Tiki Sunday

I had never been to a tiki bar other than on a beach ever in my life until Valentine’s Day, when I went with my girlfriends.

I had a great time and was excited by the fun boat drinks in cool vessels. I didn’t know where to find another tiki bar in NYC. Mostly because I hadn’t thought of it. Luckily for me, my post about my Valentine’s Day at a tiki bar was found by Damon who has a blog strictly about tiki bars. He has a whole catalog of tiki bars by state and that helped remind me of Painkiller, which is a tiki bar I had heard of once or twice but had never stuck in my mind.

Last night, I went to dinner with Dave and Tal at Rye House, which is one of my favorites. When we were done with dinner, I suggested tiki drinks at Painkiller and they were both game. After being dropped by a cab on Essex and Grand, we looked around the rather dilapidated area to find the bar.

Oh here it is!

The door is in there somewhere, it was hidden.

We walked past heavy curtains and gain entry to the low ceilings and cramped space that was this gem of a bar. We passed all the makings of a tiki cocktail on the bar on the way to our booth.

Huge straws, flamingoes, umbrellas...

I immediately ordered a Suffering Bastard (lime juice, simple syrup, bourbon, ginger syrup, Angostura bitters, gin, soda, Collins) and it was really good, but had an overly strong ginger flavor and I could only have one. But look how cool it looks!

Suffering Bastard

The others in my party ordered these fine looking drinks:

Pina Colada. The bits of shaved coconut on the top were awesome.

How awesome is this drink!?

They played fun music, including lots of Beastie Boys, which made me happy. After drinking a whole conch shell, you can bet I sang all the words to “Sabotage” out loud. The best part? The inexpensive check at the end of the evening. That was the icing on the cake.

We finally departed extremely late (or early morning?) and when we exited, it was snowing. I felt fine with that though, because of our warm weather themed evening and I can’t wait to go back.