If you've ever been to that drop-dead gorgeous Prospect Heights cocktail lounge Weather Up, you know how darn exciting it is that the owner, Kathryn Weatherup, is opening up a second location in Tribeca. The new Weather Up, expected to open at 159 Duane Street next month, will have the same vaulted tile ceilings like the original, and also offer a daily selection of oysters and caviar. Plus french fries! And it gets better. The Times has the scoop on the ice operation at Weather Up, and it's gonna make the half-assed ice at every other bar taste like paddy water.
Maybe that's a bit of exaggeration, but Weather Up's partner, the Dutch Kills/Painkiller proprietor Richard Boccato, says, "We’re going to be the first bar on the East Coast of the United States that is doing in-house ice harvesting and production." That will happen in the basement, where the Times reports that a $6,000 ice machine will produce "two 300-pound blocks of crystal clear ice every three to four days through a slow-freezing cycle. A pump mounted inside the machine’s cabinets circulates the water, thus preventing impurities from freezing into the block, and as well as the formation of troublesome oxygen bubbles and striations which make carving difficult."
Basically, the only way the classic cocktail trend could get any more fastidious is if they start making ice with water sourced from the tears of drowning polar bears.
