$10 ‘BP Martini’ quenches for a cause

The “BP Martini?”

Leave it to Sean Murphy.

His Irish already up over the five-month BP oil spill, the entrepreneurial Beach Bistro owner created a concoction to keep the public’s attention on the catastrophic damage to the Gulf of Mexico’s Louisiana coast and its way of life — even though the runaway well has been capped and our coastline has been unaffected so far.

“Everybody’s lightening up on BP all of a sudden,” said Murphy, who started his career as a restaurateur in New Orleans. “It’s like when somebody keeps beating you with a stick and then they stop. What are you supposed to say? Thank you?”

Murphy went to work, creating a $10 martini whose proceeds will go toward the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund.

“It was not an easy assembly,” joked Bistro bartender Fred Sullivan, who spent 35 years in New Orleans.

The BP Martini begins with a crystal blue vodka and curacao mix representing the virgin Gulf waters. The martini explodes with flaming 151 rum — a reminder of the oil rig explosion — and is then polluted with dark chocolate and chocolate cream. The drink is then finished by topping it off with coffee beans to symbolize the spill’s tar balls.

“We fooled around with a couple of ingredients and came up with something that characterizes the spill,” Murphy said. “And believe it or not, it tastes OK.”

Tommy Klauber’s Polo Grill & Bar in Lakewood Ranch had a similar endeavor this summer: a hurricane whose proceeds went to a coastal restoration fund for Louisiana and the Florida Panhandle.

He says they’ve sold more than 300 so far.

Would Klauber try a BP Martini?

“It sounds disgusting, but if it helps raise money? Absolutely,” he said.

The BP Martini appears in a satirical video, created by HUB Media for the Beach Bistro, with Cheryl Martin, a neighbor of Murphy’s, as narrator.

The video can be view online at Bradenton.com with this story.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation’s Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund website is: www.gnof.org/programs/gulf-coast-oil-spill-fund/

Vin Mannix, local columnist, can be reached at 745-7055.

This story was originally published August 20, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "$10 ‘BP Martini’ quenches for a cause."