April 2024 – Page 3 – The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai

April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Best Hangover Brunch in the Bay Area at Hula Hoops

After our night of tiki bar hopping in The City, we landed in South San Francisco for brunch at Hula Hoops. We were seated inside the small two-table tiki room built by Bamboo Ben, providing a quiet place to socialize and avoid the bustle in the rest of the restaurant that always been busy in our experiences. Reservations strongly recommended.

No booze for us, though I loved the non-alcoholic Banana Craze that was rich and creamy and topped by a fantastic garnish and a mountain of whipped topping. This was just what I needed. Meanwhile Mrs. Mai Tai and our friend Kristi had Iced Ube Latte with Ube ice cream as a topping that you eat first before pouring in the coffee. This was a big hit.

The main reason we wanted to try brunch here was to try the specialty pancakes. Mrs. Mai Tai went with the Ube pancakes and I went with the Lilikoi. These were easily the tallest and fluffiest pancakes that I’ve ever had, and the Lilikoi topping was a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness. The presentation for both was totally high quality as well. This was so much that we couldn’t finish, so if you’re a couple and can agree on a style these would be wonderful to split.

Brunch at Hula Hoops was a perfect hangover remedy, and we thank the Hula Hoops staff for the hospitality and for seating us in the tiki lounge.

April 8, 2024April 8, 2024

Tropical Escapism at Zombie Village

After dinner at the Tonga Room, we walked down the hill to Zombie Village for a nightcap, passing by the original Tiki Bob location at Post/Taylor. We made reservations for a booth, so we were able to socialize with friends and enjoy our cocktails.

Zombie Village is still doing a lot of things right, including well prepared cocktails and offering a large rum and spirits list for those who want to try something different. The menu is smaller than when the venue originally opened, but it is large enough to offer something for everyone and there was even a small menu of seasonal cocktails.

My go to option at Zombie Village is the Disco Banana, a blended Daiquiri riff with rhum agricole and overproof Jamaican rums. It’s delicious and was prepared and blended perfectly, one of my favorite cocktails of all time. I then used the rum list to find a premium rum for a freshly made Mai Tai. No surprise to regular readers, I chose Saint Benevolence Rum Clairin and indeed this was a wonderfully flavorful cocktail that’s even better than Zombie Village’s high-quality standard version. For rum nerds it is always appreciated when bars are able to prepare cocktails with a called spirit Hint: because they’re not batching every cocktail.

The bar was fairly busy on Saturday, though not overly so. We had great service, prompt and friendly, and we appreciate the hospitality. Zombie Village remains a stellar escapist destination in The City.

April 7, 2024April 7, 2024

Quality Cocktails are Still a Thing at San Francisco’s Tonga Room

After the San Francisco Giants home opener, we headed to The Tonga Room for a Friday night dinner and drinks. I’m pleased to report that the refreshed cocktail menu from October is still being used and that the quality hasn’t degraded at all. We will note that prices have increased $2-4 per cocktail, putting these firmly as the most expensive in town though. The Mai Tai and Hand Shaken Colada cocktails were big hits with our friends and Mrs. Mai Tai liked the tropical Mimosa-style Tiny Bubbles cocktail.

The Tonga Room’s Zombie features five different rums with falernum, grenadine, Don’s Mix, along with a bit of pineapple juice. It most certainly packs a punch, and I found it to be pretty good. I also liked the Wiki Wiki cocktail, a juicy blend of rums, spices, and just the right amount of Allspice Dram. Meanwhile, the Tiki Hunter remains the most interesting and flavor-forward tropical cocktail – don’t let the listed Jäegermeister component scare you off, it’s delicious.

The band plays on the floating stage starting at 7:00 pm, with the players this time featuring two female vocalists. This worked great on a stellar version of Fleetwood Mac’s mellow hit “Dreams.” But we continue to feel that 80s pop songs like “Crazy for You” don’t play as well as those from earlier decades. If pop must be played, the Sixties and Seventies feel more organic and connected to this retro leaning Polynesian palace.

Our dinner and service were as stellar as always. The Asian-inspired dishes are really good here, though I wish there was a little bit more variety on the menu as this is very seafood forward. The prices are fairly high, though not outside what you’d expect from a fine dining restaurant in The City. And you can’t beat the gorgeous interior with the pool and the thunderstorm that comes every 20 minutes. But remember that it’s a $1000 fine for jumping in the pool. Staff told me they’ve already had one person do this so far this year, which seems like way more than one too many.

