Frankenstein’s Cocktail Lab is open at 446 West 14th Street through October 31.
By Elazar Abrahams
I love a good themed pop-up. Getting to step inside a fictional world or a wildly specific Halloween concept is exactly the type of thing that makes living in New York feel fun. Of course, these experiences can also be pretty hit or miss. The Family Guy Drunken Clam Experience was a little thin, while Back 2 The Video Store proved that a good themed cocktail can carry an entire night. Frankenstein’s Cocktail Lab is much closer to the latter.
The experience takes over Rojo Room, the underground space beneath Puttery NYC in Chelsea’s Meatpacking District. You enter through Puttery’s sprawling social venue before heading downstairs into a fully transformed mad scientist’s laboratory. Body bags swing overhead as you walk in. There are bubbling beakers, test tubes, plastic eyeballs, spooky photo opportunities, and a full monster-movie atmosphere that feels much more committed than some of the other pop-up bars that simply put a few branded decorations around an existing room.
My favorite detail is tucked near the bathrooms. There are framed family photographs that look perfectly normal when you first see them, but turn into creepy images of dead or possessed people as you move past them. It is a simple optical illusion, but it got me every time. That is the general vibe of Frankenstein’s: spooky, kitschy, a little silly, and genuinely fun. It feels like a monster mash, in the best possible way.
Most importantly, the cocktails are actually good. That is where these experiences live or die. A ticket starts at $22 and includes a 90-minute reservation plus one interactive cocktail, which strikes me as a pretty solid deal for a New York City night out. The extra theatricality would not mean much if the drinks tasted bad, but the three cocktails I tried were all excellent.
The Blood Bag arrives suspended from a stand like a real medical transfusion, which makes it an obvious favorite for photos. The Electric Jolt has you pour in the final ingredients and stir in dry ice, turning the beaker dark and smoky. The Monstrosity is another interactive drink, with the kind of bubbling, color-changing presentation that makes you feel like you are participating in the experiment instead of simply ordering a cocktail. There are also plastic eyeballs bobbing around in some of the drinks, because subtlety was never really the goal here.
Yes, this is a gimmick. Yes, it is kitschy. That is the point. But the drinks have strong, fluid flavors underneath all the smoke, props, and mad scientist theatrics. Frankenstein’s understands that the presentation should enhance the cocktail rather than distract from it. I have been to enough of these pop-ups to appreciate how rare that can be.
The experience is a particularly good fit for the Halloween season. You could easily pair it with a horror movie before or afterward, whether that means going to a theater or heading home to watch something on the couch. It is not a full immersive theater production, and you are not going to spend an entire evening uncovering an elaborate narrative. You are going to drink themed cocktails in a spooky room and take some fun pictures. But it delivers exactly what it promises, and it does so with more creativity and quality than I expected.
Frankenstein’s Cocktail Lab is one of the better examples I have seen of Bucket Listers taking over an existing New York bar and giving it a new identity for a limited run. The decor is strong, the drinks are genuinely enjoyable, and the ticket price includes enough to make the night feel worthwhile. If you want to get into the spooky-season spirit, this is an easy recommendation.
Find tickets and more information HERE.
