Results tagged “tiki”

May be going here for NoXmas. Sounds awesome.

Say goodbye to the scenic drive, hello to museums and thrift shopping for hula girl lamps and Hawaiian shirts, right? Wrong. Forty minutes later, the sky was azure, the sun ferocious.

The small, old-fashioned city of Hilo is on the east coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, in a perfect position to catch the clouds that form when the warm, moist Pacific Ocean trade winds hit the long, cool slopes of Mauna Loa. The accordionlike folds and grooves of the jewel-green slopes and the uneven coastline and fluctuating ocean temperatures ensure that clouds meander around Hilo as unpredictably as ghost spirits. One day, around noon, I was walking down a sunny street in Hilo, worried because I'd left the sunscreen back in the room. Then I glanced across the street: the other side was shady and bathed in a vaporous mist.

I soon grew to love Hilo rain. It is a reason this city of around 50,000 has remained largely untouched since the days when it was the thriving center of the Big Island's plantation economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While the Kona area, on the west coast of the Big Island, has become a major Hawaiian tourist draw, Hilo remains sleepy and mostly condo-free -- few are enticed to build in an area that typically receives measurable rain 278 days of the year.

Good news, everyone. Now, if only they could open one a little closer to me ... say in Toronto.

Still, this will give me reasons to go down there, now that ISPCON is defunct, and my brother appears to be moving to Australia with his family.

Hopefully, having a new tiki bar in SF will forgive the (potential) closure of the Tonga Room, and the bad experience of finding a urine-soaked alcove where the defunct Trader Vic's used to be (I can't believe people are still writing reviews for the closed location).

This fall, San Francisco will become home to Smuggler's Cove, a new bar designed to celebrate the incredible diversity and versatility of the world's most exciting spirit: Rum. Smuggler's Cove offers a whole new approach to rum by featuring a vast array of traditional Caribbean drinks, classic libations of Prohibition-Era Havana, and famous exotic cocktails from legendary tiki bars- all under one roof. In addition, Smuggler's Cove will offer an unparalleled selection of rare and premium rums from around the world carefully selected for enjoying on their own or skillfully blended into cocktails. For over a decade, owner and creator Martin Cate has been passionate about rum & tropical cocktails. He was the co-creator, designer and chief mixologist for Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, CA. He has judged in international rum competitions, met with over a dozen rum distillers in five countries, and lectured at Bourbon and Branch's Beverage Academy, Tales of the Cocktail, and Tiki Oasis.

Rum Bar Opening This Fall In San Francisco

December 5th marks the 75th anniversary of Repeal Day, the end of 13 years of prohibition in the U.S. You should celebrate tonight.

Prohibition - Celebrating the End of an Era - Slashfood

Here's an interesting essay on the Mai Tai. It explains how a drink with such a closely guarded secret recipe (like the "Flaming Moe") could cause such confusion down the line. The drink wasn't even published in Trader Vic's books:

Since Trader Vic was not about to share this recipe with his customers, much less other bartenders, if somebody happened to have a Mai Tai at Trader Vic, and then innocently attempted to order it at another bar, they would of course have a problem. At first, most bartenders would not have heard of this drink before, and so would admit their inability to make this drink for their customer, but in many cases they would try to quiz the customer as to what they recall about the drink, and thus be able to provide them with a close approximation. Imagine the customer describing the drink as: "It was a rum drink, with some sort of juices in it, and I think a bit of a reddish color". This of course could describe almost any of the drinks served by these Tiki bars, and yet the bartender would often try to piece something together that would make their customer happy. Often, they would come up with something that probably tasted quite good, and thus the next time a customer came in asking for a Mai Tai, they would deftly mix up another one of these drinks and eventually it would probably even make it onto their bar menu. This process would have then eventually brought about a dozen different recipes being served at the dozens of different Tiki bars across the country. Eventually, the dilution of this drink would have gotten so great, that the various bars themselves would have forgotten exactly how they came about these recipes, to the point of thinking that perhaps "they" were the origin of this by now common cocktail.