The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai

Great afternoon in Sacramento as invited guests for the @sac_ohana Tiki Crawl stop at @birdsofparadiselounge. We thank consummate hosts Correy and Mariela for the invite. Fantastic decor throughout the home and backyard. So many treasures and fine art.

The rum sponsor for this stop was Santa Teresa 1796, a Solera aged column still rum from Venezuela. This isn’t my favorite style but @mrs_bravo did a fantastic job incorporating this into the cocktails. I enjoyed the 1796 Old Fashioned that included a Birds of Paradise logo on the ice cube. The spicy Chicha Cooler featured Peruvian purple corn, spices, and ginger beer. My favorite was the Tropical Kingbird featuring banana and cinnamon, with a nice Santa Teresa rum accent.

Nice to see the Sacramento Ohana folks too. Their ticketed three day tiki crawl seems to be extraordinary well organized and lots of fun with DJs, food, and vendors at the various stops.

The Kon-Tiki Room at Palmetto has been developing its own identity as a tiki bar with a pop culture orientation, thanks in part to its locale across the street from the Fox Theater concert venue. And then with Star Trek nights on Thursdays, complete with special cocktails and episodes playing on a fairly tucked away TV screen. More recently, Fridays are devoted to X-Files and Sundays feature craft projects.

Last Thursday was the first bar trivia version of Star Trek Thursdays and so I thought I’d see how this worked and maybe see how much TOS and Voyager trivia I’d be able to recall. Trivia was hosted well by Allie and Andre with prizes from Soytrek.

There weren’t high stakes but I found myself on a great team with Chris, Emily, and Ramona and between the four of us we were leading after two rounds. The third round veered from Star Trek and was Batman trivia, resulting in us falling behind another team. We tied that team on the fourth round so we fell one question short of winning (Holy Cliffhangers, Batman!). Quite fun if you have any appreciation of Star Trek – even if, like me, you haven’t watched some of the series.

Jeni and Tori did a great job keeping up with orders between rounds, and I quite enjoyed the Kon-Tiki Room’s premium Stargazer cocktail. This complex grog has a swirl of flavors and also includes Kon-Tiki’s amazing private barrel rum from Worthy Park. Kon-Tiki Room continues to buck purist expectations musically, since they were playing 80’s modern rock. Regular readers know I’d prefer something more vintage, but at least the songs being played were lesser hits you don’t hear every day (e.g. “Be Good, Johnny” by Men at Work, “Love Comes Quickly” by Pet Shop Boys). The Frozen Disco Banana is still being served, which assures a great time, every time at the Kon-Tiki Room.