Four Fantastic Frozen Drinks (and What to Eat With Them)

Merry heat wave! I’m back filling in and I’ll be writing more of this newsletter, alternating with our beloved Nikita through the summer.

On that subject, New York summers … can feel like a drag. Maybe I’m actually the drag — or I just need to move to Los Angeles (kidding!) — but when it’s above 85 degrees, the normal schlepping and commuting can feel torturous. The salve: drinking a beverage that feels like vacation. You know exactly where I’m going with this: boozy, brain-freezy drinks.

Here are a few of my favorites, and, because this is a food newsletter, what you should eat alongside them.

Once you’re done here, take a look at the New York Times Food staff’s picks for 22 of the best pizza spots across the country, showcasing pizza’s many exciting new forms. Let us know what your favorite pizza place is, and after that, you can read Brett Anderson on America’s storied pizza history.

Bright and boozy, plus a burger

If you’re not interested in this intel because your experience with frozen drinks is getting hungover from cloying, one-note cocktails, please know that I despise frozen drinks that are even slightly syrupy-sweet. I would never direct you to one of those.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade yapping about the frozen drinks at Mother’s Ruin, my local all-occasions bar in NoLIta (it exists in that liminal space between a dive and a cocktail bar). The contents of their slushy cocktails, which spin in a refrigerator-size frozen drink machine named Kathleen Turner, change pretty often. Currently called the Squalor Squad, the drink is a pinkish, miraculously balanced combination of rum, Campari, coconut, blueberry and citrus. And after a couple of those, you’ll be primed for a great, secret-sauced and pickle-heavy bar burger and waffle fries dusted in Old Bay.

18 Spring Street (Elizabeth Street)