The Art of the Mai Tai ; The Great Hawaiian Cocktail
Our friend Steve Marsh owns the Shoreline cafe. It’s the only restaurant in Santa Barbara that you can have lunch, island style, with your feet in the sand a cocktail in hand and chow on one of Enrique’s, the cook, famous jalapeño turkey casadias. (Not on the menu so you have to ask) Every Saturday my wife and I go there for lunch, rain or shine. Its our little weekly mini Hawaiian vacation. Probably one of the best kept secrets in SB. Great food great drinks. Especially Steve’s Mai tai.
Steve’s Mai Tai Recipe;
1 oz white rum
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1 oz Meyer’s dark rum
½ oz Orange Curacao
½ oz fresh pinapple juice
½ oz fresh orange juice
¼ oz sweet & sour juice
¼ oz Roses Lime Juice
¼ oz Passion Fruit Juice
Float 151 Lemon Hart rum on top
It is the one we base all others from. A perfect balance of not too sweet tropical fruity taste and a mellow mix of dark and light rum topped off with flammable 151. (No it’s not lit). Finding a blend like this tropical masterpiece is a bit of a crap shoot at most restaurants. Half the time Mai Tais are too sweet, not strong enough or like in Islands, expensive Hawaiian punch but with out the punch.
There is a larger cocktail bandwidth of acceptability when talking Mai Tais in comparison to lets say martinis, I know some of you might argue that but in a way its like developing your pallet with wine. It takes years of liver assault before you really discover the difference between two buck Chuck and Cuvaison. A bit of a gross exaggeration I know but the point is this - younger pallets typically don’t appreciate the subtleties of the better liquors and the more refined tastes of good booze.
When I first started drinking wine it was box wine and white Zin…sweet, cheap. Now, I will mostly blame my wife here, we have learned to drink beyond our budget with the more expensive sophisticated wines. My biggest mistake was buying her a wine cellar refrigerator for Christmas. Yes it does make a difference if you keep the wine at 54 degrees I must admit. But it’s kind of like filling up the Suburban with gas having one of these mini cellars. $150 for gas? I wish that’s all the cellar needed to be full. The only saving grace is Costco occasionally carries her brand or when we feel like leaning on Steve we hit him up for the bro deal on cases. Still. $20 for a bottle of fermented grape juice? It’s easy to bitch about our alcoholic indulgements but appreciating good wine has now become a standard with ourafter 5 cocktail hour. It used to be so easy in my younger days - Coors, Jose Cuervo, Two Buck Chuck, not the case anymore. Oh sure we still drink Jose but lets talk tequila another time.
Anyway, digressing again,
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I don’t think anyone that has gone to Hawaii’s Waikiki beach and had a good Mai Tai. Most of these have a splash of cheap rum, canned pineapple juice, Grenadine for that sweet cherry flavor, and a dry piece of pineapple for a garnie. Probably the best place to find a slaughtered Mai Tai is at one of those Hawaiian luau’s. I swear they use Hawaiian Punch here. If you go to the islands you will eventually go to a luau so be warned and take an extra flask of rum. Better yet drink beer here. It won’t pollute your memory of this great rum drink. As Rick Carrol states in his History of the Mai Tai, “Most Mai Tais served in Hawaii today are too strong, too sweet and, at $7 and up, too expensive. They are pale imitations of the original. Some taste like gasoline, others like cough syrup. They burn the throat, produce terrible headaches and generally give Hawaii a bad name. They should be served with a Surgeon General’s warning.” He has lots of great Mai Tai facts, recipes, and “where to get a good one” while in the islands, at this link. Summing it up, getting a good mai tai depends entirely on the bartender. They are a pain in the ass to make, encouraging a lot of short cuts, they require experience behind the bar, and are subject to the mood of the porer. But it is one of those cocktails that while watching it made by a good mixologist makes you salivate in anticipation. It’s getting close to 5:00 and I’m getting thirsty. Aloha!
Written by Eric States