boat and a garnish of cinnamon maybe?
The shark bowl mix is the same stuff they were putting in one of the dollar drinks repurposed, it used to be called zombie mix. Applebees is very very good at repurposing things they already have and pushing it, which is why they got multiple blue drinks. Also the sharks are always hard, even when they aren't in the drink. Easisly the worst gummies in applebees. The christmas and halloween ones are fire though.
Been watchin for a bit, and I really appreciate the scheduled ad breaks. Far, far less annoying to have an ad not randomly break up what is going on. To stop for a sec to let the ad roll, it makes it feel more like a show, doesn’t hurt pacing, and doesn’t result in mid-sentence cut offs where you have to go back a couple seconds to remember what the hell you were saying
I'm from the UK and we have wetherspoons they're basically everyone's introduction to coctails through pitchers but can have em in a glass too Godfather - (my fav) Coke, Jack Daniels, Disarono with some lime wedges chucked in Purple rain - cherry sours, blue curaçao, lemonade and lime Blue Lagoon - blue curaçao, smirnoff vodka, lime cordial and lemonade Woo woo - Smirnoff, Archers, lime and Cranberry There's a few more but they can be accessed on the Internet.
@@____________838 yeah they're pretty good 2 pitchers for £12 not sure what that is in dollars but its about as cheap as it gets here usually a standard cocktail in a nicer actual bar is around £9. And spoons are kinda everywhere here which helps
I was at a local beer hall modeled on the German style last week and they had a cocktail on their menu called the German Tart. It had Tanqueray, St. Germain, Berenjager, cranberry juice and lemon juice, garnished with a lemon wedge. I don't know the proportions but it was absolutely delicious. I didn't really taste the elderflower but to be fair I don't really know what elderflower tastes like so I may have missed it. The interplay between the honey, the lemon and the juniper was really interesting. Berenjager doesn't get a lot of love so it was cool to see it used in something so yummy.
Been watching this show for about two years, never once disagreed with Greg on anything. He's dead wrong about the gummy sharks, though. Gummy sharks are a treat for the ages.
@@Rose-jz6sx My Man goes off on gummy sharks around 10:40 which, to quote Greg himself, this aggression will not stand. One that's frozen solid, eh, probably still enjoyable after some chewing.
A few months ago I attempted to make a shark bowl at my home bar and I think the blending made the drink oh so much worse, especially with real ingredients as opposed to "shark bowl mix." Got most of the recipe from the Applebee's bartender actually.
The Applebee's "Blue Hawaiian Long Island Iced Tea" sounds like it's just an AMF by another name (done badly because the rum is Malibu). Also, Greg... are you okay? Are you doing alright? You don't seem alright.
Clever move with the Yeti trick. Kraken has a cool bottle, but Sailor Jerry is King of Spiced Rums! My mom prefers Captain Morgan Cannon Blast. Looking forward to the rest of this series...not because I want to find a way to make a fancy/upmarket version, since I honestly have no airs or notions, if it's tasty I'll try it...but to see if the drinks are even worth trying to recreate at home (because I never eat out...and no way in hell am I paying THAT much!)
Can't wait! Chili's next please! Love the current format. I do like the idea of you do an elevated version AND a bottom shelf (improved) version. My bar is not fully stocked with all the good stuff yet. Good for options.
Love this idea! Definitely do Chilis. There is like a sunrise margarita? Something like that. Before I was 21 I thought their drinks looked sooo pretty and I couldn’t wait to try it. My palette has definitely evolved since then lol
