New Lobby Bar spooky cocktails

It is coming up this Saturday and Lobby Bar D.C. is getting into some spooky spirit with some limited time Halloween cocktails. Lobby Bar owner Adam Schulman is here and bartender Joe Margand is here to show us as well what they have cooking up for us and what they're serving. Thanks for being here. Okay, so we're going to get into some fun cocktails. How do you come up with these ideas to begin with? A lot of time on Instagram. They always have good inspirations, right? No, I dream up wild things in my head, and then I send it to my bartenders, and they think I'm crazy, and they figure out a way to execute. And Joe's done a great job of it. All right, Joe. What are we going to be serving up here today that he's challenged you with? Sure. So we have two cocktails today. The first one is going to be called the Devil's Alibi. Uh-oh. It's kind of like a little fun spin. It's a little smoky with the mezcal, some Campari, but some sweetness in there, too. Okay. And then our second drink is going to be called the Witch's Cauldron. The color is what you would expect, really dark. And it's just like a fun sort of aesthetic gin drink for Halloween. And when it comes up with the names, is that all you? I'm actually going to give the credit to Annette, my GM on that one. I used to be a control freak about it, and I've learned to let go a little bit. So props to Annette there. You, when you surround yourself with good people, you can trust them to take over some of the things. Now, the bar, you were going to have some great cocktails. Tell us what's going to be happening on Halloween. Halloween is going to be a standard dinner night. The restaurant is decked out in Halloween attire. As you see, we brought some of our decorations today. And regular dinner will slowly go into a little bit more of a party atmosphere, a little costume contest, give away some prizes, give away some gift certificates, and everybody is welcome to come try these drinks and have a great time. All right, Joe, let's get one going here. All right. Tell us what we've got again. We're going to start with the double. So we're going to start with this. We'll start with the Witch's Cauldron. So that's going to be a gin-based drink. So we're going to start with a little bit of gin first. And pardon me, I just realized we are shaking this cocktail, not stirring it. All right, all right. That's okay. Every time there's some new cocktail, some new things you've got to draw up, there's different ways to put them together. Indeed. A little bit of lemon juice in there. How much lemon juice compared to the gin? About, so 1.5 ounces of gin and 0.75 ounces of the lemon juice. I'm going to put some lavender syrup for some sweetness in there, about an ounce of that. and then a little bit of vermouth as well. You make sure that you test all these before they go out and everybody in the place gets to... It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. I mean, you know, it's not easy being a boss, right? It's not a problem if it's quality control. And then the final ingredient is going to be just a tiny bit of absinthe, which is, you know, kind of associated with Halloween, a little spooky, a little licorice flavor. A lot of fun. We're going to ice it down. Make my drink good and cold, that's for sure. No point in a warm cocktail over here. No. Shake it up. Where are you located, Adam? Capitol Hill, directly across from Eastern Market. So a lot of people can come with foot traffic there. Yeah. A lot of good neighborhood places. Yeah, Capitol Hill does a big Friday. They do Halloween Saturday. It's a great neighborhood, and they do really cool Halloween stuff. So it's going to be a very busy weekend for us. What did you just add in there? We just put a little bit of activated charcoal in there, and that's what's going to give it its sort of Halloween color. A little more shake in here. All about the shake when it comes down to it. Now, while he's serving this up, which is going to look like it's great, you also have a lot of food that goes along with this. Tell us a bit about what they can get in the kitchen. Yeah, so we just launched our fall menu. A couple new items we have on there is our double-cut bone-in pork chop, our short-rib braised short-rib grilled cheese, our new shrimp egg rolls. We have the classics, obviously, still the girl dinner. Never can get rid of that. um great smash burger just real good food all around all american food okay i love the eyeballs touching this off up here as well why don't we get started on the next one real quick while we we're wrapping this one up so i can definitely see why this is i mean it's the black the charcoal added to that let me give it a try here this is definitely a little spooky you get a little bit of licorice at the end right there is that the charcoal that's the um the absinthe yeah the charcoal has zero taste the gin's a little bit floral and then the charcoal i mean the uh the licorice is the absinthe Okay, so if people want to come out to the bar, dress up because, again, there's going to be a competition for the best Halloween. Some prizes are going to be given out as well. Really easy to get to. Like you said, it's a really fun neighborhood, a lot of fun cocktails, a lot of really good food here as well. Tell us quickly what you're putting into this one. So this one's going to be a stirred cocktail, a little bit of mezcal, Campari, some fresh strawberry syrup that we make in-house. And we're just going to stir it down. Gives it a nice little red color. Kind of that's why they call it the devil's alibi. Okay. Yeah. While he serves that up, we have to take a quick little break, but we'll be right back after this.