Nothing hits the spot like a pina colada at Connolly’s. Photo: Kate Hooker
Like lots of New Yorkers, I’m fairly snobby when it comes to food and booze, but my lifelong love of frozen drinks endures nonetheless. I’ve made some progress since my college friends and I used to sit on our front porch senior year with a pitcher of mudslides made with a handle of pre-fab TGIFriday’s mix from Kroger (or maybe my aging insides can no longer handle that magnitude of sugar and shelf-stable cream). But there is still nothing that says awesome afternoon in the summer sun to me like a slushy, boozy, dessert in a cup. Over the past few summers, I’ve spent several day-drinking sessions with the surprisingly potent Froze at Pig Beach; I love the Dark ‘N Slushy at Glady’s, which is an extra gingery Dark ‘N Stormy that perfectly complements plantains and jerk chicken; and I’m a big fan of watching an outdoor movie at Habana Outpost, with their Morita (a mixture of a marg and a mojito). But the one frozen cocktail that I can’t go a single summer without is the inexplicably delicious pina colada at Connolly’s in the Rockaways. If you didn’t know to ask for it, you’d have no clue you were in the presence of such greatness—it’s agitated in one of those machines behind the bar, has a neon maraschino cherry on top, and is served in a styrofoam cup, which I’m not even sure is legal in 2019, in the unlikely setting of an old school Irish pub. But after a long, hot day on the beach, nothing hits the spot like that cold, creamy treat, sipped slowly in a cool, dark, wood-paneled bar with sand in your flip-flops. Pig Beach is at 480 Union Street in Gowanus, Glady’s is at 788 Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, Habana Outpost is at 757 Fulton Street in Fort Greene, and Connolly’s is at 155 Beach 95th Street in Rockaway Park.
