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34 MYROUSESEVERYDAY JULY | AUGUST 2016
the Cocktail issue
If you were to travel to the headwaters of the midcentury tiki
movement—in an outrigger, obviously, with a torch in one hand
and a rum drink in the other—you’d discover that you’d arrived
in New Orleans of the 1920s.
Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt—the man who single-handedly
launched the tiki trend (sometimes called “Polynesian Pop”)— as
raised inMandeville and NewOrleans by his grandfather, a raconteur
and rum-runner who also ran a legitimate import-export business.
Gantt was smitten by the exotic world of NewOrleans and theWest
Indies, which he discovered on sailing trips with his grandfather. As
a young man, he opted to travel the world rather than attend college,
and finally washed ashore for a spell in Los Angeles. In 1934, the
year after Prohibition ended, he opened up a small bar called Don
the Beachcomber’s. He served flamboyant, tropical-inflected drinks
made of rums and fruit juices. He decorated his place with stuff he’d
foraged on his travels and collected around town—blowfish lamps,
rusty anchors and woven grass mats on the walls.
His raffish bar attracted Hollywood actors and writers, and soon
attracted another breed: copycats. Among them was a man named
Victor Bergeron,who in 1937 would convert his Oakland restaurant,
called Hinky Dink’s, into another South Pacific fantasy world. He
named it Trader Vic’s.
And so tiki—a style named after South Pacific statues depicting
the other worldly—grew and blossomed, soon establishing itself
as the American rococo. It was as if the Florentine and Baroque
ages had honeymooned on a Thai bus while quaffing served high-
proof cocktails. Customers often entered a tiki temple through a
grotto, crossing a bridge over burbling waters to let them know they
were departing the familiar world. Most lacked windows—no one
wanted to be reminded of the grey and gritty present or dine with a
dispiriting view of a parking lot. Inside it was faux parrots and fake
thunder, hula dancers and flaming cocktails.Tiki fully embraced the
motto “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
Which was also the philosophy of the drinks.Tiki drinks had names
that sounded like a map of a Pacific archipelago: Nui Nui, Pago
Pago, Aku-Aku Lapu.They were served in water buffalo horns and
tiki heads and volcano blows sputtering with blue flame.The drinks
also had one other characteristic: many were outstanding.They were
made with fresh fruit juices and top-shelf
rums; many places mixed a variety of rums
in single drink, with each bringing its own
distinctive character to the drink.
Tiki established its roots before World
War II, but not until the war ended and
squadrons of sailors and soldiers returned
from the South Pacific did it hit its stride.
This was the age of High Tiki, when the
fanciest restaurants with the most sought-
after seats were adorned with thatch, where a gong sounded when
the “famous mystery drink” was served. (The menu of a famous tiki
bar and restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, helpfully noted that the
serving “symbolizes an ancient sacrifice, which reportedly stopped
volcanoes from erupting.”)
New Orleans had its own tiki temple, of course—the Bali Hai, part
of the Pontchartrain Beach amusement park, which served Mai Tais
and other exotica from 1958 well into the 1980s. It was launched
by Harry J. Batt, Sr. (grandfather of local notables Bryan and Jay
Batt), who created the park, naming his restaurant after a song in
South Pacific. It was also about this time that Pat O’Brien’s became
more widely famous for its Hurricane, which they’ve served since
the 1930s.The Hurricane isn’t technically a tiki drink—after all, it’s
not served in a tiki bar and doesn’t stop volcanoes from erupting.
But it soared in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, and ordering
one before you even unpacked your suitcase became a traveler’s
right of passage.
Tiki put the “life” in “lifestyle,” but it was soon eclipsed. A new
generation was less interested in drink and more fascinated by other
intoxicants, trading tiki mugs for rolling papers. Many of the tiki
joints that survived did so by cutting corners, using cheap rum and
canned juices, then hiding it all under a small, colorful parasol. Like
a lost Atlantis, the tiki world slipped beneath the waves.
The good news? Tiki is back. Tiki temples have opened in the
past few years in cities like San Francisco, Chicago and both
Portland, Maine and Oregon. And they’re attracting attention not
through the knowing wink and a forklift full of kitsch, but via their
outstanding drinks—some made with eight or more ingredients,
allowing visitors to rediscover a lost world, one sip at a time.
Virtually everyone who’s embraced the recent tiki revival credits one
person with bringing it back: Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. A southern
California native who was making a living as a screenwriter in the
1990s, he spent several decades tracking down the secret recipes for
drinks served in the sacked temples, interviewing retired bartenders
and decoding notebooks filled with secret recipes. Berry published
his research in six books, which have attracted a devoted following.
(Virtually every tiki bar that’s opened in the past decade relies
heavily on Berry’s rediscovered drinks.)
Tiki Talkby Wayne Curtis
It’s Tiki Time at Rouses. Catch a Tiki cooking class with Chef John D. Meisler’s this
summer at a Rouses near you. Visit for class schedules and details.