TIKI COCKTAIL BAR, THE NEW TREND
TIKI COCKTAIL BAR, THE NEW TREND
Tiki cocktails are all the rage these days, but this trend is actually a revival of an American tradition nearly a century old; the knowledge of how to make classic tiki cocktails had been lost in the intervening decades. It took an amateur sleuth delving into cocktail archeology and recipe cryptography to recover lost flavors and breathe life back into these delicious fruity concoctions.
When Donn Beach's Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt opened his bar, Don the Beachcomber, in December 1933, Prohibition had ended a few days earlier. Marie King, beverage director at Tonga Hut, the oldest operating tiki bar in Los Angeles, believes Donn had spent his days smuggling rum. "I had to have some kind of speakeasy to develop all the recipes," King told Gastropod.
Beach, the son of a Texan, had spent his youth—and his college fund—traveling the world; It was then that he fell in love with the South Pacific. When the money ran out, he ended up in Los Angeles, where one of his many side hustles involved building movie sets for Hollywood. Beach decorated his new bar with what he called "debris and flotsam" meant to invoke Polynesian deities, most of which he purchased from movie productions he had once decorated.
Don the Beachcomber was a huge success. The small space was usually filled with Hollywood personalities such as: Howard Hughes, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable. It wasn't just the decor, which capitalized on the '30s fascination with the South Pacific, it was also Donn's inventive new drinks. The drinks were rum-based, says Shannon Mustipher, author of Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails. Cuba was close and willing to sell to the United States, he says, "so rum was the only liquor that had been available in the United States while the distilleries were not operating because of prohibition." Furthermore, he points out, rum was cheap at the time, which favored its distribution during the Great Depression.
Donn's cocktails blended multiple versions of rum, as well as citrus juices, sweeteners and spices, to form complicated recipes inspired by traditional Caribbean punches, adding layers of flavor and nuances of personal touches, according to Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, the tiki's owner. Latitude 29 bar, in New Orleans. This was really the second wave of American craft cocktails, Berry told Gastropod. “No one had had drinks like this before,” he said. "No one had made drinks like this before."
“Modern tiki offers a classic retro cocktail experience with beachy touches that appeals to consumers. In cities like San Francisco, bartenders are experimenting with methods to create fun tropical drinks using fresh fruits and tinctures,” says Brandy Rand, IWSR COO for the Americas.
Within the context of cocktail trends, tiki makes sense as a response to the cocktail renaissance of the past 20 years, which has often focused on historical accuracy, elegant shakers, and an overall seriousness when it comes to cocktails. use of ingredients.
Historically, tiki has been, to some extent, an antidote to society: reinjecting a sense of fun and irreverence into cocktail bars with its extravagant glasses and even more extravagant garnishes. Bartenders dress less formally and bars are generally more cheerful.
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