Phinneas and Dr. Funk
This is how my children view Tiki Month.

Since I’m on a run of Tiki Drinks with awesome names this Tiki Month, I thought it appropriate that I get down and boogie with one of the better names in music Tiki drinks, Dr. Funk. I love the name, and find it most appropriate for Tiki. Funk is a word I use a lot to describe Tiki drinks, good ones at least. It denotes a kind of entertainingly pleasant wrongness.

The good Doctor was to be had all over the place in the golden days of Tiki. Both Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic claimed him, though he set up practice at Vic’s joints much later than Don’s, so which way the thieving went is pretty clear this time.
Except it isn’t.

Unlike most “Polynesian” Tiki drinks, which were really Caribbean in inspiration, the Dr. Funk was actually a genuine South Pacific invention, one which predated the Tiki era by some 30-40 years. Not only that, but it was named after and created by a real Dr. Funk as well. Bernhard Funk was a German ex-patriot living in Samoa. He was a popular physician, as well as a renowned mental health practitioner. And by “mental health practitioner”, I mean mixologist. Among his other claims to fame, Dr. Funk was the deathbed physician for Robert Louis Stevenson (of International Talk Like a Pirate Day Fame). The good Dr. Funk had passed away nearly twenty years before Don ever thought of Tiki.

There are a lot of Dr. Funk recipes. Names this cool seemed to have often been appropriated during the Tiki era by one bar after another, without great regard to the (often secret) recipe of the source. When there are so many choices to be had, it is usually best to turn first to the Apostle Paul of the Tiki gods, Beachbum Berry.

In Remixed, the Bum presents this version of Dr. Funk, gleaned from the Palm Springs location of Don the Beachcomber, circa 1953:

This is a pleasant little cooler, really. The flavors are light and the color an iced pink. The funk of the absinthe is kind of a background beat that underlies the main citrusy melody. This version is actually pretty delicious, with just a hint of a “what the Hell is that?” undertone to make it Tiki.

Now in general, I prefer Vic’s drinks to Don’s, the Mai Tai being a notable example. So I also wanted to see what kind of medicine the good Doctor practiced when he hung his single in a Trader Vic’s. Here is his recipe which I believe to be from Vic’s 1948 Bartender’s Guide:

I have no geraniums right now, so I used mint.

In this case, Don beats Vic like a rented mule. Vic’s version is overwhelmingly tart. I went back and added a ton more simple syrup, which made it drinkable and let some of the underlying flavors come out. You could then taste that there was rum in the drink. But the funk is practically dead here as you essentially cannot detect the absinthe at all. Indeed, Vic appeared to know this one wasn’t his best, as he seems to have monkeyed with this recipe a lot. Later recipes show it without absinthe or Pernod at all.

So as to the question of Don versus Vic, the Bum makes the right call, and silly me for doubting him!

But neither of these cocktails, it’s pretty clear, holds much resemblance to the real Dr. Funk’s prescription. In this excellent thread at Tiki Central, much anthropology has been done on the Dr. Funk, and on its namesake. And while there is no written exact receipt for it even there, the various accounts of the original drink are at least primary sources. Consolidating all their hardwork, here is what I’m going with as the original recipe:

I was hesitant to actually mix up this guess at the authentic Dr. Funk because:

1. I’m not a huge absinthe fan.
2. I already have a more than healthy share of self-respect.
3. My current surroundings are Ohio in the Winter. Why should I want to take an interest in them?

But, birds gotta sing. Fish gotta swim. Bloggers gotta blog….

First off, that is a helluva lot of water up there. I’m not sure if ice was a precious commodity on Samoa and the surrounding isles in the late 19th Century. Perhaps it was, and this drink was meant to be made without it. In any case, I used lots of crushed ice myself, left the lime shells in, and used only a bit more than 2 ounces of actual soda.

And damn if this isn’t a much better drink than either Don or Vic’s effort! Much better. It is perhaps not so approachable as theirs, because at 1.5 ounces there is no mistaking the fact that this is an absinthe cocktail. The character of that spirit is right up front. In most cocktails I make using the stuff, it is doled out in drops, so that much absinthe is a helluva lot for me.

