GREENWICH VILLAGE — If you love Bill Murray's movies, you can now sip a cocktail inspired by the actor at Sweetwater Social.
The underground bar, which is below Bleecker Kitchen & Co. at 643 Broadway in Greenwich Village, is offering a new menu of cocktails, including the "Delirium," also dubbed "the Bill Murray cocktail."
The drink is an amalgam of Laphroaig scotch, Elijah Craig bourbon, Ron Zapaca rum and coffee-flavored raw Demerara sugar. The beverage's creator, Sweetwater partner Tim Cooper, said the coffee flavor and the smokiness of the scotch are meant to recall Murray's scene in the Jim Jarmusch film "Coffee and Cigarettes."
In the scene, titled "Delirium," Murray plays himself, hiding out as a line cook in a cafe where the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA happen to be having tea. Murray guzzles an enormous pot of coffee as he banters with the rappers.
"The cocktail ties in because I'd been looking to develop an intense Old Fashioned variation with a coffee element," Cook said, explaining he started with just bourbon or just scotch but found it "too one-dimensional," so he added the two liquors together.
"That was good but I decided to try one last time with the addition of aged rum and it worked perfectly," he said. "Being that there were three individuals in the storyline, I thought it was all too perfect to name the drink after the scene."
"At the end of the day, I really just wanted to create what I think Bill would have enjoyed drinking in that scene," Cook said.
Sweetwater Social has a "Sweetest Hour" every weekday from 5 to 8 p.m., when a select beer is $5 and the bartender's choice of one of the new cocktails — including the Bill Murray — is $8 (normally $14).
Sweetwater Social, 643 Broadway, (212) 253-0477. Open Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., Saturday and Sunday noon to 2 a.m.
