Not that we’ve had a lot of time to reflect over the last few weeks and months as we’ve worked to get our little venture off the ground, but I found myself thinking about the Crossroads neighborhood and all the hope and promise it represents.  I don’t know how else to put it, but we love Crossroads!  We love what it is now, what it has been and most excitedly what we believe it can be.  We are excited about the opening of a world class performing Arts Center.  We are excited that it is still the hub and center of local art engagement and music.  We love the chaos of it on First Friday and the calm of it on a quiet summer night.  We love that we can be an even bigger part of it and offer a place to meet with friends and enjoy frozen cocktails and fresh cuisine that reflect the best of our city and our neighborhood.  We can’t wait for Snow and hope you our neighbors and our friends will want to be our company.

1) FIRE BAD!: Never do a shot with the with the words sweaty, fart or fire in the title. Examples are Prairie Fire, Sweaty Lumberjack and Gorilla Fart shots The moniker is there for a reason, and it’s not good. Along the same lines, if the shot is actually on fire when it arrives, politely decline.

2) DON’T SMELL IT, JUST DRINK IT: Humans have evolved a keen sense of smell over the ages to keep them from ingesting dangerous things that can hurt or kill you. When your bestie walks up with a shot and utters this phrase, don’t disregard years of olfactory progress in our species. It’s probably steering you the right direction.

3) SHOTS WITH NUMBERS IN THE TITLE: Three Wise Men, Four Corners and other shots fill this category. It indicates a bunch of crap mixed together and counts down to a throbbing headache for you in the morning.

4) ANYTHING WITH DEATH IN THE TITLE: Seems self-explanatory not to drink something called a Death Bed , doesn’t it? But, after a few drinks we’re not in our right mind. These shots usually arrive with the advice “Don’t smell it, just drink it.” Refer back to Rule 2.

5) CEMENT MIXERS: Just don’t. Trust us.

Got any rules we missed? We’d love to pick up a few more tricks!

Fresh local Soda Vie Root Beer makes the best Crossroads Iced Tea

Um…why are you giving away your recipes on the internet?

Well, because there’s a real lack of good frozen cocktail recipes out there.  Trust us, we’ve looked.  So, we felt like it’s a shame to have great frozen cocktails and keep them all to ourselves.  Thus, we share our Crossroads Iced Tea with you today.

• Bacardi White Rum 0.5 oz
• Beefeater Gin 0.5 oz
• 360 Vodka 0.5 oz (We like them because they’re local and sustainable)
• Cabo Wabo Tequilla 0.5 oz
• Fresh Lemonade 3 oz
• Soda Vie Root Beer 6.5 oz

I mean, do you really “know” what you’re drinking.  Let’s take the venerable “Mudslide” that you can find famously sitting on many a supermarket shelf.  “A creamy blend of chocolate and coffee flavors enhanced with rum.”  Honest to God, that’s all I can find on the ingredients when I Google what’s in a Mudslide they (who shall remain unnamed) make!  That tells me absolutely nothing about what I’m drinking.  What kind of rum?  And why can’t I have actual chocolate and coffee instead of their FLAVORS?  What’s that all about?

It reminds us of George Carlin, “Folks, watch out for the word flavored.  Lemon-flavored drink? Oh yeah. Let me know if you spot any trace of a real goddamn lemon in there.”

Now, we’re not going to get all warm and fuzzy about naming what we do, or else Carlin might jump out of his grave and throttle us for talking about “natural” and “gourmet” (pick up one of his books and you’ll get it).  But, we do think you should be able to name the ingredients in your frozen cocktails and know what those names mean.  Chocolate for instance, instead of chocolate flavor.  And we think you deserve to know the exact kind of rum we put your drink.  Life’s too short to drink the cheap stuff and it should be made from real food, from scratch, daily.  If you spend a lot of time thinking about what you eat, you should probably do the same for what you drink.

Alright, enough ranting.  May you have snowy boozy dreams my friends…

We love frozen cocktails.   L-O-V-E them, we say!  But, we found ourselves longing for something more. While we were watching all these amazingly talented KC bartenders make AMAZINGLY tasty drinks, we couldn’t find (or google) the same libations in frozen form the way we imagined. Not in KC, not in the Midwest, and not really anywhere in the US. At least not the way we believed it could be or should be.

We dreamt of a world filled with cocktails made like pure, freshly fallen snow. Frozen cocktails made with fresh ingredients (not that neon colored corn syrup crap), unique flavors (instead of 12 variations on Piña Colada or Margarita) and name brand premium spirits (bye bye rot gut liquor).  We yearned for a place where you could not only get these tasty beverages, but where you could sit and converse easily with friends while you enjoyed these magical concoctions.

Our quandary was this: Whine about it or get off our asses and create this dreamscape of snowy, boozy goodness!

In the middle of The Great Recession.

ARE YOU CRAZY???

The answer is an unqualified: Yes.

We’re crazy for artfully made frozen cocktails. So much so that this band of four friends are giving up their personal savings, taking time away from friends and family and forgoing a fair amount of sleep to bring this to reality. Is it scary?  You bet it’s f#*?ing scary!  But we think a world without artfully made frozen cocktails is even scarier.

So, the question is, do you want to play make believe with us to make this reality?  We could use some friends, some advice and most of all some imagination as we build this place together. We’re all ears and would love to hear from you as we work to open this September.

May you dream of snowy and artful frozen cocktails tonight, my friends…