#53 – DRAGON’S PEARL COCKTAIL at PAINKILLER

Once again Time Out New York released their Top 100 Dishes of the year and once again, I’m going to eat my way through every one. And no price point or subway delay will stop me. In no particular order, here’s my take on their Top 100.

I feel like I got gypped a little here. As you all know, I’m pretty diligent when it comes to the list items. I want the full experience that was written about and I’ll make phone calls, travel to restaurants multiple times, and ask questions to make sure I conquer this list properly. Yet I don’t think I got the full experience at Painkiller.

We came here on New Year’s Eve in hopes of tasting the Dragon’s Pearl. At that time, Painkiller didn’t really have a menu. The Polynesian bar listed general types of tiki cocktails (zombies, swizzles, etc.) and offered to customize a drink. I inquired about our list item but the bartender said he didn’t have one of the ingredients: dragon fruit. In my mind, this is probably the most important ingredient since Time Out mentioned the crunch from the seeds and I assume the exotic fruit is where the cocktail gets its name.

So I had other drinks that night and vowed to return. We stopped by a few weeks later and the bartender said they once again didn’t have the fruit. Then a few months ago they announced that they were re-tooling their menu to include specific drinks and one of those was the much coveted Dragon’s Pearl. I figured now that it was officially listed on their menu, I’d be able to order it no problem.

It was early on a Saturday evening so the bar wasn’t too crowded, yet the bartender was quite weeded and it took him some time to make our cocktails. Of course, I ordered the Dragon’s Pearl and he nodded and (eventually got to work). Yet when it was placed in front of me, I immediately knew it was missing the ingredients I was most excited about. It was garnished with a pineapple (the picture in Time Out shows a slice of dragon fruit) and the only round seed-like figures in the cocktail were pebbles of shaved ice. I felt gypped.

But I had spent too much money and energy on obtaining this drink already and I had ordered it from the menu and it matched the name on Time Out’s list. So here is the review.

I’m not much of a fan of tiki drinks because the cocktails are (by definition) cloyingly sweet. Yet here is a manly tiki drink. It was like a Piña Colada, but with smoky scotch and earthy mescal. I like how it balanced the sweetness of the pineapple juice and the creamy coconut milk. It was a surprising concoction at a tiki bar. And I did enjoy sipping on it.

But I truly sensed that something was missing. In addition to a seemingly low pour (shouldn’t all that ice make the liquid look as if it will overflow?), I felt like there was a brightness or a tartness that was lacking. I do wonder if the dragon fruit would have changed the game.  I guess I’ll never know. I did notice that the drink now costs $12 and Time Out listed it as $14. I wonder if they decided the dragon fruit was just too expensive and they saved their customers 2 bucks.

I thought the drink was inventive and unusual for this kind of place, but I know it could have been even more special. I looked around the bar and saw so many unusual garnishes – cloves, sugar cubes, anise syrup. Would one more strange looking fruit have hurt? I know it would have made me feel better about the pain Painkiller brought me by making this conquest so elusive.

Would Painkiller’s Dragon’s Pearl make my Top 100 of the year? Without the inclusion of the most unusual component, the drink is interesting and tasty but needs just a little something to spice it up. Might I suggest some dragon fruit seeds? 7 out of 10.