Fear and Loathing and Craft Cocktails in Times Square

If you’ve never sat alone at the bar, on a Saturday night, in a Manhattan TGI Friday’s, I recommend it. It’s a good place to reflect on life, a good place to try a cotton candy cocktail and revisit recent personal failures in montage form.

Sandwiched between a group downing French Martinis to celebrate the completion of a round of chemotherapy and a silent, sullen twentysomething hunched over a staff meal and what appears to be an intense text conversation, I order a Grey Goose Cooler and try to take in the bar without being weird.

The recent trend of “casual fine dining” chains adding craft cocktails to their menus is both bizarre and a completely logical extension in the artisanalizing of everything: Think “hand-crafted” frozen dinners and “fresh-baked” buns on your fast food, or more damning, the real origins of your beloved small-batch whiskey.

It’s coming to a head, though. Just this year, both MillerCoors and Jim Beam were sued over misidentifying products as “craft.” And yet, the beers and shots continue to flow. The backlash has arrived, even while the trend gains steam; it’s a fragmented, almost schizophrenic drinking landscape, where Fireball is poured over hand-cracked Kold-Draft ice, Manhattans arrive with straws, and everything is caramel apple-flavored. It seems like it should be significant, like maybe it is indicative of bigger cultural shifts. Probably not.

I’m on a mission that is intensely pointless and potentially dangerous.

Let me explain: It’s a brisk, fall evening and I am in Times Square, cannonballing into the deep ends of as many casual dining chain cocktail programs as humanly possible in one night. As it turns out, that number is seven. Here’s what I learned.

T.G.I. FRIDAYS
It seemed sensible to start the night at T.G.I.’s, given its history: the restaurant was the vanguard of singles bars on the Upper East Side in the ‘60s, before morphing into a family-friendly diner and suburban mainstay. Now, the chain is moving decisively back into the drinks game.

The aesthetic inside is hard to pinpoint, beyond general kitsch. A swordfish hangs here, and there, giant Blues Brothers figurines. Fake vintage signs dot the interior, the kind instructing “hippies use side door.”

Judging by the menu, the eight-ingredient Grey Goose Cooler should be a complex, interesting start: Grey Goose vodka, St. Germain, peach puree, fresh juices, basil, and like roughly one third of the cocktail list, Sierra Mist. Only one flavor actually arrives, though: Peach. Well, peach and Sierra Mist and, if you know you are looking for it, vodka. The group of friends next to me are having a great time. Another round of French Martinis appears.

It’s slow enough that I don’t mind pestering the bartender. She intuitively steers me toward the Pink Punk Cosmo. It’s terrible and perfect, like a portrait done by a child or a low-budget horror film. The drink, a Cosmopolitan riff, is poured in front of you into an oversized cocktail glass filled with electric pink cotton candy. It’s a weirdly perfect synthesis of its component parts: Mixology, with all its self-conscious showmanship and aspirational quirkiness, and the low-stakes, Give-The-People-What-They-Want populism of chain dining. I ask the bartender about fan favorites. People do order off-menu and sometimes go for classics, but usually not: “People don’t really order fancy stuff, this is more of a fast food spot.”

On their way out, the party next to me order fries to go and, what the hell, one more round of French Martinis. They are friendly and happy and it’s an effort to not let it rub off.

OLIVE GARDEN
The Garden is warmly lit and full of innocuous artistic touches, vaguely nodding to some Platonic ideal of Fancy Italian Restaurant. The tables are mostly full of families, not dates. At the other end of the bar, a middle aged couple sit morose and blank, together but apart; they sip giant margaritas wordlessly through straws. An old man stumbles going from his table to the toilet.

I select two margaritas, an Italian and a Mango. The drinks are unexceptional—the mango tastes like mango and the Italian comes with a shot of Amaretto—but the glassware is monstrous. At what point does a coupe become a goblet? Does requiring two hands qualify it?

Staring at the bartender’s gelled faux-hawk, I am reminded that Guy Fieri’s Times Square venue, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, closes at 11PM. I double fist my Margs, which seems fitting for a spot with a Never Ending Pasta Pass.

The underlying logic of Olive Garden is that bigger is better, bigger is more luxurious, and that everything can always be bigger. In many ways, it’s a quintessentially American idea. With an hour to get to Flavor Town, though, there’s no time to dwell.

OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE
On first glance, the Manhattan Outback doesn’t look like the kind of spot that serves a mean Bloomin’ Onion. It’s dimly lit with a dark wood bar and clean lines. A sit down spot. On the TVs, though, some sort of post-game sports interview is on.

The bar itself is uncrowded. None of the house specialties look particularly interesting, so I order an Old Fashioned. The bartender recommends the “more traditional” Maker’s Mark instead of the other listed option, Jack Daniel’s Honey.  Like the entire restaurant, it’s a solid impression, but the details are off. Served in a lightly flared double old fashioned glass, it’s overly sweet and, per corporate protocol, topped with soda.

