One Drink, Five Alarms

A cocktail that mixes coffee, rum, and a spray of flame.

- ROBERT SIMONSON

FIFTEEN YEARS after the Penicillin and Benton's old-fashioned appeared on the city's cocktail menus, drink names can still feel like a secret code. Take the seasonal lists at Koloman (16 W. 29th St., nr. Broadway), chef Markus Glocker's upscale French restaurant inside Nomad's Ace Hotel. There was the Jacqueline Rose, which an educated drinker could understand to be a riff on the apple-brandy classic Jack Rose; the Tennessee Gentleman signaled a drink made with Tennessee whiskey; and now there's the curiosity known as the Trummer.

"Um," I asked Meg Lazar, the head bartender, as I looked up from the menu one recent night, "is this drink set on fire?"

Yes, she confirmed. Yes, it is.