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mix of honey and butter which needs straining that took longer than expected and left our table with a brief but manageable drought but generally the drinks kept flowing and stayed coordinated with their intended food pairings of which the ginger sesame scallop and coconut crawfish cake with a spicy slaw and cilantro jalapeño lime dressing was the clear winner in my book chef richard hughes did an equally outstanding a job getting meals out hot and fresh the nui nui was my favorite drink of the night although someone at our table thought the allspice and cinnamon made it taste too much like a christmas cookie after which each sip brought visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in my head the missionary s downfall blended with fresh mint rum lime peach brandy and pineapple was very green and very minty the classic 1944 trader vic mai tai was made with rhum clement vsop which was a bit woody for my taste on the initial sip but i found method in this madness when i tasted the pork ribeye with five spice mango barbecue sauce the two paired up like a deconstructed grilled meal with the smoky taste of the drink complementing the full sweet flavor of the pork the final drink of the night was a beauty the don the beachcomber bo lo served in cored pineapples with the tops reattached with toothpicks even though we all had been sufficiently numbed by the five drinks leading up to this the trays of pineapples making their way through the room was like the grand finale of a tiki fireworks display and the drink made with molasses and sugar cane rums lime pineapple juices passionfruit and honey mix served as a great nightcap masquerading as a dessert add this to the fine evening i got to sit with rum collector stephen remsberg and talk about rum for several hours and nobody noticed or thought it weird labels events posted by wayne curtis at 5 57 pm wednesday january 30 2008 rum and chutney it s a safe bet you could drive from new york to california on two lane roads and listen to songs about whiskey for a week and never hear the same song twice whiskey before breakfast whiskey in a jar evil whiskey woman drinkin rye whiskey and on and on sad songs cheerful songs country songs hard rock songs and a surplus of tunes about loose women and skanky bars a trip with a mix tape of american songs about rum and rum drinks won t even get you from your home to the nearest wal mart if you don t count the 1979 pina colada song and you shouldn t because the lyrics are beyond appalling if you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain if you re not into yoga if you have half a brain the number of memorable songs about rum comes to precisely one rum and coca cola the andrews sisters hit that shot to the top of the charts in 1944 i devote the a chapter of and a bottle of rum to the cultural economic and political forces that cleared the path for this song s rise to stardom the gist of the history is this the song was an adaptation of a trinidadian ballad swiped by an american comedian visiting an island army base during wwii then sent into the stratosphere by american singers but scratch the surface in trinidad today and you ll find a whole slew of rum songs many recent variations of a popular hybrid subcontinent goes soca style called chutney about forty percent of the population of trinidad is of indian descent an article on the subject recently ran in the trinidad and tobago express under the headline rum and chutney the latest carnival drink having made cocktails using rum and raspberry preserves recently my first thought was well this sounds interesting then i clicked and remembered oh yeah chutney the music the trend kicked off about five years ago but songs celebrating rum or celebrating rum continue to crop up on the island with a couple of new songs released for the current carnival season here are some of the lyrics which i don t think will be licensed anytime soon by major spirits corporations for use in advertising campaigns hey listen mister shankar you sayin i is a drunkard you doh want me to marry yuh daughter but yuh doin me a favour cause i ain t want yuh daughter she too damn ugly anyway more rum for me more rum for me more rum for me more rum for me and this rum kill mih mother rum kill mih father rum kill mih whole family rum kill mih brother rum kill mih sister now it want to come and kill me but i doh really care what people say oh ah drinking today and ah drinking forever and more yuh could bring it in a bottle yuh could bring it in a flask you could send it in a cup you could bring it in a glass ah want mih rum in de morning ah want mih rum in de evening trinidad is clearly a culture that appreciates rum a confession i know i gave short shrift to rap in my inventory of american music above rappers appear to like rum although not as much as hennessy but seriously some rapper somewhere surely must be able to improve upon rhyming bacardi and party labels history