Mrs. Mai Tai is joining me in Tacoma for the weekend and we got things started over dinner and drinks at Trader Vic’s San Jose Airport. In our case we went with the standard Original Mai Tai for me and the Guava Tai for Mrs. Mai Tai, both wonderful.
I was intrigued by the Angry Bastard cocktail which is described as being “A spiced concoction with coconut, orange and pineapple” which sounds like a Painkiller. Our server Maria said it wasn’t a Painkiller and indeed it was anything but with some very pleasant and sweet fruity flavors (guava, likely) to go along with that coconut. Really great, nicely served in the classic Suffering Bastard mug.
Trader Vic’s was really busy at dinner, so the extra seating they added last year really came in handy. The Spam Musubi and the Vic’s Chicken Salad were prepared very well and we enjoyed some exotica music playing in the bar too. I looked at the back bar and spotted a Mount Gay 1703 but sadly SJC is unable to make an alternate rum Mai Tai.
TV SJC remains the greatest airport bar in this writer’s opinion, and we are so looking forward to the Vic’s location at the Oakland Airport supposedly coming later this year.
We had a great dinner at sunset over at Trader Vic’s Emeryville on Saturday, including a great view of the harbor. I enjoyed my all-time favorite Crab Rangoon plus a Trader Vic’s Salad with salmon so tasty. There were at least four tables with people celebrating birthdays, and the staff led the venue in multiple “Happy Birthday” rounds and a bowl of ice cream.
Mrs. Mai Tai got the seating going in style, ordering a Smoke Show that provided a wonderful unveiling experience and a smoky flavor to the clarified cocktail.
Meanwhile, I went a little off script by choosing one of the Tropical Tais from the menu, choosing the passionfruit version. That little extra passionfruit is nice in that it does not overpower the cocktail but provides a different flavor from a traditional Mai Tai. I’ve also enjoyed the guava and Mango versions in the past.
Had a fantastic cocktail at Trader Vic’s Emeryville, where I’ve often called a different top-shelf rum for a Mai Tai to great result. This time, I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day two days early by having a “Dublin Tai,” a Mai Tai with Jameson Irish Whiskey replacing the rum.
Irish Whiskeys tend to be lighter in overall character than Scotch or Bourbon, and in this case the cocktail was not unlike the light rum variant of the Mai Tai called Menehune Juice where the less assertive rum turns the cocktail into brighter and fruitier variant. Such was the case of the Dublin Tai where you could taste the whiskey but it was an accent flavor and not up front.
The lounge in Trader Vic’s was hopping on Saturday but our friends were lucky to snag a hi-top just in time so we could have a drink before our dinner reservation. Always nice to see things busy at Trader Vic’s and to still have a fabulous cocktail.
The House without a Key restaurant’s reputation for having a great Mai Tai goes back to at least the 1990s when I first started researching Mai Tais in Hawai’i, at the time notably being a Mai Tai known to omit the pineapple juice commonly used.
During my 1999 visit I thought the drink included a touch too much lime, though others who provided reviews to our site during that period raved consistently. The look and overall makeup of this cocktail hasn’t changed at all since that time, still one of the better Mai Tais in Waikiki and made in the style of the early Hawaiian Mai Tais with equal parts of the sweeteners and the use of light and dark rums.
Note that Bacardi Select is the older name for today’s Bacardi Black rum.
Mai Tai from June 2022
2002
This recipe was included in an August 2002 article in the Honolulu Star Bulletin, where bartender Curtis Wong described the rums as being a high-quality blend and that they make at least 100 Mai Tais per night often making 40 at a time in an assembly line-like process. This is substantially similar to the current recipe, though the use of lemon juice is a curious choice.
2002 Halekulani Mai Tai 1¼ oz Lemon Juice ½ oz Orgeat ½ oz Rock Candy Syrup ½ oz Orange Curacao (Cointreau) ¾ oz Bacardi Select ¾ oz Bacardi Gold Rum Combine ingredients over crushed ice Float ½ oz Lemon Hart 151 Rum Garnish with lime wheel, sugar cane stick, and vanda orchid
Mid-2000s Era
This recipe was recently included in Beachbum Berry’s Total Tiki app, attributing the date to 2006. We found references to this recipe on the Halekulani’s website throughout the 2010s. The use of the now-discontinued Bacardi 151 means you can’t truly replicate this at home, and the swap was likely due to supply constraints of Lemon Hart during that period.
