The fever dream of an alcoholic leprechaun.

New Irish joint Murphy’s Law (1590 E. Flamingo Rd.) bartender Nate Collver started with a garnish and a color, and worked his cocktail backwards from there. It’s maybe not the typical way to build a drink, but putting your engine in the trunk isn’t the typical way to build a car, and it worked for Volkswagon. (Yeah, we have no idea what that means either. That should be one of those old-man platitudes that never makes any sense but people say anyway.)

“I got hung up on the gold. Then I came up with the idea of the golden coin as the garnish, and I got kind of hung up on that,” Collver said. “Finally I thought I’m going to do basically an Irish Manhattan. Instead of the vermouth I was trying to figure out how to use Irish Mist … as I was doing that a rep for Angostura walked in, and she had some orange bitters.”

That fortuitous sales job is what winds up tying the drink together. It’s Michael Collins Irish whiskey, a splash of Irish Mist, the whiskey and honey liqueur, and a couple dashes of Angostura orange, strained into a cocktail glass and garnished with a chocolate coin (making this the only drink ever that can sell equally well on St. Patrick’s Day and Hanukkah).

The Mist adds a sweet layer, but it’s the bitters that give the drink depth and complexity. The citrus you get from Angostura’s orange is pretty potent for how much goes into the cocktail, but you need it to level the honey in the Mist. We’re not sure if it’s because of the bitters or the sweet honey, but we weren’t picking up on traditional whiskey flavors all that much. Except with the kind of burn you can only get from a cocktail that is essentially whiskey with a splash of whiskey. Go ahead: Try to out-manly that the next time you’re creating a drink. You would more or less have to submarine a shot of Everclear into a water glass of Wild Turkey.

Murphy’s — which boasts year-round green beer made without food coloring — celebrates its grand opening tomorrow night with drink specials changing on the half hour to keep you on your increasingly inebriated toes.

By Jason Scavone

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