UPDATE: ABQ is accepting reservations beginning at noon on Tuesday, June 12! With a waiting list nearly 12,000 deep, make a lunch date wherever you can find the fastest internet connection to get in. Everyone who’s signed up on their mailing list will get an email at the same time, and it’s first come, first hit.
The only time cooking a cocktail is acceptable is when you’re doing it in Walter White’s meth lab.
Of all the things “Breaking Bad” gave the world, it’s safe to say nobody predicted a themed bar inside an RV modeled after the makeshift laboratory of Bryan Cranston’s high school teacher-turned-drug manufacturer.
Yet that’s exactly what ABQ London has been doing since 2015, with staff dressed in yellow biohazard suits guiding guests in creating cocktails like Blow (vodka, Cointreau, rosewater and something called “butterfly tea”) and Pinkman (fennel-infused gin, shrub, rhubarb syrup, bitters, lemon) in London and Paris — 100,000 happy “meth heads” served so far!
This summer, it’s time for a road trip as ABQ (short for Walter and Jesse Pinkman’s home turf of Albequerque, New Mexico) brings its mobile bar to New York City, and not just for a short weekend — they’ll be serving cocktails in Erlenmeyer flasks for a few months. Still, it’s only for a limited time — “After all, we are now in the DEA-land!”
Sign-ups are open now to be notified when tickets are released. Details on the pop-up, first reported by Eater, are still sparse, including its location which will be somewhere in Brookly. Tickets will run you $45 for a two-hour stay inside the RV and three cocktails.
The experience goes something like this: Once you pass the lawn chairs and are beckoned inside the lab by an uncanny Walter White look-alike, you’ll be welcomed with a drink (non-alcoholic option available, these guys aren’t pushers) and then spend an hour doing molecular mixology to “cook up” two more cocktails, plus an hour to enjoy the “mind-blowing” ambiance — aah, black lights, test tubes, graffiti and enough science equipment for a high school chemistry class.
While you wait for your fix, there’s the permanent “Breaking Bad”-inspired coffee spot Walter in Bushwick, serving perfectly legal brews (and, wink-wink, rock candy).