Unlike the other spots, though, the bartender is great. She’s funny and honest, the sort of authentic presence that draws drinkers to the quality bars that these chains are halfheartedly mimicking.

GUY’S KITCHEN & BAR
Depending on who you ask, television personality and sentient truck nut Guy Fieri might be everything wrong with cuisine and America, or at the very least, American cuisine. This special level of loathing was on full display in Pete Wells’ notorious Times review eviscerating both Guy and his restaurants.

Nestled between a Guitar Center and several theaters on W 44th St., you enter and are immediately shocked by the size of the place. It’s three stories. Four? It’s hard to tell. There are 500 seats. You tilt your head back to take in an elevator emblazoned with the immortal greeting: WELCOME 2 FLAVOR TOWN. It seems ominous, perhaps a trap. Read backwards under a full moon, one imagines deciphering the secret message: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

The design elements are equally disorienting. Upstairs, the exposed brick and venting combine with discrete grid lights to reference the area’s theatrical history, and the booth seating is understated rust-colored faux leather and patinated brass accents. Also, the bathroom has a TV in it. Also, there’s a giant chandelier with the repeating slogan, Cookin' It Livin’ It. Generic classic rock blares from unseen speakers.

I order a Crazy Hagar and a Black Manhattan and, because I’ve been drinking oversized cocktails for several hours, an order of “Awesome” Pretzel Chicken Tenders—the Awesome and surrounding quotations are Guy’s.

The Crazy Hagar is a Daiquiri riff with cucumber-infused simple syrup and the signature rum from occasional Van Halenite, Sammy Hagar. The Black Manhattan is a slight twist on the classic, trendily swapping in Foro Amaro for sweet vermouth. Neither drink is particularly good, nor memorably bad. Pete Wells was wrong, though, the Pretzel Chicken Tenders are great, awesome even. Is Wells just a snob, or is Fieri’s flame-covered bowling shirt of an empire really and truly evil? Does lying to customers about using fresh juice in sugary, oversized signature, craft artisan cocktails stop people from enjoying them? Or is the emptiness there, under the surface, a spiritual hole no endless pasta can fill?

Are these questions that matter?

I leave conflicted, exhausted and strongly considering throwing in the towel. Three spots to go.

RED LOBSTER
It’s shortly before Midnight when I enter the Times Square Red Lobster, a quarter mile away. There’s an open seat at the bar in between a man in a doctor’s coat and a man in an all purple outfit. Am I hallucinating? There’s football on the televisions and awful paintings of lighthouses all around. To my side, there’s a giant window through which to people watch on 7th Ave, but in the darkness, it’s mainly a port hole to a giant, pink LED billboard.

As with the other locations, I ask my bartender: What’s the fanciest, most Cocktail cocktail you have? Here, at Red Lobster, it’s the Caramel Appletini. Caramel is drizzled over the martini glass, and the drink is poured over this in front of you. True to expectations, it tastes like a caramel apple soaked in booze. I try to remember the last time I went to a dentist, and am still worrying about this as I pay and leave.

APPLEBEE’S
Pushing past doddling Midwestern tourists and drunk businessmen, past Madame Tussaud’s, a Ripley’s Believe it Or Not and a Dave & Buster’s, I arrive at Applebee’s.

Entering, thirsty patrons head up a winding staircase to the second floor bar. Everything is lit teal and orange, and the overall impression is of taking bad acid in a futuristic mall food court. The drinks’ calories are listed but not the prices. The Bourbon & Berries (150 cal) is a citrusy whiskey thing served in a wine glass. It’s tart not sweet, and thereby interesting in the context of the night’s libations. The Cider Bourbon Infusion (190 cal) is a terrible, terrible drink; it tastes similar to the Caramel Appletini, but looks worse, somehow. I’ve stopped enjoying this. Why did I think this would be fun?

CHEVY’S FRESH MEX
I stumble down the street into the nearly empty Chevy’s and lurch straight for the bar. When the bartender drops complimentary chips and salsa on the counter, I’m so overjoyed and grateful I scare myself. It’s an effort of superhuman willpower to respond casually, like a customer and not an animal.

Rejuvenated, I finish strong with a Chesney’s Pirate Punch ($10.49, 240 cal) and a Rumchata Colada ($9.99, 240 cal). There’s nothing particularly notable about the interior of Chevy’s, except that it’s on the more casual end of casual fine dining. Somehow, the Pirate Punch is my first blue cocktail of the night. It’s a tropical, curaçao-hued concoction, and comes with a “hook shot” of more rum. The Rumchata Colada is smooth, sweet and too easy to drink. After I finish, it takes a moment to sink in: Finally, I can leave.

I’ve never been so happy to wait for a train.

(This article originally appeared in edited form on Liquor.com)