The Bushwacker, a chocolate milkshake-like cocktail, was the most-searched drink in Tennessee during quarantine, according to Google. Like the most sought-after drink recipes in neighboring Georgia and Alabama the Bushwacker is inspired by coastal getaways, making it perfect for at least a partial escape while stuck at home for months. Native New Orleans drink the Sazerac is Georgia's top pick, while Alabamians jazz up their Zoom cocktail hours with the Hurricane, another Crescent City classic.
The Bushwacker was created at a restaurant on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and named in honor of a customer's Afghan hound, Bushwack. The owner of Sandshaker Beach Bar in Pensacola, Florida, introduced her version of the drink in Pensacola, which has hosted an annual Bushwacker Festival since 1986.
Chattanooga restaurant and bar The Big Chill is known for its take on the Bushwacker, which was added to the menu after one of its bartenders returned from a beach trip to Pensacola. They even sell a T-shirt that says "I got Bushwacked at The Big Chill."
The bar takes the classic recipe up a notch by making it with soft-serve ice cream and 190-proof pure-grain alcohol. "It's like a milkshake on steroids," says Stephen Stapleton, assistant general manager of The Big Chill. "I think it's the best hangover cure."
The Big Chill's Bushwacker
(Makes 1 gallon, or eight 16-ounce drinks)
What you need:
3/4 cup Fat Tuesday vanilla soft-serve mix
1/5 liter vodka
1/5 liter pure-grain alcohol
1.5 ounces coconut rum
1 ounce Kahlua
1.5 ounces creme de cacao
What you do:
The Big Chill mixes 5-gallon batches of the drink in its slushie machines, which save unused ice in a reservoir before cutting the ice with steel blades and adding it to other ingredients as necessary for a smooth texture and consistent quantities of ingredients. If you don't have a frozen drink maker at home, you can add - in batches, depending on blender size - ingredients to a blender with ice, but consistency will likely be chunkier and ingredients less evenly distributed.
So, what was the most-searched drink overall? The Old Fashioned, which took the top spot in eight states: Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, Washington State and Washington, D.C. The ones that personally sent us searching were Ohio's Boulevardier and Minnesota's Oliveto; while Delaware's, Kansas' and South Dakota's searches for Screwdriver recipes left us scratching our heads.
