WEST LOOP — When CH Distillery’s Krissy Schutte was told to cease and desist selling the OxyContin cocktail under the trademarked painkiller’s name, she did just that.
And then she renamed it the “Cease and Desist.”
“All the regulars think it’s hilarious,” said Schutte, CH’s food and beverage director who created the cocktail. “Some people are being stubborn and still calling it the old name but we do have it changed on the menu.”
The OxyContin was one of the first for CH, a distillery and bar that opened at 564 W. Randolph St. in August. Schutte named the drink, made with tea-infused dry gin, honey, ginger syrup and lemon, in homage to the cocktail Penecilin, a similar drink made with scotch.
A rep at Purdue Pharma — the makers of OxyContin — seemed less than thrilled about the cocktail after Time Out Chicago ran the name by him last month.
A few days after that story posted, the bar received a letter from Purdue Pharma telling them to ditch the name or face the consequences.
The bar dropped the name, but infused a little humor into the situation.
“Effective immediately, fans of CH Distillery's Cocktail-Formerly-Named-For-A-Popular-Prescription-Painkiller-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named will need to order it by its new name,” a press release about the former OxyContin cocktail read.
You can still order the drink — along with equally wacky, but less trademarked drinks — at CH, Tuesday through Thursday from 5-11 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m.-midnight.