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.
This is a very serviceable Mai Tai that would be a pretty good destination if not for the fact that it is four doors down from Dr. Funk on San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose.
Trader Bob’s Mai Tai features the excellent Smith & Cross Jamaica rum, but whereas Dr. Funk pairs Smith & Cross with Appleton 12 year, District pairs it with the underwhelming Planteray Original Dark. So, this is just an okay rum blend. The lightly garnished cocktail also features homemade Orgeat plus Falernum, though I thankfully didn’t get a ton of spice notes that you sometimes get from Falernum. Overall, the flavor profile leans light and something a bit more than mild, and it is well balanced.
District seems to have a lot of focus on wine but also has a nice cocktail menu including this 1944 style Mai Tai. It is another quality destination in downtown San Jose.
Spoilers ahead for the most recent episode of Make and Drink on YouTube
When Derek from Make and Drink invited me for a blind test of the core lineup of Appleton Estate rums I was confident that I would prefer my favorite expression from the range, Appleton 12 Rare Casks. This has been my go-to single bottle Mai Tai for over a decade, featuring a blend of pot and column still distillate, long tropical aging, and a rich flavor that works great in the cocktail.
I was also expecting to not prefer Appleton’s entry level expression, Appleton Signature, aged for around four years and a lower proof as well. And I also expected to not really dig Appleton’s longest aged expression, Appleton 21 Nassau Valley Casks. In the past my perception was that I didn’t really like this rum feeling that the body was not as heavy nor as complex despite two decades of aging.
Such was my surprise that I preferred Appleton 21, and it honestly wasn’t even close! The bold barrel notes worked well with the rest of the Mai Tai ingredients to present something that had a bit more to chew on than my second favorite in the blind test, Appleton 12. I feel less bad in that Derek preferred the 21 as well. Of course, Appleton 21 being three times the price of Appleton 12 means that it wasn’t like the Mai Tai was three times better, so factoring price into account Appleton 12 is still the winner.
The blind test shows that you need to check your assumptions from time to time and address the reality that your taste can change over time or that perhaps your previous experience was an off day for your palette. Apologies for the shade, Appleton 21.
We thank Derek for providing the venue to taste the rums in this format.
Check out today’s episode of Make and Drink where I visited the Make and Drink bar to try all of the mainstream Appleton Estate Rum releases in a Mai Tai and via a blind taste test to declare a winner.
This was similar to the Single Bottle Mai Tai Rum challenge I did with Derek last year, though this time the results didn’t quite go as expected at least for this writer. In any case, this was a lot of fun and hopefully informative. Appleton makes great rums and any great rum will do well in the Mai Tai cocktail format.
The Appleton Estate rums we tested were:
Appleton Signature
Appleton 8 yr Reserve
Appleton 12 yr Rare Casks
Appleton 15 yr Black River Casks
Appleton 21 yr Nassau Valley Casks
Be sure to stick to the end to see the results that might shock you.
