ValentinesDay – The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai

Valentines meets Lunar New Year at Dr. Funk in downtown San Jose, featuring themed lighting and decor, a limited edition cocktail menu, and specialty garnishes. The red theme of Fortune X Romance works pretty well as neither holiday overshadows the other.

We tried four of the five drinks on the menu, and we didn’t try the specialty desert this time. But we did enjoy most of the drinks and overall this was a strong selection of options that worked well with the well-executed theme.

Jaded Lover
Works a great companion to the jade tiles throughout the venue, but only if you’re a pandan fan since that’s the predominant ingredient. We didn’t really taste the wine float, but the 151 rum helps pack a punch.

Moonlit Blossom
It’s a Painkiller with blackberry added, served with a sparkler that’s sure to impress. We couldn’t really taste the Jamaican rum but overall this cocktail was a big hit at our table. Not as sweet as you might expect.

Red Thread
If cherries are your thing, this is the drink to get. That OFTD and Jamaican rum does push through and this cocktail has a great mouthfeel and a lollypop chaser if you feel it isn’t sweet enough. Recommended.

Smoke & Silk
The mezcal isn’t overpowering but we all felt this drink tasted a little flat and thin. The flavor was there but it needed “more” to compete with the other great drinks we tried.

The fun garnishes really make this speciality cocktail menu and theme be cohesive. This ranks among the best pop-ups that Dr. Funk has done – check it now through February 22.

The Beetlejuice and Grinch pop-ups at Dr. Funk must have done great, because downtown San Jose’s premier tiki bar is dipping into another themed menu and decor for Valentine’s Day. The pop-up launched on Saturday and runs through February 22nd.

The interior is a symphony of reds and pinks, with some nice lighting on the backbar so that you can actually see the rum and premium spirits, plus a cool lighting package on the outside of the bar that draws you into the theme (as an aside, can we please stop calling this a “hidden tiki bar”, Dr. Funk?). There’s even a “kissing booth” that’s designed for social media.

We felt that previous two special cocktail menus were only okay, but the crew did a wonderful job with the specialty cocktails this time. Most come with a strawberry-based garnish to remind you of a heart and some conversation heart picks.

Our favorite was the Lovebird, made with the same Jamaican rum blend as Dr. Funk’s Mai Tai, strawberry-infused Aperol, and juices. This rich and bold cocktail has a ton of flavor and isn’t too sweet.

Shot to the Heart was less sweet than you might have expected from the ingredients including a sugared rum and honey, but instead the light touch of passionfruit meant this was balanced well and had a great mouthfeel.

Heartbreaker is essentially a Painkiller with lighter rum and some raspberry added, still not overly sweet and a great option for tiki newbies who want something approachable.

The most crushable of all the cocktails was the Mad Love that has gin, vanilla liqueur, strawberry, and juices. This was very, very easy to drink but still has a lot of flavor.

I was impressed by the special cocktail menu, though I do hope to someday visit Dr. Funk when it is just a plain old regular tiki bar. We also had dinner last night and the staff couldn’t have been nicer and were very attentive even though it was fairly busy. We even caught a bit of DJ Ship Rex’s set as we were leaving.

Tag: ValentinesDay

Fortune X Romance at Dr. Funk in February

Dr. Funk Valentine’s Affair