Once you learn that Long Island Bar’s proprietor was one of the smattering of people credited with conceptualizing the cocktail that went on to be Sex and the City’s fifth lead, it follows that the corner spot would have a frozen cosmo. This one’s more opaque than its liquid BFF, with orangey-pink crystals packed tight like a real Miranda, though the subtly retro decor is a little more relaxed.
Trends come and go whether they illustrate a seemingly organic zeitgeist like this year’s influx of speakeasy-style bars or they’re the product of a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign like the Aperol spritz blitz of 2018. Summer is particularly conducive to the form: A season that somehow feels more ephemeral than the others, making abstract promises of love and holidays, all hazy with the patina of heat.
Last year’s so-called drink of the summer was the frozen, as it was before, and is once more and will always be. It's the ideal icy canvas to spin anything into with unending possibilities limited only by the imagination (and occasional supply chain issues). The tipping point in 2021 that delivered more frozens than ever before was the proliferation of places newly making room for slushie machines or plugging blenders in behind the bar.
“I think that frozen drinks are outstanding,” PDT owner Jeff Bell told us in an interview at the time. “I don’t think frozen drinks were received well ten years ago. I think everybody was still in this moral high ground, high horse of like, ‘Oh, that’s a trashy cocktail because it’s frozen.”
But as more and more restaurants and bars were able to create or expand their outdoor seating areas, attitudes changed and soon new frozens were joining our old favorites all over town. And, while the occasional zag to something shiny and new can be cute, frozens are the drink of forever summer in NYC.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to summer drinks in NYC
