Author: Kevin Crossman

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Clarified Ultimate Mai Tai

Huge shout out to our buddy Rex Stone (aka DJ Ship Rex) who brought a clarified version of the Ultimate Mai Tai to a recent gathering. Clarified cocktails are an area that I’m not deeply familiar with but sounds like Rex used standard milk washing techniques.

The resulting elixir is very smooth to drink but still has plenty of the flavor that the Ultimate Mai Tai is famous for. So, if you’ve ever thought about trying it I can tell you that the effort will be worth it – even better, if there’s any left over from the gathering then clarified version will last for days.

So, cheers to Rex for making the effort and delivering a fantastic Mai Tai in a different format. One of the best Mai Tais of the year.

The Ultimate Mai Tai rum blend features equal portions of Appleton 12, Smith & Cross, Planteray Xaymaca, and Planteray OFTD rum.

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Pau Hana Studio: Holiday Open Studio

Sunday afternoon’s drive up to the Oakland Hills was so pleasant but paled at the festive time at Pau Hana Studio‘s Holiday Open Studio. The event showcased the activities at the studio, focusing on Woody Miller’s ceramics, lamps, and other art that’s featured in tiki bars far and wide. Additionally, there was a mini marketplace with artist in residence Laura Head, Joe Kent’s alohaware, and some really great sweet treats from Bristlecone Bakery. Lively festive music from DJ Danny Santos set the mood, plus some drinks and treats for those visiting.

Laura Miller and Woody Miller from Pau Hana Studio

Pau Hana Studio has been running craft classes for the last couple years and announced a series of new ones for the 1st quarter of 2026. Iconic Tiki Mugs returns, allowing attendees to see the full production process for a tiki mug and to glaze one to their liking. The popular Black Velvet Painting, Lamp Building, and Carving Tiki Bar Signs classes are also returning. One new class that I’ve already signed up for is Knot-Tying for Glass Floats, taught by Kristin Moore of Fore and Aft Oar Designs. You can check out all the class details on Pau Hana’s website.

Woody also showed off some mugs connected to new tiki bar projects that look amazing, plus the recently released collaboration with Smuggler’s Cove and a wall of his greatest hits. He was also kind enough to sign a few Kon-Tiki Oakland items I’ve collected over the years.

DJ Danny Santos
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Nightmare Before Christmas at Dr. Funk San Jose

Downtown San Jose’s cocktail scene is really hitting its stride, and there are tons of holiday offerings so Dr. Funk is doing another holiday pop-up to blend their tiki bar with a themed overlay. This year’s theme is Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, including some fab decor and special menu items.

Worm’s Wort, What’s This, and Deadly Nightside

Given that this movie franchise has roots in both Halloween and Christmas, the team at Dr. Funk smartly leaned into the Christmas side for this particular pop-up and as with previous efforts the decor team create an immersive space that looks great and is a lot of fun. There are five specialty cocktails, plus a brownie and ice cream desert.

Consistent with previous Dr. Funk pop-ups I felt that these cocktails were good overall, with no stinkers in the bunch. Deadly Nightside is basically a Mai Tai with activated charcoal and it’s fine but doesn’t really hold a candle to Dr. Funk’s regionally famous Mai Tai that’s always great. But this is a nice change of pace, especially if you find the Dr. Funk’s Mai Tai to be too assertive.

By far the best of the cocktails is the Hot Buttered Rum riff called Dr. Finklestein’s Creation. This hearty and spice-forward cocktail has several overproof rums to help warm you during those cold San Jose nights, and the large portion was served in a great mug. I know the character in the movie is called “Finklestein” but one wonders if “Dr. Funklestein” would have been more appropriate.

Nightmare Before Christmas runs through December 31, reservations highly encouraged.

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Lost Recipe: Camparinara

This historical punch recipe was recently discovered and amplified by Derek on his Make and Drink channel on YouTube. It is Campari-forward, with other ingredients familiar to tropical and exotic cocktail fans.

In Derek’s video he published two single cocktail versions of the Camparinara and I chose the one that’s more rum forward. It originally calls for ginger and clove and so I used Falernum in place of the Ginger Syrup that Derek used. And rather than using Allspice Dram I used “Don’s Spices no. 2” which is equal parts Allspice dram and Vanilla Syrup.

It’s a really interesting and very flavorful cocktail that I’d like to see commercial tiki bars adopt. Cheers to Derek for finding this lost treasure.

