Category: Mai Tai

Posted on

Rock Candy Mystery Solved

Our trip to Vegas started at the San Jose Airport with some dinner and drinks at the Trader Vic’s Outpost. Our flight was delayed two hours so this wasn’t a bad place to spend some time (and turned out to be our only tiki bar visit that night due to the delay). Following Atlanta and Emeryville, this was our third Trader Vic’s location in 27 days – all on U.S. soil with three other stateside locations in development in Kona, West Hollywood, and Oakland Airport.

Navy Grog

The Mai Tai was good here as usual, as was the poke bowl. I decided to go a little off script by ordering a Navy Grog for the first time in forever. I like my Navy Grogs a little sweeter, so asked for extra Grog Mix syrup and it was really delicious and had a rich mouthfeel.

There’s some sort of story that the rock candy stick that comes with the Trader Vic’s Navy Grog can use used to sweeten the drink. Well, I stirred that thing for five minutes straight and it didn’t dissolve any appreciable amount. The reason Vic’s uses a rock candy stick for a garnish is because it takes five seconds to prepare vs. the Don the Beachcomber traditional ice cone garnish which takes considerably longer. But from several feet away they have the same sort of look. That tricky Trader!

Posted on

The Tiki Bar at Excalibur Las Vegas

Excalibur recently renovated their show lounge into a tiki theme, which was met with skepticism by many in the tiki community. Indeed, a tiki bar seems to be a poor fit for a resort themed around Medieval knights, though it isn’t any further off theme than the Johnny Rockets or Australian “Thunder from Down Under” show already on property.

The Tiki Bar features a rectangular bar, plus a very large lounge that features a stage and some TV screens that were playing The Creature from the Black Lagoon during our visit. We arrived around noon and during this time the bar is the only part that’s officially open, but the bartender kindly let our party of five sit at a cozy table in the lounge. We felt very far away from the casino floor, as the lounge sits in a corner and features good sound-proofing. Music was vintage exotica; I for sure didn’t have Les Baxter on my bingo card! The thatch walls feature artwork from various contemporary artists and the “clown tiki” elements are fairly minimal.



Overall, our party was impressed by the space and felt it was actually pretty nice. The twin peacock chair was a great capper and photo opportunity.

We have less kind things to say about the cocktails, which are priced at around $18 and definitely not great. There are some cocktail flights on the menu, but the bartender told one of us that it wasn’t a good deal and to stick with cocktails. I had the Mai Tai (orange-forward) and Tropical Tai (pineapple forward) and neither was really very good. The Sweet Surrender was a bit better, balancing juices and spicy mango syrup. The Cucumber Melon Splash is a Daiquiri with watermelon syrup and is probably the best option for craft cocktail snobs looking for balanced flavors.

Mai Tai and Tropical Tai


Happy hour runs from 5:00-7:00 and cocktails are only $8, so this is the best time to visit if you can. We think the average Excalibur guest will love the sweet cocktails, but it is too bad there isn’t maybe one or two for serious cocktail fans, such as a Rum Old Fashioned. Nonetheless, The Tiki Bar at Excalibur truly is a nice relaxing option on the South Strip.

Sweet Surrender
Posted on

Hinky Dinks Speakeasy at Trader Vic’s Emeryville

Shhh.. don’t tell anyone.

Trader Vic’s Emeryville is normally dark on Tuesdays but on this rainy February night opened the Lanyu Room as Hinky Dinks Speakeasy. This event featured a special cocktail menu including some small bites, paying tribute to Trader Vic’s original restaurant at 65th and San Pablo Ave in Oakland that opened in 1934 (this venue was later renamed Trader Vic’s, as you might have heard). Era-specific standards from DJ Speakeasy Ray set the mood perfectly, as did the mood lighting. Artifacts from the now-closed Trader Vic’s London were also a focal point.

The speakeasy motif was in force as you entered via the side door and you had to say the password obtained by calling the Trader Vic’s telephone number. This was a fun way to start the evening, including torches and a bright red light.

Cocktails for this event were well-curated and blended classic recipes with modern ones. The clarified Mai Tai called Tiki-Easy was fat-washed in peanut butter and was the standout of the evening, but the clarified Essence of San Juan was nearly as good. I also liked the Hotel Nacional which had delicious fruity notes. PB2Y2 is a Vic’s cocktail from the 1940s and uses a common Vic’s build featuring two rums and three citrus juices – leaning a bit tart but overall quite good and plenty boozy.

We’ve been told that the cocktails may cycle in and out over the next few Tuesdays, with some other vintage recipes being considered for future dates. If this event is of interest we encourage you to attend in the next few weeks to keep up the momentum, and we do plan to return in a couple weeks ourselves. It’s really great to see Trader Vic’s paying homage to their history but doing so with some fresh cocktails and loungey atmosphere.

Tiki Easy, PB2Y2, Hotel Nacional, Essence of San Juan
Posted on

Small Hand Foods Orgeat

We’ve been doing this deep dive into Mai Tais thing for a while now and I do feel it is important to challenge assumptions and revisit past experiences to see if products or the palate has changed over the years.

When I saw a new label on this bottle of Small Hand Foods Orgeat it gave me the opportunity to try this orgeat again. Small Hand has a great reputation for bottled cocktail syrups and I also am a strong advocate of their bottled ready to drink Mai Tai. But in the past I haven’t liked the taste of this orgeat nor the way it separates, requiring shaking.

Well, folks, for better or worse the taste of this orgeat has not changed. I personally find it to lean far too much into a marzipan direction, so much that I can most definitely taste it in a Mai Tai. It isn’t my thing but might be yours, though, and I’ll look forward to trying this again in another few years. In the meantime, I’ll continue to use Small Hand’s tangy and delicious and tangy Passion Fruit Syrup that’s wonderful.

Posted on

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

Posted on

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
Posted on

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.