MAI TAI

Just as we never say no to watching The African Queen, we never turn down a Mai Tai. While we can count the number of times we’ve made this drink at home on to fingers, we can hardly recount the times this potent concoction has gotten the best of us while we were out on the town.
We’d entertain more prejudices about the Mai Tai if only we hadn’t had such fun drinking it. The irresistible irreverence of this drink always takes us from the doldrums to the tropics, and we salute Victor Bergeron, known to the world as Trader Vic, for creating this drink before he’d even visited the tropics.

By most accounts, Vic whipped up the first Mai Tai in 1944 at his Hinky Dink’s restaurant in Emeryville, just over the bridge from San Francisco. Trader Vic himself tried to set the record straight for doubters in his bartender’s guide of 1947:"There has been a lot of conversation over the beginning of the Mai Tai… I originated the Mai Tai. Many others have claimed credit… The drink was never introduced by me into Tahiti except informally through our good friends, Eastham and Carrie Guild… Anybody who says I didn’t create this drink is a dirty stinker." Trader Vic goes on to write that his two friends who had been visiting Tahiti requested something special from the bar, so he grabbed the Jamaican rum, a lime,, curacao, Orgeat and rock candy syrup, and concocted the Mai Tai prototype.

Just as Trader Vic tempered Polynesian cuisine to the tastes of North Americans, we’ve taken the liberty of altering his drink recipe slightly. In a shaker, we combine 2 ounce dark Jamaican rum – either Appleton or Myers - ½ ounce curacao, ¾ ounce fresh lime juice, and a splash of Orgeat, followed by another splash of either simple syrup or grenadine, depending on the colour we’re after. When strained and served in a tall, frosted glass filled with shaved ice, this drink, this drink always brings warm tropical thoughts to mind, even when we’re in the midst of a blizzard. Some bartenders say that using a fine orange liqueur in a Mai Tai is a little like slathering Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup on a crepe. To us, that view is only a telltale sign that the mixer is using some modern-day recipe with far too many ingredients. The Mai Tai, after all, is nothing more than a dressed-up Daiquiri. Fortunately, nearly all recipes for the Mai Tai are sweet enough that if a bartender screws up, we’re unlikely to notice. By second or third round, the bartender may even have us shouting Tahitian phrases such as "Mai Tai – Roa Ae!" – which means "Out of this world – the best!" – just as Carrie Guild did years ago.