Cream-based drinks from Bistro on the Boulevard's cat-loving bartender

Steve Price is what some would call a crazy cat man. When he’s not being the human companion to three felines (Shorty, Oliver and Wylie), he is the general manager of Bistro on the Boulevard, an Irmo-based restaurant with a number of cream-based drinks.

Four of the bar’s six dessert cocktails use cream, milk or half-and-half.

“The biggest thing about cream-based drinks is that they mask the alcohol taste,” Price said. “So this gives people who are not big drinkers … a little bit of alcohol.”

Take the bar’s most popular creamy cocktail, the Bistro’s “magic martini,” for example. Even though it’s made with three different spirits – Chila Orchata cinnamon cream rum, Fireball cinnamon whiskey and Frangelico – they’re mostly liqueurs lower in alcohol by volume. Price – who doesn’t have a background in bartending, but who has “sat at a lot of bars in my life” – created the drink one night for a group of ladies out celebrating a birthday. A year later, it’s still one of the most popular martinis on the menu, with no signs of being replaced or unseated.

Other lactose libations include the “sin-cicle” (Chila Orchata cinnamon cream rum and Amaretto with a splash of milk), pineapple upside down (New Amsterdam’s pineapple vodka, pineapple juice, grenadine and a splash of cream, garnished with a pineapple and cherry stacked skewer) and the Bistro’s take on the most famous cream-based cocktail, a white Russian (made with locally owned Topper’s Rhum Mocha Mama, vodka, Chila Orchata cinnamon cream rum and half-and-half).

Price says they buy cream by the case and go through about a quart a week at the bar. It’s usually used later in the evening.

“Other than a white Russian, most people think of cream-based drinks as an after-dinner drink,” he said. “You can have it as dessert and not have the cake. It gives you the sweetness that you’d like after a savory meal.”

A nightcap or human cat nip? You be the judge.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 9:12 AM with the headline "Cream-based drinks from Bistro on the Boulevard's cat-loving bartender."