Mid-2000s Halekulani Mai Tai 1¼ oz Lime Juice ⅓ oz Orgeat ⅓ oz Rock Candy Syrup ⅓ oz Orange Curacao ¾ oz Bacardi 151 Rum ¾ oz Bacardi Gold Rum Combine ingredients over crushed ice Float ¾ oz Bacardi Select Garnish with lime wedge, lime wheel, sugar-cane stick, mint leaf, and vanda orchid
Mai Tai from June 2019
2020s / Current Era
First included on the Halekulani website in 2020, this version still relies on a base Bacardi rums but once again features Lemon Hart 151 for a float that provides just enough additional rummy flavor. On occasion we’ve seen that Myers’s is used when supplies of Lemon Hart are unavailable, much to the detriment to the overall character of the cocktail, but if you can get this with Lemon Hart it is really a fantastic Mai Tai.
Halekulani Mai Tai – Current 1¼ oz Lime Juice ⅓ oz Orgeat ⅓ oz Rock Candy Syrup ⅓ oz Orange Curacao (Cointreau) ¾ oz Bacardi Select/Black Rum ¾ oz Bacardi Gold Rum Combine ingredients over crushed ice Float ½ oz Lemon Hart 151 Rum Garnish with lime wheel, sugar cane stick, and vanda orchid
Alter Ego is a dimly lit speakeasy style lounge with cocktails and small bites located inside Still O.G. on First Street in downtown San Jose. Reservations for two-hour seatings are essential later in the evenings, but we arrived promptly at opening and it didn’t really fill up until about 90 minutes later.
Cocktails at Alter Ego lean on classics, though there is a little bit of something for those who enjoy tropical cocktails or cane/agave spirits. I thoroughly enjoyed the vibrant flavors of the Easytiger served on crushed ice with “Amaro, Railla, Allspice, Almond, Lemon, and Tobacco Bitters.” I followed up with the Paper Plane riff called Dogfight that is made with Bourbon, Amaro, Aperitivo, Lemon Essence, and Orange Bitters and comes with a little paper airplane as a garnish.
EasytigerDogfight
Mrs. Mai Tai’s Annabel Lee features a smoke bubble and the Pisco Sour riff has Bolivian Brandy, Pommeau, Aperitivo, Smoked Pineapple, Chili, Tamarind, Egg White, and Lime – plus a stencil on top that reveals itself when the bubble bursts. Julie loves coffee drinks so the Kyushu Coffee was right up her alley and very rich, featuring Shochu, Coffee, Kuromitsu, Black Sesame, Heavy Cream, and Salt. You can see these look great and use a lot of really interesting ingredients. We saw several other cocktails with inventive garnishes and glassware.
Annabel Lee
Alter Ego also serves gastronomical small plates, quite well executed and featuring a symphony of flavors well beyond typical bar fare. I loved the rich Guinea Fowl with truffles and the Scallop dish with just the right amount of chili spices.
The elegant vibe inside Alter Ego is relaxing and dark, and there’s no sound bleed from Still O.G. on the other side of the curtain. Our cocktails were fantastic and the staff did a wonderful job preparing everything and being responsive for additional orders. Nice to see old friends Ken and Paul still doing the amazing cocktail thing at a different venue in downtown San Jose.
We dropped into Dr. Funk near opening on Sunday for a chill time relaxing with some rums from Jamaica that are on the Rum Asylum Level 1 list.
I compared two rums that have different approaches to the market, choosing Dr. Funk’s allocation of Myers’s Single Barrel Select rum and Worthy Park 109 dark rum. Both are affordable and approachable expressions, the Myers’s best for sipping and comparable to some of the lower aged Appleton rums. Worth Park is my go-to for cocktails when a “dark Jamaican rum” is called for and tastes a lot better in a glass than Pusser’s which I also tried during the sitting.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Mai Tai tried Planteray Xaymaca in the Daiquiri format and it turned out really great. Very drinkable and so much more flavorful than a cocktail made with light rum.
We recently popped by Cosmo Alley / Trader Vic Alley in San Francisco.
This was the location of the then-flagship location of Trader Vic’s when it opened in 1950 and eventually became so famous that the Queen of England dined with President Reagan and had her first meal in any restaurant. This Vic’s location closed in 1994 before I got into tiki, so was never able to visit. The restaurant’s successor Le Colonial closed a while back and recent news indicates there’s a desire to transform the area from a parking lot into an urban park.
This is across the street from the old Tiki Bob’s location, now the Honey Honey cafe. We also noticed there’s a Vic’s Cleaners around the corner and wondered if this business might date from the days when Trader Vic’s was one of the leading restaurants in the city.
