It's summer. Where is that rum? And the pineapple?
The names Jules Bergeron [12/10/1902-10/11/1984] and Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt [2/22/1907-6/7/1989] may not be familiar to you. But you may well have been in one of their restaurants and you must have had one of their drinks. Jules founded the Trader Vic’s line of restaurants and Ernest, who changed his name to Donn Beach, formed the Don the Beachcomber brand. Who was first in the game? They were within months of each other in 1933-1934, opening up in Los Angeles and Oakland. They were friendly competitors. As prohibition ended, these men began to pour the rum and they never stopped the flow.
Tiki Drinks: Tropical Cocktails for the Modern Bar is a tribute to both the heritage of tiki drinks and to the revival of tiki delights around the country. Here you will find classics carefully presented and moderns, new combinations of those potent rums and syrups and fruits that can make the room dazzle.
Many of the drinks here are shown in deep color photographs. There is not a paper umbrella to be seen. This is, you see, a very serious book.
There are three major sections to Tiki Drinks.
Ingredients covers rum in detail, by type, by country. Rum is the fuel in these drinks, of course, but you need all those other elements too. So juices, coconut, syrups and sweeteners are all discussed. And, in the Recipes section, you’ll find excellent recipes for homemade syrups that can be used in beverages: falernum [lime and allspice], honey, and pineapple. This section will probably send you on missions to find very specific and delightful rum species. Do look for the nuances affect the flavor of these drinks.
The section on Bar Tools [and techniques] is brief but important. These beverages have so many ingredients, each wanting to burst to the top in the flavor profile, that proper mixing and chilling is essential to elicit the full power of the beverage.
And then there are the Recipes, divided into classic, modern, and blended drinks and bowls. Here you discover the span of this book: those lovely classics and the new ideas spawned from the competitive minds of authors Nicole Weston and Robert Sharp. The very first recipe in the book is enticingly provocative: the Aku Aku is made with white rum, apricot brandy, lime juice, pineapple juice, simple syrup, and mint. It’s the prototype tiki beverage: an assault of flavors intended to stun you with its barrage of spice and sweetness. And, the drink succeeds. I can tell you that personally.
In the modern drinks portion, the standout is the Cachaça Batida: cachaça, cream of coconut, sweetened condensed milk and simple syrup. I have not made this yet. I fear telling my wife about it. I am sure that as I drink it, I will feel it throughout my body, certainly in every vein and artery. Still, just one? Right?
You want to do two things with the recipes here. First, make them as written, drink and enjoy the balance of decades in perfection. Second, experiment. That Aku Aku is made with simple syrup but you could double down on the pineapple and use the excellent pineapple simple syrup defined in this book. Where passion fruit juice or guava is suggested, you can mix and match. Use a fruit nectar, banana or apricot, instead. Use a banana flavored rum if you like.
This book is the perfect vehicle to empty out those bottles of flavored rums you’ve stashed away. Unstash them. Polish up your cocktails shaker and pretend, for an evening, that you are working for Don the Beachcomber/