Last week, beloved East Williamsburg pizza restaurant, Mo’s General, launched its much anticipated rum-focused cocktail menu in collaboration with the folks from Lullaby on the Lower East Side.
On Tuesday night, friends and family gathered in the warm embrace of dim lighting, 90’s hip hop, and neighborhood-favorite pies at Mo’s for the unveiling of the revamped menu. Though the intimate celebration marked the first formal collaborative output from Mo’s founder, Mac Murdock and Lullaby founders Harrison Snow and Jake Hodas, their partnership is quite some time in the making.
Mo’s and Lullaby came to each other rather organically. Hodas and Snow met in Boston, pre-pandemic, where Hodas was in college studying film, while Snow was working on his craft as a mixologist, learning from and working alongside industry legends like the late Brother Cleve. A couple years later, the two reconnected in East Williamsburg. Like many during the pandemic, Hodas and Snow found themselves cooking and drinking a lot. Soon, rumblings of harnessing that momentum towards something more tangible echoed in conversation, as the two began musing about starting a business together. Enter, Lullaby; a chic, basement cocktail bar on the Lower East Side, where DJs spin vinyl and Cleve’s legacy lives on in a highly touted cocktail list.
Around this time, Mo’s General, opened in 2021 by Mac Murdock, was starting to make waves through North Brooklyn. Snow and Hodas found themselves frequent patrons of the East Williamsburg pizza shop, but perhaps more serendipitously, new neighbors of Murdock’s. As the two commuted to Manhattan to work on Lullaby, they would regularly pass Mo’s on their way to the L train. Friendly hello’s became introductions and eventually the three found themselves commiserating over all having recently started new businesses in the food and beverage scene. As Hodas puts it, “Mac’s a friend. We were always gonna work together one way or another, whether it was on paper or not.”
From Left to Right: Murdock, Hodas, and Snow
It wasn’t long before dreams of a tandem project came to life. The trio’s new cocktail menu, a creation of Snow’s, boasts a diverse selection of rum. Among its many high marks are the “Southpaw,” an elegant Boulevardier with cacao rum and the “Golden Hour,” which marries rhum agricole, a rum variant distilled from sugarcane juice, with gin, cognac, pineapples, and absinthe. Detail-focused and highly inventive, the menu covers a breadth of sensibilities. As Snow puts it, “rum is so diverse, I sorta wanna build what I’m drinking around how I’m drinking it.”
Mo’s General X Lullaby Cocktail Menu
Tuesday night, as Snow and fellow bartender and rum connoisseur, Liz Hitchcock, shook drinks, the kitchen fired off an assortment of Mo’s pies, some old, some new, to the friends and family in attendance. Twenty years now in New York, Murdock has fostered a real community within the larger food scene. This emphasis goes beyond little details like Mo’s house-made ginger beer, named after Dr. Vinny, a foot doctor down the street. Tuesday’s launch felt abuzz with familial chatter, as old friends reminisced and talked future collaborative ventures.
If Mo’s and Lullaby are any indication, Hodas, Snow, and Murdock all have a strong commitment to curating a feeling. Talking shop Tuesday night, Hodas put it aptly: “The product is the experience…a lot of people get bogged down in the wrong stuff.” It’s no wonder the three were drawn to each other. Theirs is a partnership steeped in a shared desire to build something lasting…and this collab is likely just the beginning.
Tuesday night’s launch party
Mo’s General’s new menu is live. You can find their signature cocktails at 620 Lorimer Street in Brooklyn. Lullaby is open 7 days a week at 151 Rivington.