But the grenadine and lime and water do a beautiful job of changing the punch in the snoot of absinthe, transmuting it into a refreshing splash in the face. My immediate thought was to compare it to one of my favorite drinks, the Gin Rickey.
Dr. Funk’s concoction seems likely to be just as thirst-quenching as Colonel Rickey’s. And while it may not be quite so easy drinking as the Rickey, for a man with a sour mouth or stomach from over-indulgence, post-indulgence, or just general tropical crud, this drink would likely be much more cleansing to the palate.

Lastly, should you be wanting to initiate a hesitant guest into trying absinthe for the first time, this might be your drink. The cool name, and pleasant pink color, should get them to accept the drink in the first place, and the muted nature should get them to take the time to appreciate the depth of the absinthe without being assaulted by its usual brash nature.

Dr. Funk’s Funky Trio of Funk
Don, Doctor, and Vic (L to R)

I’ll leave you with two entertaining tidbits found in my Stanley-esque search for Dr. Funk. This first is the comforting news that there were snotty booze snobs long before there were hipster bars and cocktail blogs for them to spout off in. Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson himself was somewhat of one, and another occasional patient of Dr. Funk, Paul Gauguin (the guilt-free sex guy) was even more of a pissant about drinks. He (and Stevenson) are described fabulously so in this quote from Wanderings; A Book of Travel and Reminiscence.

Blow me! cried Pincher, the skipper of the Morning Star. ‘E was a bleedin’ ijit. I fetched ‘im absinthe many a time in Atuona. ‘E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin’ ass for inventin’ a drink that spoiled good Pernod with water. ‘E was a rare un. ‘E was like Stevenson ‘at wrote ‘Treasure Island.’ Comes into my pub in Taiohae in the Marquesas Islands did Stevenson off’n his little Casco, and says he, Ave ye any whisky. ‘e says, at ‘asn’t been watered? These South Seas appear to ‘ave flooded every bloomin’ gallon. ‘e says. This painter Gauguin wan’t such good company as Stevenson, because ‘e parleyvoud, but ‘e was a bloody worker with ‘is brushes at Atouna. ‘E was cuttin’ wood or paintin’ all the time.

I think this passage lends two valuable pieces of advice. First, if you are too much of a booze-snob, then old bartenders, especially crusty old sailor bartenders (Ed Hamilton, anyone?) will think you are a “bloomin’ ass”. Second, regardless of how you act, for God’s sake don’t be French.

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2012 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

A few mornings ago, the PeguWife called me in to see the local news. A local morning radio host and standup comedian named Dino Tripodis was on, promoting his new book, The 25 Days of Christmas Cocktailing: One Man. One Month. One Very Merry Mission. Since Dino is a very funny fellow, and the subject was cocktails, I sprang to Amazon to order a copy.
25 Days is a short, easy, and entertaining read, chronicling the author’s quest with some friends to invent and consume a new cocktail every single day from December 1 to Christmas Day in 2008. I’m not sure who would find a task like this more daunting, your average Joe, or someone who actually knows some mixology. His method for inventing the drinks was to come up with the name for the drink in the morning. (Some highlights: the We Three Kings Disoriented Are, and The George Bailey) He’d get home midday, and mix and taste to try to fit the name, then serve up his best result to his panel about 3PM. It is good to have self-employed friends…. Of course, this is not the way to produce an unbroken string of winner drinks, but the aim of the book is the humor and the journey, not the recipes.
Since Dino lives in that special hellish life known as being a “local celebrity”, he has to do things like answer long lists of questions from people like me, and do it with a smile. I therefore abused the privilege and I’ll illustrate this review with some of those answers.

