Halloween at Last Call Bar

to clean my makeup brushes as well. Every seven days, eeks. All right, well, it's Halloween time. We're going to talk a little bit about Tacos and Treats at Last Call Bar in D.C. It's getting spooky with some scary good cocktails and food this Halloween. So joining us now is the Director of Operations, Michael Ciccone, and thank you so much for being here. I'm seeing it like tacos and tequila go very well together, but you got all different flavors of drinks. Tell us first off, what is the festivity? Of course, Halloween coming up, but you're going to have a special activation for it. Yeah, so this is our second alley party. We call them alley sessions. There's a big alley on the next to last call where we do nighttime parties. This is Tacos and Treats. So it is on Halloween, 9 to 1 a.m. And we will have tacos from Taqueria Habanero, as you can see, be a food truck there. And then cocktails from Cotton and Reed, Jim Beam, Jameson, Tito's, Amaris Mezcal, Beer from D.C. Brow, Jell-O Shots, DJ, so there's definitely a lot going on and fun for everyone to have there. Now, you said it starts at 9 p.m., so parents, this is for you. Take the kitties out trick-or-treating, drop them off at home, and then come out and enjoy all of your cocktails. Okay, we're going to be doing a lot of drinking on this night. That's basically what you're saying there, so you need to have the tacos as well. There's going to be a food truck with all the tacos. Right now, I can tell you they smell good, so you can get your food on while you're going of course tacos go with anything a little bit of spicy you've got us just mentioned a lot of different cocktails here what are you going to be making for us today so today we're just going to make a kind of a classic fall drink that you is pretty versatile um i'm going to make this with cotton reed aged rum but you can definitely use tequila whiskey vodka like you said you use as well um so the base of it is a pumpkin apple syrup um so we start by juicing pumpkins and apples and then taking that you're making this fresh Yeah. You can also buy pumpkin puree if you want to also mix it with your apple juice, equal parts, and then just some brown sugar. And then any baking spices that you enjoy really is cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, cardamom for this. When you're making this, if like somebody wants to make this at home for one of their parties, what is the biggest trick and thing that they need to know to make sure that they get it right? I think you can take equal parts of just apple juice and pumpkin puree to make it easy in a pan. Heat that up with half the amount of brown sugar and then spice it however you'd like um bring up to a simmer cut the heat let it steep for a while maybe like 30 minutes to get all that in there um but the nice thing i like about this is you can kind of customize it to the way you'd like um if you want to you know dump a bunch of pumpkin spice in there you can if you want a little bit spicy make a trick you can add some uh pepper in there as well let's do some ice here and shake it up grab the ice over there okay uh and again this is it's going to be late night a lot of different kind of vendors uh people can walk through you can have some live music some there to entertain the visitors on there'll be a dj outside playing as well um and there's also just a lot going on at ed market that day as well so it's a great opportunity to come by hang out um stop in for a taco or in a treat or hang out with us all night, um we do have pre-sale tickets available through Eventbrite, okay so you have to make sure you get a ticket in order to attend tickets are not required, um just more so we can get a baseline of how much food and drink we need for everybody, okay um but they They're not required. They're $25, and with that $25 ticket, you get two tacos, a Jell-O shot, and a Halloween pail to do your trick-or-treating with through the alley. Oh, all right. This is great. So my cocktail's ready to go? Cocktail's ready to go. I've never had a pumpkin, you know, alcoholic beverage, so. Oh, that's very lovely. Okay. You barely even taste like all the alcohol in it, too. Yeah, and you can do it hot also if you're cold. It works both ways. Yeah, like a warm, because it's chilly out. It should be beautiful weather as well. And then also they have Jell-O shots, which we will not do today because these get sneaky on you. No, he said they always have Jell-O shots. But tell us what is special about these for Halloween. So the team made a bunch of fun Halloween-themed Jell-O shots. So we got some creepy crawlies in there. There's some gummy worms. Just kind of a little spooky take on our Jell-O shots that we normally do. You can see the candy on in there. We should distribute these in the newsroom as well. You're more than welcome to leave them here for that, yeah. We see how everybody handles and gets ready throughout the day. Lots of, again, fun activities. You're expecting, you know, how many people tend to come out? Because I know you've done some of these things before. We've done before. Usually around 100 to 150 people show up. So it's a good crowd, and that entire alley doesn't get crowded. There's no long lines. It's just a nice, fun vibe to be outside and drinking when you're not really supposed to be. Again, a very special opportunity because not always can you be outside in the alleyway there. Tell us again where it's at. So Last Call is in the Union Market District. It's 4th and Neal Place, and big blue building, can't miss it, right across the street from Minetta Tavern. And the alley is right next to it. All right, and if you want to check them out on social media, there it is on the screen. just head on out a lot of fun again we're going to have the taco truck that's going to be out there tons of different options uh for beverages for you to enjoy your evening it goes until 1 a.m so again drop the kitties off head on out there costumes for you it's it's in it's in progress i'm thinking about it i'm thinking about it they're very good at people costumes here as well something i'm sure if you give our crew and the producers enough of these you know jello shots then we'll be able to get you something pretty well perfect all right makia all right thanks you're like, let's let it come this way.