It's a random weekday at Thursday Kitchen, a Korean hotspot in Manhattan, but you'd think it was Christmas morning the way two of the grown men who manage the restaurant are acting. They're jumping up and down and shouting in high-pitched voices because of a package the mailman just dropped off. What could make Jeremy Seong and Bernard Kim — the co-owner and customer relations rep, respectively, of one of the Lower East Side's coolest see-and-be-seen places — squeal like little girls, you ask? Ice cubes. To clarify, they're pretty cool. They're glowing, white, LED ones that are FDA-approved to sit in your drink. The guys have had to use garish red, blue, and green ones while they waited for this shipment to come in."It's been looking like Vegas in here!" Bernard says.
The cubes are for Thursday Kitchen's famous Capri-Thursday cocktails. They're an alcoholic spin on the classic fruity Capri Sun, spiked with a Korean liquor called soju. And if you look at the photos the restaurant's been tagged in on Instagram, you'd think they're the only thing served there. It's not so — there are a ton of delicious Korean-fusion small plates, too — but nearly every table does have the drink on it.
You'll probably max at out at two — the cocktails are on the sweeter side — but it's worth a repeat trip (or one really drunken night) to try all four flavors. There's the Pure Jeremy (a strawberry drink named after the co-owner's love for the fruit), Ms. Cutetini (cucumber-based), Lemonie Anne (lemonade-like), and Lychee Reach Rich (a mango-lychee combo). And yes, the waiters know the names are hard to say. Just buck up, give it your best shot, and know you'll be rewarded with a drink more thrist-quenching than your Capri Sun-drinking elementary school self could ever have imagined.
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