Local Libations

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The Tiki revival is in full tilt at Hula’s

by Rob Fisher

Collection of historic Tiki mugs at Hula’s in Monterey.

In 1934, when Prohibition had just ended, a young southerner and former bootlegger named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt opened a five-table bar in Hollywood called Don’s Beachcomber Café. Gantt was a restaurateur but also a showman. Much of the lore around him is colorful and unverifiable.

Gantt soon moved his bar across the street and renamed it Don the Beachcomber. He also legally changed his name to Donn Beach. His watering hole gained a following with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Buster Keaton and Joan Crawford, who went not only for the whimsical faux Polynesian décor and the Chinese food made to suffice for South Pacific cuisine, but also for its legendary rum drinks. Whether Beach’s cocktails were his own invention— as he always claimed—or that of his Filipino bartenders, they were creative and popular. Great care was put into each recipe, and all were kept a closely guarded secret. It is said that Beach would mix his ingredients out of sight and put them in labeled bottles for the bartenders to use, to guard against the prying eyes of curious employees and patrons.

His New York Times obituary credited Beach with inventing more than 80 different cocktails. Some of the drinks attributed to him include the Vicious Virgin, Missionary’s Downfall, Shark’s Tooth, Dr. Funk, Zombie Punch and, Sinatra’s favorite, Navy Grog. Beach’s 1934 recipe for Zombie Punch, as published in The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan, has nine ingredients, including three kinds of rum and an eighth of a teaspoon of absinthe. It was a strong drink, and according to legend, one night loyal customer Howard Hughes struck and killed a man while driving home from the Beachcomber after indulging in at least one too many Zombies.

In 1936, a one-legged San Francisco native named Victor Bergeron transformed his own bar in Oakland, then called Hinky Dink’s, into Trader Vic’s. Bergeron invented the Mai Tai and was the first to bring wooden Polynesian statues, called tikis, into his restaurant.

These wooden statues gave Tiki culture its name, and the trend really began to take off across the country after World War II, when men came home from the Pacific, and the country was happy to find a fantasy escape from the escalating Cold War. Beach lost his rights to his restaurants in a divorce, but his ex-wife expanded the franchise to more than a dozen locations. (Meanwhile, Beach was not barred from doing business in Hawaii, as it was only a U.S. territory, and

The Blue Hawaiian

1 1/2 ounces light rum (Hula’s uses Cruzan) 1 ounce Cream of Coconut 1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice 1 ounce lime juice 1 ounce blue Curaçao Maraschino cherries Paper umbrellas (for the full effect)

Fill a Hurricane glass with ice. Pour all ingredients except for the blue Curaçao into a shaker and shake well. Pour back into the glass and float the blue Curaçao over the top. Garnish with a cherry and, if desired, a paper umbrella.

not yet a state, so he opened a new Don the Beachcomber in 1946 in then-sleepy Waikiki, where he remained until he died in 1989.)

Over the years, Tiki culture has ebbed and flowed. Trader Joe’s is now much better known than Trader Vic’s, and most people who have had a Mai Tai in Hawaii would have a hard time believing that the name really means “the very best” in Tahitian. For a while, it seemed the adventure and the art had been lost.

Happily, these days are seeing a major Tiki revival. Serious mixologists who had diligently brought back many of the classic preProhibition cocktails are now turning their attention to post-Prohibition Tiki drinks, embracing the challenge of reproducing the original complex recipes while keeping them fresh and fun—and rarely neglecting the use of flamboyant mugs and pieces of fruit when at all possible.

We are lucky to have two of the West Coast’s most respected Tiki watering holes right here in our own backyard: Hula’s in Santa Cruz and in Monterey.

Brothers Craig and Chris Delaney created Hula’s after years of living in Hawaii. The Delaneys decorated their original Monterey restaurant with surfboards, ukuleles, carved statues and many Hawaiian Island garage-sale gems, like a black velvet painting of surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku. The food is island fusion prepared with a commitment to using exclusively sustainable fish and 18 savory and delicious housemade sauces. (The Kingston Curry is addictive.)

Eventually, the brothers opened a second restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz, and even if you’ve not had the chance to drop in, you’ve probably seen their roving billboard— a vintage truck with a sign on the side, cleverly moved around town to spread the word.

Nikki Uchida, bar manager of Hula’s Monterey, says that all of the drinks are created and refined by collaboration. The bartenders like to start with the recipe of a classic Tiki drink, and “tweak it until it tastes like it’s ours.”

True to the spirit of the original Tiki bars, Hula’s was very, very reluctant to share a single one of its recipes, but after some cajoling, they decided to give us their recipe for the Blue Hawaiian. Unlike most of the drinks at Hula’s, this one is not difficult to try at home. “It’s not going to take 25 ingredients and 100 dollars,” says Uchida.

When one of the visually striking Blue Hawaiians is ordered and goes out from the bar, suddenly 10 more get ordered by patrons who see it and want one, too, Uchida says. It is a sweet drink that is popular with people who don’t normally like sweet drinks because the flavors are all natural, and there is enough sour to balance the sweetness. “It’s delicious and beautiful!” she says.

We have diligently tested this recipe in our own kitchen and made a lot of people happy in the process. But if you don’t have time to make this one yourself, you can always go to Hula’s.

Hula’s Monterey: 622 Lighthouse Ave. 831.655.4852 • www.hulastiki.com

Hula’s Santa Cruz: 221 Cathcart St. 831.426.4852 • www.hulastiki.com

Tiki mavens: Ian McRae of Hula’s Santa Cruz and Nikki Uchida of Hula’s Monterey.