Murphy: Here's to you, Gulf oil spill

Anna Maria Island restauranteur Sean Murphy has yet again taken a page from the headlines to come up with his latest drink concoction.

A few years ago it was a special martini with a price that fluctuated on the day's closing price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This time it's the BP Martini.

The BP Martini is a dig at the company behind the oil spill in the Gulf. Murphy says he created the drink to both keep the attention on the company and to raise money for spill victims. Indeed, all proceeds from the sale of the drink will be donated to the Greater New Orleans Foundation's Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund.

The drink can be purchased at Beach Bistro, Murphy's trendy, award-winning restaurant. Instructions to make the drink can also be found online, in a YouTube video produced by the Hub, a Sarasota-based Internet and video production firm. The video is thick with satire.

For example, the woman-narrator in the video says the mixer “lies about how much alcohol is in the drink.” The martini, according to the video, also “explodes” with flaming 151 rum and is “polluted” with dark chocolate and chocolate cream.

Finally, the drink is topped off with coffee beans meant to symbolize the spill's tar balls — none of which, of course, reached the shores of Florida's Gulf Coast.