The Melt Bar & Grilled in Cleveland offered a cocktail in February that was intended to evoke the taste of chocolate covered strawberries. Called For Lovers Only, it had Smirnoff Vanilla, Crème de cacao, simple syrup, lemon juice and strawberry preserves.

One Valentine’s Day special, possibly for someone who’s not necessarily feeling the love of the day, is the Bitter Little Tart at The Ice Cream Bar & Soda Fountain in San Francisco. It’s made with a three bitter aperitifs — Cappelletti, Cocchi Rosa and Elisir Novasalus — blended with pink grapefruit sorbet.

This Drink is My Date is a sundae drenched in beer. More specifically, it’s a bourbon barrel-aged beer called Allagash Curieux poured over scoops of butterscotch, milk chocolate and banana pudding ice creams. It’s served in a large frozen goblet topped with caramelized banana, whipped cream and an Amarena cherry. 

The Redeye at Stoke restaurant in Charlotte, N.C. was inspired by a bottle of Jameson Caskmates, an Irish whiskey aged in stout barrels that Bar manager DiSean Burns sampled while looking to expand the restaurant’s whiskey offerings.

The drink starts with a syrup that’s equal amounts Guinness Stout and superfine sugar. Burs adds cracked espresso beans and split Serrano chiles to that and lets the mixture steep for a week, shaking it daily to make sure he gets good extraction from the chile and coffee.

Dessert beverages aren’t just for customers. They can also be a morale-boosting pick-me-up for staff. That’s what Thea Habjanic uses her milkshakes for at La Sirena Ristorante, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s Italian restaurant with a Spanish tapas bar at the Maritime Hotel in New York City.

“We were super, super busy over the summer, and one Saturday we were facing a 600-cover night,” she said. So to boost morale and give staff an energy boost and sugar high, she made cookies-and-cream milkshakes, pictured.

The milkshakes have become a weekly custom, and have ranged from a chicken-and-waffle milkshake (topped with a piece of Belgian waffle and a fried chicken breast), to churros and chocolate, to matcha.