A Bloody Mary With a Giant Bagel Garnish?! 9 Outrageous Cocktails That Double as Meals
Not sure if you're thirsty or hungry? Doesn’t matter with these boozy feasts-in-a-glass.
A pineapple wedge on your mango margarita. A slice of bacon and maybe even a shrimp dangling off your Bloody Mary. A piece of chocolate on your dessert martini. All cute efforts at garnishing a cocktail—but the everyday bite-of-food flourishes aren’t in the same ballpark (or even the same galaxy) as these nine drinks that may legitimately require doggie bags for their garnishes.
1. Checkmate Caesar
Your educational tidbit for the day: In Canada, they’re super into Caesars, which are basically a Clamato-added take on a Bloody Mary. At Vancouver’s Score on Davie sports bar, they’re garnishing their most epic Caesar with an actual feast fit for a small army (or at least a few highly drunk overachievers). The cocktail boasts a roast chicken, burger, wings, onion rings, pulled pork mac-and-cheese hot dog, and a brownie. No, this is not a dream.
2. Lox’d & Loaded
Isn’t it SUCH a pain to have to hold your bagel in one hand and your Bloody Mary in the other? Happily, Buffalo & Bergen in Washington, D.C. gets our struggle, and is freeing up that second hand by putting the bagel (complete with cream cheese, lox, and all the fixin's) directly on top of their spicy Mary as the world’s most carb-tastic garnish. Thank you, heroes.
3. F* Brunch Sangria
Your Sunday can be a real, real fun day if you start it off with 32 ounces of sangria topped with steak and shrimp fajita meat, a chimichanga, taquitos, a chorizo-stuffed jalapeno and, of course, fruit (because it’s important for your garnishes to be nutritionally well-rounded, natch). This booze-meets-Tex-Mex mashup with skewers galore can be marveled over at the Anvil Pub in Dallas.
4. Homeslice Bloody
Nothing chases away a hangover quite like cold pizza. So it stands to reason that the Bloody Mary from Homeslice in Chicago is just what the proverbial doctor ordered, since the zesty elixir comes garnished with a chilled slice of Hawaiian pizza—along with some pepperoni and pepperoncini to really drive the point home.
5. Bang Bang Michelada
Just can’t decide between a michelada, a Bloody Mary, and a turkey leg? (We have so been there.) No need to pull a Sophie’s choice, because The Bang Bang Bar in San Antonio has your back with its Sunday-only michelada/Bloody combo that just happens to be topped with a huge-ass turkey leg. It’s totally what Henry VIII would’ve pounded at brunch.
6. Chubby Mary
When the catch of the day is on your beverage, odds are that you’re living life right. At The Cove in Leland, MI, the Chubby Mary is garnished with a smoked chub fish standing tall and proud in the boozy blend. And when you finish the last drops of your drink, the server conveniently brings a plate of crackers for you to enjoy with your chub.
7. F* Brunch Mimosa
Those mad cocktail scientists at the Anvil Pub in Dallas just keep skewering things and creating eye-popping concoctions. Their mimosa comes topped with no less than a breakfast sandwich, a cinnamon roll, tater tots, and basically a fruit bowl on a stick. Not into bubbles? No worries, because their Screwdriver comes with all the same tasty bells and whistles.
8. Sumo Mary
And sometimes your adult beverage garnish is basically an entire buffet. Such is very, very, very much the case at Chicago’s Sunda, where the Sumo Mary is crowned with tocino grilled cheese, a duck bao bun, a crab handroll, pork belly, shishito peppers, bacon, potatoes, lumpia, pickled radish, and Chinese broccoli. Consider gravity (and logic) officially defied.
9. Chicken Fried Bloody Beast
If you like your cocktails to contain an entire picnic’s worth of food, look no farther than Sobelman’s Pub & Grill in Milwaukee. That’s where your Bloody Mary will be handed to you bedecked with a whole fried chicken. Sure, it’ll also sport a bunch of other more typical accoutrements, plus a bunch of bacon-wrapped jalapeno cheeseballs—but did we mention the entire fried bird plopped on top?
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