Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Three Cocktails and Fun (REVIEW)

Rub Smokehouse & Bar recently opened a third restaurant in Newcastle upon Tyne, following on from its successful ventures in Nottingham and Birmingham. ‘Rub on the Tyne' opened in October 2016 in the leisure complex called The Gate, serving up huge plates of food, cocktails and creating 60 new jobs at the same time.

In a bid to let more people know about the cocktails on offer, an invitation to a cocktail class arrived in my inbox.

class cocktails at rub smokehouse and bar in newcastle

So what's a girl to do when she gets an invitation to a cocktail mixing night? Accept straight away of course. So that’s what I did (once I’d made sure hubby was happy to do bedtime duties solo that evening).

Recently opened in The Gate in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the Ask restaurant was formerly located, Rub Smokehouse & Bar is a BBQ restaurant with it roots firmly in the South of the USA.

A passion for food, drink and creating a party atmosphere are the three ingredients, that Rub say make up this larger-than-life Amercian style barbecue and cocktail bar, which has brought it’s own a taste of America with barbecue, milkshakes, waffles into the city centre.

With 150–covers, this casual, loud and bold bar and restaurant, which has been inspired by the 1980s, is open from 11am until late Monday to Friday, and from 10am until “very, very late” at weekends, adding to Newcastle's already vibrant nightlife scene.

The menu at Rub on the Tyne’s is packed with specialities including ‘low n slow’ meats smoked over hickory, including pork shoulders and beef brisket cooked for 16 hours, burgers, desserts and inventions listed on the menu as #Epicfood.

The portion sizes may be oversized but I like the fact that doggy bags are given to customers who can’t clear their plates so they can take the rest home, avoiding unnecessary waste.

Although on this occasion we were not there to sample the food, complimentary dishes were served to accompany the cocktails.

It’s a BBQ restaurant so I wouldn’t expect many veggie options but with Potato Skins, Forest Burger, Southwestern Salad and Mixed Bean Chilli, plus seafood options there are alternatives to meat that sound pretty tasty. I’ll be trying them next time.

However, this visit was all about the cocktails! There are 20 classic cocktails, 26 speciality cocktails, including sharers served in tin baths as well as mocktails and alcoholic slushies.

To someone who was legally allowed (only just mind), to actually drink 80s cocktails in the 1980s, then the drinks list at Rub brings back all sorts of memories. You'll find the commonly known Cosmopolitan, Daiquiri, Manhattan, Mojito and Pina Colada as well as imaginatively and creatively named cocktails with an 80s twist: Dead Pig Society, Papa Don't Preach, Saving Mr Banksy and Buffalo Soldier to name just a few.

Mixologist and cocktail creator Joe MacBeth, demonstrated how to make a cocktail – and with his expertise made it all look so easy! We could see how he had recently been crowned a winner in a global cocktail competition.

The first cocktail he demonstrated was an OLD FASHIONED.

Once demonstrated we then had to make our own pictured below ...

Here is the recipe if you’d like to try it at home but please drink responsibly!

50ml Wild Turkey 101
5ml Sugar Syrup
3 drops of Angostura Bitters
Orange peel which releases oils and aroma
Add Ice then shake

Another from the classic menu was a WHISKEY SOUR

50ml Buffalo Trace
30ml Lemon Juice
25ml Egg White
25ml Sugar Syrup
For this one you add ice, shake then remove the ice and shake again to allow the drink to expand.
Add bitters and a slice of lemon.

And from the speciality menu a BUBBLEGUM HEMINGWAY

50ml Red Stag
25ml Bubblegum & Cherry Syrup
10ml Lime Juice
40ml Grapefruit Juice
Shake, pour over ice and top with bubblegum foam.

These all sound far easier than they are to make and it’s a lot harder, trying not to spill the drink when shaking without looking like you are going to do yourself an injury. As we were soon to find out!

Next, we had to create our own from ingredients provided.

For us, these were Stolichnaya Vanilla, Cassis, Sugar Syrup, Mountain Dew, Crushed Ice, a Meringue and Strawberry Syrup.

Looking like a list of dessert ingredients rather than a cocktail we created a rather sweet, but still quite tasty drink which we named ‘A Messy Rub’ paying homage to the delicious dessert that is an Eton Mess.

rub smokehouse and bar newcastle cocktails

It's not going to win an award, even if described as ‘pretty’ by the cocktail creator himself (notice he didn’t describe the taste) and it's never going to beat my number one cocktail the ‘Expresso Martini’.

The cocktail king did though make me an Expresso Martini and it was perfect!

If I'm honest, Rub probably wouldn’t have been top of my list for an evening out, but now that I've been and seen that the venue is fun, clean and bright, I can see the boys loving the décor and the food and me loving the cocktails.