Critical DMs: Taste testing the Grape Ape at the Loon Cafe
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Critical DMs are lightly edited Slack conversations by members of the MPR News arts team about Minnesota art and culture. This week, arts editor Max Sparber and senior arts reporter and critic Alex V. Cipolle discuss a collection of Minnesota’s signature cocktails.
Max Sparber: CRITICAL DMS ACTIVATE.
Alex V. Cipolle: Purple Gemstone has been pushed. Did we check if our teeth are purple?
Sparber: So let us set the scene. Just a few blocks from where we work at the Kling building in downtown St. Paul, tucked into a pedestrian walkway, just behind a statue of the Hamms Beer Bear, is the Loon Cafe.
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And in the Loon Cafe?
A cocktail, or more properly, a cluster of related themed cocktails
Cipolle: Announced by a neon sign and wallpaper.
Sparber: The Grape Ape, and its siblings.
Cipolle: Baboon!
Sparber: And?
Cipolle: Orangutan!
Sparber: Each is citrus vodka mixed with Buddy’s flavored soda, grape, orange and strawberry. Plus sweet and sour and a splash of Sprite.
So we thought we would drink us some.
Cipolle: For seven bananas and 50 cents
I mean $7.50.
Sparber: As far as I can tell, the Grape Ape is no relation to the giant purple gorilla that used to ride on the back of van driven by a beagle in the 1970s cartoon.
Cipolle: That cartoon looks amazing. “The Great Grape Ape Show”?
Sparber: Yep. But this was instead invented by Loon bartenders Danny Baker and Marcus Dorn.
They invented it about the time Absolute Citron was released, late ‘80s. Now they use Three Olives vodka.
Cipolle: And what little soothsayers they were. Who knew they would create a cocktail that tastes perfect for the heat of climate change.
Sparber: Yes, let us now move into the review portion of the Critical DMs. We drank all three. And it tastes as you would expect: like somebody melted a popsicle.
Cipolle: One-hundred percent melted popsicle. But I could see someone making an argument for Freeze Pops and Jolly Ranchers.
Sparber: A depth of flavor, if by depth we mean it tastes like various candies
Cipolle: The grape was great at the fake grape flavor. It tasted purple.
Sparber: Pure purple
Cipolle: My favorite was the strawberry. It was the least sweet and the most like summer. Like sitting in the AC of your friend’s basement and their mom brings a pitcher down with Cheetos or finger sandwiches.
I will say, the Grape Ape one tasted pretty identical to the Lift Bridge Grape Ape Seltzer they sell at the State Fair.
Just hoping the Loon crew is getting some cred there.
Sparber: I paired it with the Loon’s signature chili, which was a mistake. This cocktail comes from a Minnesota mixology moment that predates such niceties as a consistent menu flavor profile.
Chili would go well with a beer cocktail, or mezcal or the like. But this is from the era when people only drank vodka and wanted it sweet.
Cipolle: So sweet that I couldn’t really taste the vodka. Which makes this a somewhat dangerous cocktail.
Sparber: Yes, it’s very drinkable.
They tell stories of people drinking way too many of these. It’s alcohol without guardrails.
Cipolle: It would be a colorful aftermath. 🍇🍓🍊 💥
Sparber: There’s one local comic, who will remain nameless here, who is supposed to have drunk 100.
Cipolle: Ex-squeeze me?
Sparber: This is a fellow who has started showing up in the news for getting kicked off stage for intoxication. So … Please be careful with the Grape Ape.
Cipolle: Don’t go bananas. Sorry.