trends posted by wayne curtis at 4 22 pm saturday december 29 2007 whoa nellie an excellent crop of cocktail books came available during the holiday season this year offering great possibilities for elaborate experiments after thanksgiving i was dipping into one of the books the wonderfully written and illustrated in the land of cocktails by ti adelaide martin and lally brennan when i came across an odd sounding drink with a good pedigree the authors are the proprietors of the incomparable commander s palace in new orleans and for this book they pulled together a great collection of drinks including many local favorites like the vieux carré and the brandy milk punch plus classics like the papa doble and french 75 two variations i was intrigued by the whoa nellie not only for the name but the ingredient list and its provenance according to their write up it was concocted recently by ted dr cocktail haigh on a visit to town when he basically rifled through the fridge to see what he could find he threw some things together took a sip and said whoa nellie it s an odd mix of ingredients but it comes together with perfect balance and none of the seams showing it s got a distinctly pre prohibition taste profile heavier on the bitters than the sweet i ve been making it for friends the past few weeks none of whom have refused seconds here s the recipe it deserves a broader audience whoa nellie 1 1 4 oz sazerac rye or other rye 3 4 oz dark rum such as myer s 3 4 oz cointreau 4 dashes angostura bitters 1 2 oz fresh lemon juice 1 2 oz grapefruit juice 1 2 oz simple syrup shake and strain into chilled cocktail glass labels recipe resources posted by wayne curtis at 4 31 pm thursday november 29 2007 faux flip last night in new orleans the tales of the toddy was held at the hotel monteleone it s sort of pre holiday one night riff on winter drinks from the same folks who put on tales of the cocktail a couple dozen bartenders and restaurateurs came up with drinks both hot and cold and served them to a crowd of several hundred one writer also served a drink that would be me my aim was to ladle up a colonial drink as a counterpart to more modern offerings like the absolut mandarin orange creamsicle a colonial flip seemed like a winning idea fresh and unknown yet historic and i d made it before in front of a fireplace in maine problem is it requires an open fire and iron poker heated to the color of a cherry which is then thrust in a tankard i devote the better part of a chapter in the rum book to flip which fueled a colonial craze from about 1700 up to the american revolution sadly i was laboring under the jackboot of unreasonable restrictions from event organizers please insure that all cooking equipment is powered by sterno electricity or butane as allowed by the new orleans fire department this seemed to rule out building an open fire and brandishing of a glowing piece of iron so a few weeks beforehand i started messing around with adaptations of flip which has as its base ingredients beer rum and molasses i monkeyed around with vats of beer syrup made with molasses the result was more like something one might consume as a science project rather than for enjoyment although beer syrup made with 50 50 sugar and molasses and served 50 50 with vodka makes for a wonderful sort of beery liqueur there i ve said something favorable about vodka i concluded that there s something that occurs chemically during the scalding by red hot iron a process that creates a whole new beverage something that can t be replicated with a hot plate or butane stove flip tastes like none of its components and has a not unpleasant burned flavor like starbucks coffee so i sadly abandoned my dalliance with molasses and took up with something else that would have been available in colonial times maple syrup and i found that mixed with ginger syrup and rum and beer and lemon the result was a colonial style drink that was at once tart and complex and tasted not of beer or rum but something else altogether flippin flip 1 1 2 oz old new orleans crystal rum 2 oz abita amber beer 3 4 oz maple syrup 3 4 oz ginger syrup 1 2 oz juice of meyer lemon fresh nutmeg combine all ingredients except nutmeg in saucepan and heat until steaming but not boiling pour in mug and grate fresh nutmeg over surface ginger syrup combine one cup sugar with one cup water bring to boil and take off heat add approximately four ounces of chopped fresh ginger unpeeled is fine and let sit until cooled strain into bottle will keep refrigerated for a couple of weeks note on the meyer lemon ok it s not really colonial the meyer lemon is an asian fruit that was discovered and brought to the us around 1908 by a u s dept of agriculture staffer named frank meyer it looks like an unripe and soft skinned lemon and is sour like a lemon but has a distinct mandarin orange tang to it it s available at the farmers markets in new orleans and some stores hereabouts i m not sure about availability outside the region i understand alice