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Wilfred’s Lounge Has The Sesame Mai Tai You Never Knew You Needed… Until You Did

We always enjoy visits to Wilfred’s Lounge in downtown Napa, which is still doing a great job offering a Hawaiian-leaning food menu and a variety of exotic cocktails. This time we feasted on appetizers including a pretty nice Pupu Sampler Platter along with Spam fries and Spam musubi. The standout here were the Spam fries, perfectly fried and seasoned – and the salmon rangoon in the sampler platter had a nice spicy bite to them as well.

For drinks, Mrs. Mai Tai went with the Maximum Aloha which is still made to original specs and contains so many great flavors – not as sweet as you’d think, either. It is still the best cocktail here, so if you’ve never had this cocktail it is definitely worth the trip.

I perused the Mai Tai menu and decided to try something new by ordering the San Fransokyo. It’s quite a stretch to call this a “Mai Tai” considering it doesn’t have any original Mai Tai ingredients, but it has a type of orgeat so I suppose that’s fine. This black cocktail has some components I usually don’t have, including shochu, sake, cachaca, pisco, Cherry Heering, black sesame orgeat, shiso, and lemon. This is really sesame forward, and found it to be pretty enjoyable too. Maybe not in my regular rotation but definitely glad I tried it.

Wilfred’s Lounge also features great views of the Napa River, with fire-pit lounge seating upstairs that is even better when it’s warmer.

San Fransokyo and Maximum Aloha

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The Fink Is Napa’s Can Do Cocktail Lounge

We took a trek up to Napa to view the Lighted Art Festival, with displays across the charming downtown. We also made sure to visit our favorite cocktail joint and had a couple rounds with local friends. While we’ve patronized The Fink several times, during this visit we really got to see how they handled a contrasting set of cocktails, all of which were made with the high standards they’re known for.

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way; yes, The Fink’s OG Mai Tai is still excellent and the best one I’ve had all year. We even suggested this to our friend who’d only ever had island Mai Tais and she was completely blown away by the nutty flavors from The Fink’s house-made orgeat. Also excellent was the tiki cult favorite Reverb Crash that features zesty white grapefruit, demonstrating once again that tropical drinks are a strength here.

We also saw that The Fink does well with other cocktail styles including an off menu Gin Daisy that was a special order from our friend. The Candy Apple Sour, New York Sour, and Mocha Milk Punch were all perfectly balanced and highlighted diverse flavors. The Fink really proved that they can do it all.

Candy Apple Sour and Mocha Milk Punch
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Nightcaps at Rosetta Brings Mardi Gras Menu to Downtown Livermore

Our favorite Livermore cocktail spot has a New Orleans inspired menu to celebrate Mardi Gras, available now through February 13. Nightcaps at Rosetta is the evening persona of Rosetta Roasting and trades coffee for a cocktail focus.

The NOLA menu is pretty vast with numerous favorites such as the Sazerac, Bourbon Street Julep, and Voodoo Grog. There are also some food options including king cake that compliments Rosetta’s always stellar cake lineup. We skipped the alligator flatbread and went with the beignets that are served either with chocolate or a raspberry cream dipping sauce and these were really great.

Hurricane

On the cocktail side I went with the Hurricane which leans a little more juicy and orange-forward than on the passionfruit side, with a good amount of rum but not so much that it’ll kill you. I found it to be delightfully balanced with plenty of flavor, with a lighter and less syrupy body. Mrs. Mai Tai had the Marie Laveau which is somewhat like an Espresso Martini but with bolder coffee flavors that’ll really appeal to those who love a bold, dark roast.

Marie Laveau

Be sure to check out the Mardi Gras menu while you can, and be prepared for a Valentine’s Day menu at Nightcaps for the 14th.

Beignets and Masks
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Fortune X Romance at Dr. Funk in February

Valentines meets Lunar New Year at Dr. Funk in downtown San Jose, featuring themed lighting and decor, a limited edition cocktail menu, and specialty garnishes. The red theme of Fortune X Romance works pretty well as neither holiday overshadows the other.

