Aaron Blakely | Owner | The Junction | Roscoe, New York
Photo Credit: Aaron Blakely
From Real-Fruit Classics to Frozen Yuzu Gimlets
As frozen drink machines churn to life this time of year, Aaron Blakely understands why their candy-colored contents don’t appeal to everyone. He also understands why that’s a missed opportunity for bar programs. “One thing about frozen cocktails is that people often (and rightly) assume they’re going to be sweet and full of artificial ingredients. When have you ever had a banana daiquiri made with real banana purée?” asks Blakely, the owner of The Junction in Roscoe, N.Y. “However, just like how cocktail bars have been using fresh juices and ingredients for the last 25 years or so, the same can be true in the frozen machine.”
Margaritas fill one side of The Junction’s frozen drink machine. The other side features real fruit versions of classic frozen drinks and frozen versions of modern craft cocktails. Crowd favorites include frozen takes on a Paper Plane and a Dark and Stormy. Cherry Limeade with The Perfect Purée Cherry appears during the heat of summer. It’s reminiscent of a refreshing drive-in treat but isn’t too sweet and tastes like real cherry. “We combine vodka, fresh lime juice and The Perfect Purée Cherry to create a cocktail that’s both nostalgic and more delicious than the fast food versions,” Aaron says.
Despite bitter cold winters in upstate New York, the Junction’s frozen drinks are so popular they’re served year-round. In colder months, Aaron fills the machine with tart, citrusy Blood Orange, Pomegranate and Yuzu Luxe Sour, an aromatic blend of lemongrass and makrut lime that enhances yuzu, one of his all-time favorite flavors. “If I had to pick one frozen drink to have on my desert island, it’s a Frozen Yuzu Gimlet,” Aaron says.
The frozen machine is your friend
Aaron and his partner, Misty Hackworth, met working in New York at beverage destinations including the Brooklyn Brewery (Misty for nine years) and Smith & Mills and Employees Only (Aaron). Avid fly fishermen, they moved two hours upstate to Roscoe, aka “Trout Town, USA,” and opened The Junction in 2021 as a low-key place for locals, anglers, and day trippers alike. “We don’t want our cocktail program to be intimidating to anyone who comes in, and I can’t think of anything less intimidating than a frozen cocktail,” Aaron says.
That means using fruit that’s familiar to cocktail lovers — Cherry, Strawberry, and Red Raspberry — as well as approachable tropical flavors including Mango, Carmelized Pineapple, Passion Fruit, and Banana. Aaron has been using The Perfect Purée as the basis of frozen cocktail programs for 15 years and lets its flavor line-up guide his team. “Using The Perfect Purée not only allows for consistency from batch to batch, but it also provides that fresh and true-fruit flavor that people don’t expect in a frozen cocktail,” he says.
Aaron advises fellow bartenders to batch recipes with balance in mind. Because sugar levels vary naturally from fruit to fruit, tasting purées before mixing with them helps determine whether a recipe needs citrus to offset excessive sweetness or simple syrup to counter extra sour flavor. “You can really impress your guests with a well-balanced frozen cocktail,” he says.
Aaron designs frozen versions of classic cocktails by substituting a puree for a fruit liqueur or a flavored spirit. Once customers taste a piña colada or a banana daiquiri with real fruit flavors and appreciate the difference, they’ll trust your more inventive creations, he says. “The frozen machine is your friend. Good machines can pump out a ton of drinks quickly, and they can be much easier on your bottom line and your elbows if you do it right.”
Advice for students: Learn the whole operation
Aaron grew up at his great-grandmother’s hotel and restaurant on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Over the course of his 30-year career, he’s worked every role in the house and been part of more than 20 openings. That’s given him first-hand experience of the many different decisions that go into making a place work (or not) and helped him see what employees deal with night in and night out.
“The most important thing you can do with your culinary or hospitality education is to get out there in the wild and work a variety of styles and positions,” he says. “Here at The Junction, I can point to every part of the restaurant and see the little bits I’ve taken from all the places I’ve been part of over the years.”
Given all that influence, Aaron’s not keen on reinventing the wheel, and he’s relieved to see a trend emerging over the past couple of years — guests returning to recognizable classics. “There’s a lot less house-made bitters, house-made infusions, and wacky recipes that were written just to be something no one had ever thought of before,” Aaron says. “There are so many companies that provide well-made, natural, and consistent ingredients that you don’t have to make everything from scratch in-house just to put out good drinks.”