The only difference between getting drunk with your mom as opposed to your dad is you feel worse about the fistfight afterwords.
—Dino Tripodis 1996

The drinks are presented in chronological order, and each has a quote from Dino’s standup act or his radio show, along with a tale relating how the drink came to be or something otherwise related.
I noticed a paucity of gin in his recipes, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Dino drank a lot of gin in college, he told me, but that’s because he tries “to be accommodating when it came to liquor choices and relationships. Lets not talk about the apple-tini run, if you don’t mind.”
Fat chance, Dino. I assure you that most of my readers are mocking you mercilessly right now….
One of the aims of the process, he says, was to give a workout to some of the bottles he doesn’t much use otherwise. He even added a few new liqueurs to his inventory during the adventure, like Chambord and Grand Marnier.
Although he invented the drinks last year, Dino is faithfully drinking them all again this year, day by day, which is a much easier task. Last year he had to drink the mistakes, too.

Doug: You make wise mention repeatedly of the removal of car keys, etc. In addition to all the bars in your home, do you also have several guest beds, or just a cab company on retainer?
Dino: Yeah, I don’t like anyone leaving my house impaired and have actually gotten in fist fights over it with certain friends who have said, “give me the keys or we’re fighting.” And my reply? “Well, c’mon then. I guess we’re fighting.” Yeah. The extra beds get the occasional guest, but mostly it’s the couch. And (lol) no cab company on retainer…yet.

(See the LOL from the professional comedian? And you thought I wasn’t funny!)
Despite his cocktail cred-ruining affinity for vodka (With women, vodkas are like shoes: the more you have to choose from, in both color and style, the better your chances of making a sale.), and his disdain for gin, Dino has more hooch-fu than he’s willing to claim. He was a bartender for a brief period in his youth. Today he has four bars in his home, including a fully equipped Basement Bar, a main floor bar with fridge, a bar in his home office, and an outdoor backyard bar for when the weather allows you to be outside when thirsty. He mentions a fifth bar in the book, but it has since been, um, pruned by his lady fair.
25 Days of Christmas Cocktailing is an OK drinks book, but a damn fine read about drinks and drinking. It is selling pretty well this year via online sales only, so you may see it in bricks and mortar shops next holiday season, along with a possible Advent calendar for the drunkenly devout. Though it is too late for you to buy the book and do all twenty five drinks along with Dino, it isn’t too late to order a copy as a gift.
If you’d like to find out more about Dino, he’s on Facebook and Linked In, as well as on his radio station’s website.

The Aviation is a great drink to serve to people who are fond of telling you “I don’t like gin.” It tends to go down far better than a slap upside their head as you yell, “Well, it’s about time you learned to like it, you . . .”
—Gary Regan

This is from Gary’s latest article, Ten Essential Cocktails You Can Make at Home, in SFGate. Good wisdom, but it goes even better when applied to the Pegu!

I wrote this post before reading the comments. As usual with cocktail articles on SFGate, there are some stunningly, entertainingly stupid things said in the comments that need, um, reasoned correction. Fly my winged monkeys! Fly!

Since this is a quote post, I’ll include my favorite two here:

Yikes, where’d you dig up these trashy oldies?

and this gem, from someone who clearly hasn’t the slightest f’n idea who the hell he is dealing with:

The author obviously does not know how to make a martini. If you included this much dry vermouth in a martini to anyone who “knows” the drink, it would be rejected.

The problem is that this familiarity has created a vicious cycle, where the bartenders are taught to make the basic drinks, so people only order the basic drinks. Over time it’s become so reinforced that people are scared to order anything other than the most well known drinks.

If a chef school taught its students this way, every restaurant would be a fast food burger joint. But most schools that teach cooking try to instill creativity into their pupils. Experimentation is what makes dining out a pleasure, the same cannot be said about most bars.
—Darcy O’Neil at Art of Drink

This comes from a not overlong and very thoughtful piece. If you are either a bartender or a budding cocktailian, you should read it.

It has been a long while since I did one of these, but what the hey.

Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor.
-Groucho Marx, in A Night at the Opera

To be found in The Daily Cocktail: 365 Intoxicating Drinks and the Outrageous Events That Inspired Them.

While diddling around on this, I found this absolutely incredible clip from A Night at the Opera. If this is real, the Marx Brothers were even bigger geniuses that I thought.

