March 27, 2026
Kristin Hunt/for PhillyVoice
Forsythia added the Story to its happy hour menu last October. The bourbon cocktail comes with a small notebook with an ongoing story. Whoever orders the drink can add to it.
Since October, patrons at Forsythia have been scribbling tales of shape-shifting dragons and forlorn astronauts inside a tiny notebook. They're all, amazingly, part of the same story, one that comes with its own craft cocktail.
This unusual drink special is offered exclusively during the Old City restaurant's happy hour. Priced at $12, the Story is a campfire-inspired blend of bourbon, chocolate amaro, graham cracker syrup, Licor 43, chocolate bitters and mezcal. A cherry soaked in more bourbon and covered in toasted marshmallow rests atop the glass. Anyone who orders it also gets the notebook and an invitation to add to the ongoing narrative.
At this point, it's practically an epic. The story begins with an impressionistic opening, written by Forsythia beverage director Chris Harrop. From there, it veers wildly. A creepy street scene involving a mangy dog (resembling Gizmo from "Gremlins") and a dying man turns out to be a prophetic dream. Tina, a girl with a tingling birthmark, attempts to make sense of it all. But the perspective shifts from her to new characters — a couple meeting at Forsythia for a date, a man awakening from a fugue state in outer space, an interior decorator following a shifty French jewelry dealer in search of her missing cat Tom (he has picked up a mouse friend named Jerry). Sabrina Carpenter even shows up for a few passages, warning of danger in Philadelphia before turning into a golden dragon and flying to a cat cafe.
Forsythia staff said the cocktail had been ordered 77 times as of Wednesday evening. Since customers occasionally get a second round as they craft their chapters, that translates to roughly 60 authors and over 50 pages. It's easy to lose an hour poring over the little book, as this writer can attest.
Most contributors scratch out a page, but some add only a few sentences. Others compress their handwriting to fit in as much plot as possible over multiple pages. A few have signed their work with initials, a first name or a date. Doodles are rare, but there were at least two — one of the strange dog, who pops up throughout the story, and another of a simple heart.
To help situate new writers, Forsythia has typed and printed out a story summary. It's updated every couple weeks as the plot thickens, and the restaurant has no intention of scraping the cocktail once the pages fill up. The bar has a few more mini notebooks on deck, ripe for fresh tales from Philadelphia barflies.
So where will Tina, Sabrina, Tom and Jerry go next? The answer lies at the bottom of that bourbon cocktail.
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