Camparinara – Rummy Version on Ice
1 oz Lemon juice
2 tsp Falernum
2 tsp Cinnamon syrup
2 tsp Don’s Spices no. 2
1 oz Campari
2 oz Rum (Mount Gay XO)
Shake with ice and strain over a large ice cube. Garnish with ground nutmeg.

Watch the video on YouTube

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Happy 8th Instagramiversary to Me

The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai was relaunched on Instagram in December 2017, reviving the brand started way back in 1998. 2700 posts in total and 247 in the last year, chronicling experiences with cocktails, connections with people in the community, and world’s leading feed of Mai Tai minutiae.

We had some great adventures in the last 12 months. A few are chronicled in the photos including some travels with Mrs Mai Tai to far off places such as Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and San Diego. We visited SeaTac for a long weekend and even experienced a tiki bar blackout! We had memorable trips to SoCal including New Year’s Eve at Lucky Tiki and attending the Rum Curious Summit in Long Beach. Locally, I spoke at SF Rum Fest, spoke and toasted at Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Day, and I hosted Mai Tai Trivia in at Dr. Funk in San Jose. I was featured on episodes of the Make & Drink channel on YouTube, including a blind tasting of Appleton Rum Mai Tais, as well as the Tiki Talk Show podcast.

I visited 46 different tiki bars in the last year, plus several home bars including bartending a Circus Peanut party in Marin County. We returned to Europe, including Trader Vic’s in Munich, Matiki in Vienna, and Mata Hari in Zurich. The Ultimate Mai Tai remains on the menu at Tiki Tom’s, but we had to say goodbye to our beloved Kon-Tiki Oakland. Thank you to so many folks in the industry who’ve shown what true hospitality is.

So, thanks to so many fellow Mai Tai fans I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with over the last year. I appreciate your follows, likes, and comments online and in real-life, where UMT stickers are usually enthusiastically received. Here’s to another year.

Cheers!

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Mata Hari Bar Zürich is Great but Not for Everyone

One part tiki bar, one part rock and roll club, Mata Hari Bar marches to their own drummer in Gewerbeschule. We walked over and arrived right at opening on a Thursday, with deep cut Ramones, Calvin Russell, and the Stones darker themed “Paint it Black” and “Sympathy for the Devil” playing. The lounge has cushy seating with plenty of tikis and bamboo, plus some edgier elements such burlesque event posters and the skull-shaped toilets.

So, it’s a pretty good tiki bar, but only if you can hang with the music – we found it to be immersive enough and lacking classic rock or top 40 which would have truly broken the illusion.

Our bartender Mario came over to take our order and steered Mrs Mai Tai to the flaming Zombie which was a little different but still pretty good. Even better was the “Donn Beach Style” Mai Tai that I thought was great – a really chewy rum blend and balanced sweet and sour elements, and not too spicy like some Don the Beachcomber drinks can be.

On our second round, we went with a Missionary’s Downfall that had a good peach flavor but could have used a bit more mint. The namesake Mata Hari cocktail leans lighter thanks to soda and is effectively a very tasty mango-forward rum highball.

I know that tiki bars that don’t play exotica or Hawaiian music can be a turn-off for some folks, but I totally loved the vibe of Mata Hari. As long as the music is cohesive and stuff you haven’t heard a million times before, it’s okay with me as long as the other elements are in place. Those other things are done so very well at Mata Hari judging by our experience and the recommendations of so many people we heard from. Check it out in Zürich.

Zombie, Mai Tai, Missionary’s Downfall, Mata Hari
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Kon-Tiki Zürich

Kon-Tiki bar and coffeeshop was less than ten minutes from our hotel, on the eastern half of old town in Zürich in an area known as Niederdorf. The place started in the 1950s, with an opening under current management in 2017. While there are some tikis and other traditional elements, this venue has dive leanings and a rougher reputation due to raucous live music and DJ sets on some nights. We were welcomed on our visit for a couple cocktails in the late afternoon and explored the first floor, avoiding the second floor where there’s smoking/purchase of various things which we don’t cover on the blog. It’s that kind of coffeeshop.

The Mai Tai here is fairly good, a bit tart for our taste, yet still with a nice rum finish. Mrs Mai Tai tried an original cocktail called Tiki Tea that featured Skipper Rum, falernum, orgeat, and CBD iced tea. It tasted pretty nice to me though she didn’t really care for it.

Tiki Tea and Mai Tai

The nods to the famous Kon-Tiki voyage are available throughout the venue and we liked all the various event posters plastering the walls. Tiki bars come in all kinds of styles and Kon-Tiki presents as an unpretentious and grungy type.