I missed this column right after the election. It all is funny. It all makes sense. But the end deserves some quotation round the Cocktailosphere:

You know what I miss? I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world’s most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents and their friends, who were fairly evenly divided, and very passionate. They’d have these major honking arguments at their cocktail parties. But unlike today, when people wear out their upper lips sneering at those who disagree with them, the 1960s grown-ups of my memory, whoever they voted for, continued to respect each other and remain good friends.
What was their secret? Gin. On any given Saturday night they consumed enough martinis to fuel an assault helicopter. But also they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country. So they argued by sincerely (if loudly) trying to persuade each other. They did not argue by calling each other names, which is pointless and childish, and which constitutes I would estimate 97 percent of what passes for political debate today.
What I’m saying is: we, as a nation, need to drink more martinis.
No, you know what I’m saying. I’m saying, now that this election is over, whatever the hell happened, can we please grow up and stop being so nasty to each other? Please?
OK, I didn’t think so.
Please pass the pitcher.

Hat Tip to Glenn Reynolds, who claims he has said much the same thing himself. I have too. As he says, we ain’t Dave Barry.

I just picked up a copy of Eric Felten’s How’s Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well and began reading it yesterday. I ran across a passage in the Forward (or Aperitif) that I thought I’d share in advance of Monday’s soirée at Stevi’s, revolving around Guilty Pleasures.

It is possible to be serious about drinking without being a serious drinker, especially without taking oneself too seriously. It’s never been clear to me what it is about liquor that brings out the mandarins in people. Perhaps it is a nagging social insecurity that makes for diffident drinkers. We cling defensively to uninspired, socially safe glasses. We find ourselves not unlike Phillip Carey in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, disparaging even things we enjoy out of fear that our tastes might be suspect.

I think Eric’s words are particularly applicable to those of us who blog about cocktails. That’s why I’m glad for Stevi’s choice of theme. If you cocktailblog, how many times have you hesitated to write about something because it seemed silly, or looked down upon by others. surely we have all thought at least once, Wait, I have a reputation to maintain! I’ll admit this is particularly bootless for those of us without much of a reputation….
Still, I’ve thought on how many things could make up a guilty pleasure in our environment. I’ve chosen a McTini with three elements that would get me kicked out of polite cocktailosphere society on other days:

• Stupid name
• Shooter lineage
• Made with Poser Fluid

What elements makes your Guilty such a Pleasure?

I haven’t scraped someone else’s list for a post in a while, but DrinkPlanner’s 10 Commandments of Drinking Like a Man is both clever and (inadvertently I’m sure) insightful. Like most such lists, I love a few, would twist a few more, and blow my nose at others.

Thou Shalt Learn to Enjoy Whisk(e)y – Bourbon, Scotch, Irish, Tennessee whiskey and every other form of the drink shall heretofore be your best buddy….

heretofore??? doesn’t he mean henceforth? Let me get this straight. You are quoting a list with a major gramatical error? Have you no standards?

No. No I don’t.
Sorry DrinkPlanner, she’s a grammar nazi. But she’s a great broad (defined at least in part as a woman who drinks like a man whenever she damn well feels like it), so she probably drinks as much whisk(e)y as I do. Which isn’t that much. The brown liquors are for me a drink that reflects my mood. I have to be feeling particularly languid or depressed to go there.

Thou Shalt Not Consume Drinks With Idiotic Gimmicky Names Meant to Cover Up How Girly They Are – So help me God, if I see any of you jackasses out there with a Sex on the Beach or a Screw Me Blue in your hands, I’ll slap it to the ground and eat your worthless soul….

A) These names don’t cover anything up. At least they are honest in advertising the exact intentions of the man who is ordering or even drinking them.
B) You forgot the Pink Panty Pulldown in your list of offenders.

The Way You Treat Bartenders and Waitstaff Says More About You Than You Know

Truer words hath not been spoken. Nuff said.

He of course has others on his list, or it wouldn’t be ten commandments, now would it? Go read them there.
Or stick with me, and I’ll add a few of my own.

