Three must-try hot buttered rums

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That's not a hot toddy; it's hot buttered rum in disguise. Bar manager Chris Spinato mixes Appleton Estate Reserve Jamaican rum and hot water into a toddy glass (an elevated mug with a low handle often used for serving hot whiskey drinks) with a dollop of high-grade butter, which floats and melts. If you're at this Downtown spot to drink, the glass is garnished with an orange-peel-wrapped cinnamon stick. If you're there for theater, Spinato will swap the Appleton for a higher-proof rum and set the drink ablaze. "It's more labor intensive, but we'll do it at the guest's request," he says of the fire.

Mouton

It smells buttery and it tastes buttery, but you'll find no such thing floating in Mouton's hot buttered rum. Why? Bar manager Logan Demmy freezes 5-gallon mixtures of citrus-and-espresso-spiked brown butter, Jamaican rum and Jagermeister (which he uses for its botanicals). The butter eventually solidifies and is scrapped, while the rest of the mixture goes into a glass with hot water. "All the butter floats to the top of the vat, and the fat molecules are imparted into the liquor mixture below-but you never actually see the butter," Demmy says.

Grass Skirt Tiki Room

It all starts with a coconut. Cruzan light rum is skillet-infused with toasted coconut slices before making its way into one of Grass Skirt's kitschy-cool skull mugs with hot water and house-whipped brown butter. But the catch is the garnish: an orange slice coated in sugar, cinnamon and Bacardi 151, skewered and ignited over the mug. "It burns for about 30 seconds heating up the oils in the rind, which are then imparted into the drink," owner Carmen Owens says.