By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Is he Loko?
A popular Manhattan chef is continuing to serve Four Loko — a controversial drink that's 12 percent alcohol combined with the equivalent of two cups of coffee — at his Lower East Side restaurant, despite the state's consideration of a law banning the high-potency beverage.
Eddie Huang, the restaurateur behind popular eatery BaoHaus, had been promoting the fruit-flavored concoction with an all-you-can-drink deal at Xiao Ye, his Orchard Street restaurant.
But the all-you-can-drink special is against the law in New York, and the State Liquor Authority is currently weighing whether to outlaw the beverage altogether, which has been banned on college campuses and played a role in a recent bias attack in the Bronx involving a man being forced to drink 10 cans of the malt beverage.
"For the record, Four Loko Thursday is still goin down," Huang tweeted Tuesday, under the fitting Twitter handle GeneralLoko. "SLA won't allow all-u-can-drank so its now $3 a can of four loko 6 to 11pm."
Huang offered up a defense of Four Loko on his blog Monday.
"Its making news because people are ending up in the hospital as a result of BINGE drinking four loko but tons of people murk themselves for binge consumption of other things like cheeseburgers, cigarettes, and scientology," he wrote. "What's worse? Four Loko or the Tea Party?"
He added that other bars and restaurants in the city offer unlimited mixed-drink deals, but that the SLA isn't coming down on them.
"Alcohol doesn't kill people," he wrote. "[S]tupid people kill people."
The Liquor Authority didn't take kindly to Huang's assertions.
"The chef should consider staying in the kitchen and away from the bar," SLA spokesman William Crowley told the Observer, "unless he's looking to lose his liquor license."
Huang doesn't seem moved by the SLA's threats. When told that the unlimited drink deal violated state law, he said he now had to figure out how to give people enough Four Loko so "they can get their blackout," reported the Daily News. "People like to black out."