April 5, 2024

Custom Aged Rum

Mrs. Mai Tai got me this little aging barrel for Christmas and after three months I thought it was aged well enough to bottle. The blend is about two thirds Rum Fire from Jamaica, an overproof rum at 63% ABV with overripe fruit notes, and a third Saint Benevolence Rum Clairin from Haiti, an olive/brine forward rum at 50% ABV. Both pot-still rums are unaged and will put the aging process to the test.

After three months, you can see the rum has turned very dark. I estimate the “angel’s share” loss to be at least 40%, perhaps due to the barrel not exactly being made to distiller’s quality. In fact, the fragrant blend of rum is still present on the barrel today.

In this glass, this is like nothing I’ve ever tasted thanks to the blend of two flavor bombs blended together. Yet this definitely isn’t the same as the two rums together if poured straight out of the bottle. There’s a lot of traditional flavors that you’d expect from barrel aging, but still a lot of the acetone flavor you sometimes get from overproof Jamaican rums. In the Mai Tai, this potent rum made itself known immediately but the cocktail format rounded off some of the hard edges. It is delightful if you really like to chew on your rums in a Mai Tai.

The experiment isn’t over. I’ve refilled the barrel with some Puerto Rican light rum to see how the barrel and any residual flavors from the Rum Fire and Saint Benevolence affect the flavor. We’ll have an update in three months.

April 2, 2024April 2, 2024

Tiki Palooza Seattle

Still catching up on the backlog of posts from mid-March but didn’t want to go without mentioning Tiki Palooza that was held a few weeks back in Seattle.

This event was hosted at Tim’s Tavern and started with a small tiki marketplace under the tavern’s covered patio area and some tiki drinks were served out of the adjacent trailer bar. The Tikipalooza Mai Tai was what it was, though I really enjoyed the Singapore Fling. We got to hang out in the marketplace with Andy Nazzal of Tiki Joe’s Ocean fame and bought the new CD single “Two Voyages.” Great exotica music if you haven’t heard. There was also a vendor selling Tiki Palooza swizzles.

The event transitioned indoors where Stephen Curran did a presentation about his travels to Papua New Guinea. This allowed attendees to order food or more drinks from inside the tavern, and Stephen’s presentation was top-notch with some great cultural details. With so much PNG artwork in so many tiki bars, it really was a treat to learn more about the people of the region.

The event then transitioned back to the patio for a paid/wristband entry for some live music from Tropical Itch and the Tikigraphs. The patio was in full swing, despite the cold and rainy weather, thanks to some heaters and the crowd that was filled with aloha. The bands sounded great and were very entertaining.

I lucked into being in town for this event, and it was modest in scale but was a really nice event for the Seattle crowd and a few interlopers like me.

April 1, 2024March 31, 2024

Primal Mai Tai Soap

Something a little different for Mai Tai Monday this week as we go back in time to 2002 and check out the cocktail bar by the artist Shag – a bar of soap! This was in a line-up that included a Dirty Martini and Cosmic Cosmopolitan but of course the one I picked up at Tiki Fest in Seattle was the Primal Mai Tai.

Shag himself provides the directions: “Transform your tub into a tiki temple with the Cocktail Bar so authentic it comes with tiny bubbles. Bask in the mystical Mai Tai mojo. Then tuck a paper umbrella behind your ear, and head for the nearest volcano.” In other words, use it as a special tropical treat in the tub. After 22 years, there’s a pleasant and mildly fragrant smell from this bar, though I did not take it for a proper “test drive” in the tub.

There’s also a “Simple Mai Tai” recipe on the back which I prepared as directed, and I even used some 2000s era Appleton V/X Jamaica rum to provide that true 2002 authenticity. This being a recipe prior to the Craft Cocktail Renaissance(™️), the recipe subs Grenadine in for the Orgeat and uses Bar Sugar rather than something richer.

Simple Mai Tai
1 oz Jamaican Rum
¼ oz Orange Curacao
1 tsp. Grenadine
1 tsp. Bar Sugar
Juice of ½ fresh Lime
Hand shake and pour over cracked ice. Garnish with lime peel and mint sprig.

I’m using high quality Liquid Alchemist Grenadine and this cocktail was not good. Simply using the proper Orgeat and using a Demerara Syrup rather than bar sugar really made this so much better. I guess we’ve learned a few things since 2002.

Got to hand it to Shag, though, the box and packaging are really nice and who wouldn’t have impulse bought one of these at Hot Topic back in 2002?