The King Kong is a stirred, spirit-forward Old Fashioned riff with a tropical streak: bourbon and a backbone of overproof aged rum, sweetened with banana liqueur and seasoned with Angostura. It is documented by Difford's Guide as adapted from a 2015 recipe by Sam Ross at Attaboy in Manhattan — the same bartender behind the Penicillin and the Paper Plane. Despite the King Kong name, this is no fruity blender drink; it's a boozy, banana-inflected sipper built for slow drinking over a big rock.
Not a tropical blender drink in sight — just an Old Fashioned that took a vacation and came back smelling of banana and overproof rum.
History
Sam Ross is one of the most influential bartenders of the modern era — a Milk & Honey alumnus whose Penicillin and Paper Plane are already global standards — and Attaboy, the bar he co-founded on the old Milk & Honey site on Eldridge Street, is the kind of room where a drink like this gets made to order. The King Kong is recorded by Difford's Guide as an adaptation of a 2015 Ross recipe; as with many contemporary bar drinks, the exact original spec lives in service rather than in a definitive printed source, so we follow the documented version and credit it plainly.
The drink rides a small modern wave of "banana Old Fashioneds" — stirred whiskey drinks that use a good banana liqueur not as a novelty but as a rounding, almost nutty sweetener. The overproof rum is the twist that earns the name: it gives the King Kong its weight and a little swagger.
The Spec
Bourbon does most of the lifting; a half-ounce of high-proof aged rum deepens it; banana liqueur sweetens in place of sugar; Angostura ties it together. Stirred, never shaken.
The banana liqueur matters
Reach for a serious banana liqueur — Giffard Banane du Brésil is the bar standard — rather than a neon crème de banane. The good stuff tastes of ripe fruit and a little cocoa, and it behaves like a sweetener with personality, not a candy bomb.
Overproof rum as backbone
A high-ester, overproof aged pot-still rum (think Jamaican) brings funk and heat in a small dose. It isn't there to taste of rum so much as to give the whole drink a longer, warmer finish behind the bourbon.
Stir, don't shake
This is an Old Fashioned in structure — all spirits and bitters, no citrus — so it wants to be stirred to silky dilution and served over a single large cube. Shaking would aerate and cloud a drink that's meant to be clear and slow.
Bottom Line
The King Kong is a clever, grown-up banana Old Fashioned — rich, boozy, and deceptively simple. Use a quality banana liqueur and a real overproof rum, stir it cold, and give it a large cube and an expressed lemon twist.