We tried four of the five drinks on the menu, and we didn’t try the specialty desert this time. But we did enjoy most of the drinks and overall this was a strong selection of options that worked well with the well-executed theme.

Jaded Lover
Works a great companion to the jade tiles throughout the venue, but only if you’re a pandan fan since that’s the predominant ingredient. We didn’t really taste the wine float, but the 151 rum helps pack a punch.

Moonlit Blossom
It’s a Painkiller with blackberry added, served with a sparkler that’s sure to impress. We couldn’t really taste the Jamaican rum but overall this cocktail was a big hit at our table. Not as sweet as you might expect.

Red Thread
If cherries are your thing, this is the drink to get. That OFTD and Jamaican rum does push through and this cocktail has a great mouthfeel and a lollypop chaser if you feel it isn’t sweet enough. Recommended.

Smoke & Silk
The mezcal isn’t overpowering but we all felt this drink tasted a little flat and thin. The flavor was there but it needed “more” to compete with the other great drinks we tried.

The fun garnishes really make this speciality cocktail menu and theme be cohesive. This ranks among the best pop-ups that Dr. Funk has done – check it now through February 22.

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Disgruntled Mai Tai

This delicious Mai Tai riff comes from Sam Ross of Attaboy in New York City. Ross is a Bartender of the Year winner from Tales of the Cocktail and has been a staple of the NYC cocktail scene for two decades.

The drink is elaborately garnished with a little bottle of Underberg, a bitter German herbal liqueur. It also splits the rum base with Aperol, leaning into pleasant orange flavors.

Disgruntled Mai Tai by Sam Ross
1 oz Lime Juice
½ oz Orgeat
½ oz Curacao
1 oz overproof Jamaican rum, preferably Smith & Cross
1 oz Aperol
Whip shake with a small amount of crushed ice, then strain over crushed ice in double rocks glass. Then remove cap and paper cover from Underberg bottle and place nose-down into the cocktail. Garnish with mint sprig, lime wedge, freshly grated nutmeg, and cocktail umbrella.

I thought this was fantastic, though the Underberg didn’t really incorporate into the cocktail. In fact, I drank the whole thing and then lifted out the Underberg bottle which was still nearly full. So, I poured the contents out over the ice, added about ¾ oz of orgeat and then topped with soda. The orgeat balanced the bitter flavors and I found it to be quite pleasant.

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Pacific Catch’s Juicy, Boozy Mai Tai

We had a great lunch at the Pacific Catch location in Dublin, including a really great Poke bowl. This west coast chain is a favorite of ours.

I also enjoyed the juicy Mai Tai that includes POG juice and lime along with Flor de Caña silver rum, and overproof rum, and Lahaina Dark Rum. I asked for the dark rum on the side just to taste it, finding it to be mild in flavor and light in body. It is made from a stock of molasses produced a decade ago when Maui still had a sugar refinery, which is a nice bit of history even if the rum itself isn’t really anything noteworthy. I did notice they’re using Kuleana rums from the island of Hawai’i as well, so it’s nice to see Hawaiian rums in widespread use here.

Pacific Catch’s Mai Tai has a ton of flavor and leans a little boozy, making this is one my favorite island style Mai Tais.

 

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Welcome to Sugar Town

Most spirits aficionados are aware that many rums contain added sugar. During my visit to Dr. Funk I chose two that are most noteworthy in this practice.

Planteray/Plantation 20th Anniversary XO has a base of aged Barbados rum and then adds a heavy dose of sugar, making this very easy to sip with hints of coconut. This wasn’t nearly as sweet as I remember, though still very far afield of typical Barbadian rums.

XO has a rep for being really high on those added sugar lists, but was practically dry compared to Papa’s Pilar which tasted basically like maple syrup it was so sweet. That one I didn’t finish.

Having a neat pour of rum can give you insights to the brand and understand the diversity of the rum category. Some expressions are those you return to again and again. And there are others you don’t.