Crystal clear espresso martinis, a gin fizz that you eat with a spoon, french onion soup martinis topped with brioche bread foam. At the newly opened Adventure Time Bar at 101 Broadway, owner Sam Wood is the Willy Wonka of cocktails.
“From the molecular mixology aspect, it’s like, how can I make a cocktail fun and cool and get exactly what I want out of it to present to you,” Wood energetically expressed. “If I want to flash freeze a Ramos Gin Fizz into a cloud, how do I do that? Or, if I want to reverse engineer a cheese Danish and turn that into a foam, how do I do that?”
All of those items he mentioned, by the way, can be found on Adventure Time’s current menu.
The reservation-only cocktail bar operates on rotating themes every three months, matching the decor to the cocktails. Its debut concept, Neon City, transforms the space into a futuristic cyberpunk world. A $20 ticket gets guests through the door, a welcome cocktail, and a souvenir at the end of the experience. A punch card allows them to return during the current theme without paying the ticket fee again, a system born after Wood realized guests weren’t ready to leave once their 90-minute time slot was up.
“We thought the bar program would support the theme,” he said. “It turned out to be the opposite. The theme allows us to do really wild, ultra-specific things at the bar.”
For the last three weeks, the place has been sold out.
Mad Scientist Mixologist
Behind the bar and in the compact backroom “lab,” there’s all kinds of tools and ingredients to bring Wood’s fantastical creations to life. There’s a JetChill machine that injects liquid carbon dioxide into specialized glassware to safely create a drinkable dry ice vapor without the danger of asphyxiation; a cocktail printer capable of producing edible, crisp, color images; a 180-liter tank of liquid nitrogen; a hand-crank shave ice machine; cotton candy rigs; extract stations; and more.
As for the menu, there are fantastical creations like the Electric Sheep, which is Wood’s take on a carrot cake in cocktail form made with vodka, carrot, pineapple, and cheesecake cotton candy sprinkled with electric blue buzz button dust that activates the taste buds. The Tinfoil Unicorn comprises shaved ice drizzled with house-infused ube liquor, coconut milk rum, salted creme plantain, and anko liquor, and comes with a spoon and boozy popping boba. On the simple-but-not-simple side you’ll find the Voodoo Mule, which tastes just like jerk chicken.
Notably, in the bar’s first month, Wood says Adventure Time has only used one lime. Instead of relying on fresh citrus, he developed a shelf-stable “pseudocitrus” designed to retain its flavor indefinitely using citric acid. Wood and his team also make custom extracts to flavor a single base simple syrup and house-made liqueurs. The creations work great, all while saving shelf space and money.
His experiments extend beyond the bar and into his home garage. There he’s currently building a vacuum filtration system designed to clarify gallons of milk punch in under an hour, instead of waiting days for gravity filtration.
“If I’m doing 10 gallons of milk punch, I don’t want to wait two days for it to clarify,” he said. “I want it done in 45 minutes.”
World-Building on Broadway
The Neon City theme will run through April, a cyberpunk fever dream inspired by films like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. You’ll see touches of these movies through the influx of neon signs, animes playing on projectors, and a glittering bar top that shines under the lights, which, added Wood, his team made themselves using more than 30 pounds of glitter. There’s even a commercial-grade scent diffuser that fills the room with a custom “future musk.”
“When you walk in, I don’t want it to smell like Broadway, I want you transported,” Wood shared. “It’s about world-building.”
Each theme costs $15,000 to $20,000 to build. Every few months, the team will shut down for roughly 10 days to strip the room and install an entirely new universe. And unlike most pop-ups, Wood has no intention of repeating themes annually.
“I don’t want you to think, ‘Oh, they’ll just do that again next Christmas,’” Wood continued.
Behind the Scenes
Wood spent a decade writing for film and working comic conventions. That experience shaped how he approaches Adventure Time’s pop-ups. He also has 13 years of bartending experience under his belt, and eight of those running high-end bar programs. His resume runs through Los Angeles staples like Black Market Liquor Bar and cult-favorite The One Up, where he cut his teeth creatively.
After moving to Colorado, Wood managed bars at SALT in Boulder and later the now-closed For[a]ged in Dairy Block. But, he said, ownership is an entirely different beast. He and his wife Laura, who co-owns the bar and handles the business management side of things, searched for nearly two years before landing the Broadway space. They pursued the spot at 101 Broadway for 13 months.
“We started with nothing,” Wood said. “This place didn’t even have floors when we first moved in.”
While Wood is the mad scientist behind the drinks, the bar’s creativity is collaborative. He credits much of the execution to his tight-knit management team which includes general manager Jordan McMahan and co-bar managers Tristan Worble and Evan Moore.
“They’re world-class,” he continued. “I got lucky, they’re one-in-a-million.”
After one month open, one thing is clear. Adventure time isn’t just a themed bar; it’s a laboratory, a film set, and a culinary playground wrapped into one maximalist, reservation-only fever dream.
Visit Adventure Time Thursdays from 6 to 9:30 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 6 to 11:30 p.m. 101 Broadway #9, Denver, adventuretimebar.com
