ARLINGTON, Va. — Local restaurant the Green Garden began serving mocktails which are perfect for the person who doesn’t want to drink, but still wants to spend $18, confirmed sources.
“I was feeling left out drinking an affordable diet Coke,” explained sober man Lawrence Wilkes. “All my friends were having a great time spending $22 at a time on espresso martinis and mezcal old fashioned drinks. I always felt excluded when it was time to close out our tabs and I’d only spent like $16 on food and they’d spent half their paychecks in one sitting. Thankfully there’s a way to feel like I partied hard too. Like, when we went to the Green Garden, I noticed they had a menu of mocktails. I think that is a portmanteau of mock and cocktail, but I would have to Google it to make sure. It was delicious, and it cost me as much as a burger without fries would have, so I felt good about it. I’ve just had way too much money on my hand ever since I quit boozing.”
The restaurant’s owners seemed to express consternation at the success of their new $18 glasses of sugar water.
“Look, we want to provide a good time for those who drink and those who don’t,” said Green Garden manager Ruth Peters. “I had the idea to add mocktails, a portmanteau of mock and cocktail by the way, to the menu. Most of the time there’s about 90 cents of juice and soda in each drink. We are making out like bandits. The biggest overhead on the mocktails comes from the ridiculous amount of dried fruit we put in them to make them look worth buying. It keeps me up at night how much money we are clearing on these things. Maybe capitalism was a mistake.”
Although the mocktails became immensely popular, not all customers felt the same enthusiasm as Wilkes.
“I wish Larry would just drink again,” said girlfriend of three years Dana Steward. “We go to Green Garden because they have delicious cocktails that get you fucked up. Larry quit booze a few months back and he’s been so boring since then. All he does is jigsaw puzzles and run 5ks. I want the man I fell in love with back. The same guy who shit in the bathroom wastebin thinking it was the toilet. Now all I have is some pussy who orders virgin daiquiris.”
At press time, the Green Garden bar staff was experimenting with a mocktail that was just water and grenadine that would require a loan to purchase.