waters is a fan if you can t find them use regular lemon juice and a dash of orange bitters tales of the toddy was a terrifically fun event and my thanks to chris hannah of arnaud s for saving for me one of the 53 pouuse cafes he made with gran duque de alba brandy chartruese and st germain elderflower liqueur and marvin allen of the carousel bar for sending over a much needed mrs claus tea made with rhum clement s creole shrub earl grey tea fee bros spiced cordial and a dab of spiced butter and as always it was great to catch up with the other authors selling books including philip collier mixing new orleans ti martin and lally brennan of commander s palace in the land of cocktails and the always inimitable lorin gaudin photo above 86 recipes new orleans labels events recipe posted by wayne curtis at 10 34 pm wednesday november 28 2007 a zombie comes back to life today s new york times has a great article by steve kurutz about jeff beachbum berry and his tiki drink related investigative work the article gives jeff all the credit he deserves for taking something that s camp and making it well if not classy at least respected and worthy of discussion mr berry s single minded scholarship has gained him respect in the cocktail world kurutz wrote he noted jeff s uncovering of the three supposedly original zombie recipes one after another and the process he used to identify the original original this involved in part a year long effort to crack the secret code of a recipe he turned up in a 1937 little black book owned by a former don the beachcomber bartender the recipe is here but he only scratches the surface about what jeff s research actually entails cocktail history tends to be more participatory than say the study of deep ocean mollusks or ancient roman architecture inquiring minds want to know what did the original zombie taste like using the rums that were available back at the inception the times didn t tell the story of a tasting this past summer which i was lucky enough to join in one night during tales of the cocktail in july jeff martin cate of forbidden island in alameda and i headed over to stephen remsberg s our goal make the original zombie stephen as those who ve read the book might recall is the rum collector with 700 plus bottles in his stockpiles many of them vintage rare and unopened we were interested in recreating the proto zombie then called the zombie punch one of the drinks that made don the beachcomber famous soon after he opened his bar in los angeles in 1934 stephen had painstaking accumulated the prescribed rums including a pre 1935 puerto rican rum an equally early demerara rum and a no longer made early lowndes jamaican rum for the latter stephen could locate only an unopened mini which sadly provided just enough rum to make a single original original zombie but this is scholarship and sacrifices must be made we shared one drink in the interest of scholarship i should also note that we cheated a little stephen broke out a bottle of vintage absinthe for the anis flavor and that would have still been illegal in the united states in 1934 some other anis substitute would have gone in the original original zombie i m happy to report that the zombie flash blended with crushed ice as don would have prescribed was a thing of utter and complete beauty the biggest surprise to me was how woody it was this wasn t all about sweet or juices or ooh la la but about complexity it had touch of natural pucker to it thanks to the wood which was eased by the anis and falernum this zombie came at you from many directions all at once all demanding attention it was all you could do but to sit down and marvel you can have king tut s tomb unearthing the taste of the original zombie is my kind of archeology i m quoted in today s times article as calling jeff the indiana jones of tiki drinks and i m here to tell you i d follow jeff into any cave snake pits be damned update i missed this on the first go around on the times web site jeff narrates a slide show featuring up an excellent capsule history of tiki photos nyt portrait of jeff above tasting photos by martin cate left to right stephen jeff wayne and below the original original ingredients labels history trends posted by wayne curtis at 12 48 pm monday november 12 2007 cocktail ranger trader vic s scottsdale the original trader vic s in scottsdale arizona opened in 1962 on west fifth avenue just six years after the luxe midcentury modern valley ho hotel up the street it was axis of swank then it became the forgotten zone the trader vic s closed the valley ho closed and there was talk of demolition time passed now the valley ho has been made over top to bottom respecting its midcentury roots and a new trader vic s opened adjacent to the hotel a year ago i was in arizona last week and made a detour to check it out spending a night at the hotel and being drawn by a curious gravitational pull to trader vic s the redone hotel is impressive i ve always thought that to capture the m...