This NC bar’s colossal Bloody Marys blur the line between cocktail and seafood tower
An important thing to know about the Zeus, the colossal Bloody Mary from the Blind Pelican in Holly Springs, is that the grilled cheese is there for a reason.
“We grill the steak rare or medium rare, so it’s going to be dripping juices,” Blind Pelican bar manager Joshua Self said. “If we put a grilled cheese on the Bloody Mary, it sops up the juices instead of them dripping in the drink. Also, steak-marinated grilled cheese doesn’t sound bad at all.”
There’s gilding the lily and there’s pimping the Bloody Mary.
The Blind Pelican may specialize in both.
Yes, steak and a triangle cut grilled cheese are just two of the components of Bloody Marys at the Blind Pelican. You’ll also find king crab legs reaching to the sky, fat lobster tails, and other more subdued toppings, like shrimp and bacon and olives.
Self launched the Blind Pelican’s Bloody Mary program two years ago, he said. It was quaint at first, with large stalks of celery and jalapeno peppers and cucumber.
‘Over the top’ substance and show
“If it looks amazing, people will take a picture,” Self said. “We went over the top with veggies. It was almost a salad on a drink.”
Self insists the bar’s Bloodys are as much substance as they are show.
“Usually a big Bloody Mary means the Bloody Mary is trash,” Self said. “We put time and love into our mix.”
The Blind Pelican mix is made with 14 different ingredients, Self said, with a bit of heat from hot sauce and some biting pucker from pickle juice. Most are made with a sriracha vodka for a little extra kick.
Then things started to escalate. It started with a question.
“We wondered, ‘What if we added a lobster tail to this?’” Self said. “Andrew (Stafford), the owner, said at that price point it was going to end up being a $40 Bloody Mary.”
Diners ordered them anyway, Self said, with the bar selling more than 100 the first weekend they were offered.
“It was kind of this monstrosity of art,” Self said of the lobster tail Bloody Mary. “We named it the Lobstrosity.”
Posts on the Blind Pelican’s Facebook page routinely get hundreds of shares on the social media platform, often of towering Bloody Marys studded with crab legs or skewers of scallops. A post in April reached new heights, shared more than 24,000 times and reaching more than 6 million accounts.
“The community took it as a challenge, to come up with the most extreme Bloody Mary,” Self said. “It started going up from the Lobstrosity and adding crab legs and it all blew up from there.”
Now the Blind Pelican’s Bloody Mary menu reads more like a seafood tower, going ever higher in components and crustaceans.
A $280 martini
Starting at $80, the Kraken includes shrimp, bacon, a grilled cheese sandwich and a pound of crab legs. The Medusa adds a grilled filet mignon, and Zeus, presumably the god of brunch, adds a platter of freshly shucked oysters surrounding the Bloody Mary.
The Zeus is more than $100 and depends on the price of oysters, but Self said diners have built bigger and bolder Bloody Marys than what the bar has on its menu.
So far the record is $280 for a single Bloody Mary, Self said, with the drink topped with excessive amounts of steak, Ahi tuna, oysters, crab and lobster.
The bar recently launched a four-person Bloody Mary pitcher that starts at $180, Self said, which he expects will eventually break the record as it gets tricked out.
“My personal goal, I want to put North Carolina on the map,” Self said. “Every state has their thing. When people think of Bloody Marys I want them to think of us.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 10:00 AM with the headline "This NC bar’s colossal Bloody Marys blur the line between cocktail and seafood tower."
