That old saying “youth is wasted on the young” fails to account for the ready supply of youthful exuberance one can always find in a bottle of 99 Bananas. Some drinks have the power to transport you to a fragrant Alpine meadow at springtime, or a thatch-roofed cabana beside a beach, or a buzzy Italian piazza at golden hour. For Kitty Bernardo, the award-winning bartender leading the New York City tropical enclave Paradise Lost, the high-proof banana-flavored liqueur takes them back to “basement house parties à la Rutgers University.”
When Bernardo happened upon an oversupply of cases of 99 Bananas at Paradise Lost, they wondered what they were going to do to move literally dozens of bottles of the stuff. Social media to the rescue.
“I jokingly posted the find to my Instagram, where [Seattle bar owner] Chris Elford told me we could go through it quickly by pouring Cynanagan shots,” they recalled. “His favorite shot comprised a most unlikely pairing: the 99 Bananas of my state university past in equal parts [with] Cynar, an artichoke-based amaro that I had come to respect as a highbrow digestivo and cocktail ingredient over the years.”
Bernardo has since taken the high-low duo and upcycled the recipe into a party-perfect highball. “99 Bananas’ usually cloying sweetness [is] mellowed once married with Cynar’s bitter and dark profile,” they say, describing it as “the love child between chocolate-covered bananas and bananas Foster.” Lengthened with soda water and finished with expressed lime and orange peels, the drink is also bright and fragrant. It’s a highball with one foot in the dorm room, and the other in the cocktail bar.
