“You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find it,” Revel Room bartender Robbie Guevara said, shaking his head. Challenged by Nick Ostapczuk (Bangers & Lace) to make a drink with Cheez Whiz, he’d scoured the city before finally locating some of the processed cheese spread (not to be confused with Easy Cheese, the spray-on stuff) at one particular Dominick’s.
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Things didn’t get much easier from there. Apart from its viscosity—”It just does not blend, no matter what you try,” he lamented—Cheez Whiz has such a distinctive processed taste and smell that Guevara found he simply couldn’t mask it. On the other hand, he didn’t want it showcased. So he went for a “savory, salty” profile to try and complement the cheddarlike flavor, arriving at what he called “a Bloody Mary without the Bloody Mary.”
But the real key to the cocktail is technique: you need to shake vigorously and double strain “as best you can,” he warned, because “the cheese does solidify.” Best drink it up quickly, too.
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