The Dave & Buster's Cocktail We'll Never Order Again

If you have small children who attend birthday parties for classmates whom they barely know, work an office job that regularly attempts team-building outings, or consider "Dance Dance Revolution" your main form of exercise, then you've probably been to a Dave & Buster's. The super popular sports bar/restaurant/arcade is a loud, flashy assault on the senses, including your tastebuds. There's a surprisingly extensive cocktail menu available at Dave & Buster's since every occasion you'd be at one for calls for a drink or two.  

But there's one cocktail that we reckon you should avoid at all costs. Tasting Table ranked every cocktail at Dave & Buster's from worst to best and, shockingly, the one that came in dead last place was the classic Aperol spritz. To be fair, ordering an Aperol spritz at Dave and Buster's is like cooking a filet mignon over a flaming pile of Dave and Buster's arcade tickets — you just shouldn't do it. An Aperol spritz is typically made with Aperol, soda water, and Prosecco. Their version is not. 

Someone (either Dave or Buster, probably) decided that the Prosecco in an Aperol spritz should be replaced in their rendition with Graham + Fisk sparkling rosé in a can. "Though the partnership with the wine-in-a-can brand does gift Aperol spritz orderers the sidecar of remaining wine," our reviewer noted, "the tiny, bitter contents not only prove uninviting, but the culprit corrupts what could be a perfectly quaffable spritz." On top of that, the drink is watermelon-flavored, which would have been okay if it weren't for the truly bad wine in a can messing up the entire drink.

Aperol spritzes are notoriously divisive. Some people swear by a recipe using the original ratio, which apparently works every time to create the perfect Aperol spritz, while there's also a nifty trick to keep your Aperol spritz from falling flat, and it's as simple as adding the club soda last. But one thing most people tend to agree on is that it probably shouldn't be watermelon-flavored. Fresh apple gives an Aperol spritz a great, fruity flavor, but including watermelon is an abomination that only someone happily standing in front of 12 big-screen TVs simultaneously blasting different sports games at them could come up with.

Our taste tester called the D&B's Aperol spritz "one of the only truly regrettable drinks" on the menu. And, on a Reddit thread listing customers' favorite alcoholic drinks, not a single person mentions the Aperol spritz. According to the thread, the best drink by far at Dave & Buster's is the Backwoods blueberry lemonade (which came in fifth place on our list, FYI). It's made with ABSOLUT Berri Açai vodka, Ole Smoky strawberry moonshine, lemonade, and blueberry purée. It's the perfect drink to sip and repeatedly try to press the button exactly when the little light passes by to win the jackpot while your kids run wild.