1. Shots Are For Special Occasions If you are the only one doing shots (and especially if you are the only one there), you are not drinking like a man, you are drinking like a drunk. So shoot in groups, and not often, as they get out of hand. Remember, payday is not a special occasion.
2. Wine Is Always And Only Made From Grapes
   

   Q. What was the precious trade secret bequeathed by the dying wine maker to his assembled family?
   A. Wine can also be made from grapes.
   —Everyday Drinking, the Distilled Kingsley Amis

The King was talking about really crappy ordinary wine, but I am talking about all wine. Men do not drink wine made from fruits other than grapes. They. Just. Don’t.

It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.
—David St. Hubbins

The New York Times reported this weekend on a terrible threat growing beyond American shores. Imagine being blindfolded, your hearing blocked by consciousness-altering sounds. Then chemicals are sprayed in your face while you are fed drugs through a tube. And this sort of treatment is going on openly in the largest city of our staunch ally, Australia! Nancy Pelosi, save us all!
OK, maybe it isn’t that bad.
This situation was brought to my attention by the venerable New York Times. The Zeta Bar is an establishment in Sydney that in most ways looks like the kind of awesome cocktail bar that folks in my fly-over neck of the American woods can only dream jealously about. They do all sorts of fabulous molecular mixology, as well as classic cocktails spectacularly presented, all in what looks to be a pretty kicking environment. Had I not discovered them via the Times article, the only thing that would have given me pause is the fact that they brag that their staff is “dressed by internationally acclaimed Australian fashion designer, Tina Kalivas.” I’m not sure I want to go drink someplace where the staff is probably better dressed than I am. Just saying.
What does an awesome cocktail lounge have to do with the experience I outlined at the beginning? Behold the latest brainchild of Zeta, the Virtual Cocktail. Lest you think my description of the experience is over the top, here’s a picture.

The cocktail experience pictured here is the Tiki. The rum-based recipe is given in the Times article, but what matters is the rest. You are literally blindfolded and secluded. You are given an iPod with (I surmise) beach music playing, and drink your tiki drink from a whole pineapple while they spray what (smells) like Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil over your face.
In theory, it is a brilliant idea. Sounds and smells are powerfully evocative senses. Combine them with taste, and cut off that inconvenient sight, and you should be able to transport yourself as requested. I’ll bet it works, too.
As my man St. Hubbins says, there’s such a fine line between….
Bars are social environments, folks. You go there to see, be seen, talk, and (if the music isn’t too frickin’ loud) listen. If you want to drink alone, do it at home. It’ll cost less, and the inevitable slide into alcoholism won’t bother others. Why would you want to go out to a bar with friends, a spouse, or to the finest point, a date, and then go sit in a booth and listen to eighteen minutes of cuban music by yourself with your Daiquiri? And with the blindfold, you can’t even see the staff in their Tina Kalivas originals!
Besides, if this catches on, you know where it’s going to end up….

Now don’t get me wrong, the idea of adding other sensory components to cocktails is a good one. I’d make the case that its been going on for over a century, in the form of garnish. On a larger scale, you could use the idea to enhance your tiki bar. Try some sand on the floor, subtle ocean noises under the music, and a tang of salt in the air. Larger establishments could modify different areas of the bar to enhance certain drink styles. Serve Cuban drinks in the cigar room. Try celtic music, dark fragrant leather, and dart boards in the whisk(e)y room. Most bars couldn’t do it, but who cares?
A cocktail is just a cocktail, folks. It can be a thirst quencher. It can be a social lubricant. It can even be a tiny, ephemeral work of art. But it should never expand or be expanded to blot out the world around you. The consequences are just a bit creepy.

RICHARD SHERMAN: There’s Gin and Vermouth. That’s a Martini.
THE GIRL: Oh, that sounds cool! I think I’ll have a glass of that — a big tall one!

—From Hollywood Cocktails

This bit of banter comes from the film The Seven Year Itch, with Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe.
Bonus Quote from La Femme Monroe in the film:

Have you ever tried dunking a potato chip in Champagne?

She was lovely and tragic, but I can’t quite forgive Marilyn for so profoundly changing the apex of sexiness in popular culture from smart to stupid….