Making it Modern Tiki

Dalla Pola notes he went full-on tiki ten years ago. “I started to study the recipes and to experiment and realized—Hey, this will never work on the modern palate.” He needed to tweak the original tiki recipes, as he examined palate evolution. “Some cocktails are undrinkable now for many reasons,” he explains. “At the time, people liked those kinds of drinks. The lemon back then in Hawaii was sweet. We must take into consideration that these drinks were invented in 1934. Think how the grapefruit might taste, how about the orange juice, or how was the rum back then?” So, to make it modern, look back and see what the real tiki cocktail was, then work around that and make it your own for today’s palate. Keep in mind, to be considered ‘tiki,’ a cocktail needs to follow certain standards, according to Dalla Pola. This includes being made in a proper tiki bar with a tiki-worthy name like 3 Dots and a Dash, Scorpion, Cannonball, or Shark Bite. It should contain some rum, like the Beachcomber (or the father of tiki) intended it to be, served in not necessarily a stereotypical tiki mug. “The beachcomber was using different glassware. It’s the same thing that we do at Esotico and Kaona. We design our tiki glassware.”

Turning it Tiki

Bartenders use their interpretations and variations to recreate drinks. “There is nothing wrong with copying a tiki drink and making it your own because this was the thing to do back then,” says Dalla Pola. “It became a tradition to take a drink that’s already been invented and reimagine it. When I reimagine a drink, I call it ‘remixed’ on our drink menu. Like a song, a remix of a popular cocktail is reimagined and remade into many versions.” Check out two popular cocktails, The Ghost and Miami Kula, served at Kaona, Miami, highlighting Dalla Pola’s modern twist on classic tiki recipes.