This little concoction is another creation of Don the Beachcomber. The Lui Lui dates back to the pre-war Tiki era, when Don was still just constructing his wing of the Tiki edifice. It is also one of my favorites of his creation (I’m more of a Trader Vic guy, at least when it comes to recipes). This is bright and exotic, with the dryer, tangier mix of flavors that you more often find in the older recipes.
It also has the singular advantage of providing me with an excuse to crack open my last two, previously un-remarked upon here bottles from Trader Tiki, the cinnamon syrup and the vanilla syrup. Since those bottles’ arrival was what cemented my determination to Tiki out again this year, I needed to put them to some use!

I dug this one out of Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari. Well, actually I reminded myself of the details in Tiki+, since I can’t find my copy of Safari right now! Wahhhh!

Well now!
Isn’t it about time you actually do a drink post for Tiki Month? My lady is thirsty!

Quite right, my good sir!
Let’s start off Tiki month with a 1950s classic from Don the Beachcomber.

Don served this at his Colonel’s Plantation Beefsteak and Coffee House, in Hawaii. I think it is a pretty nifty Tiki punch, and apparently Don did too, since he named it after himself, in his World War Two incarnation.
I first found this one on Tiki+, and you can also read more about it in Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log.

Ahoy, me bonny crew! This wee libation is bein’ me favorite of me three International Talk Like a Pirate Day drinks, even if it be sufferin’ from a most unfortunate etymological origin.

Avast!
No pirate worth the salt in his beard be usin’ such fancy dan words as etymological. Yarrrr!

Arrrr. Perhaps ye be speakin’ the truth. Let’s be findin’ out fer sure.
Ahoy me hearties! Take Mr. Guy here and let him ask the experts. They be swimmin’ around just below the end o’ that plank!
As I was sayin’, Navy (Arrrgh!) Grog has a most unfortunate name and origin. I spit on those Navy dogs! And the real Grog o’ the British Navy from pirate days was pretty scurvy stuff, bein’ naught but bad rum, with a wee tot o’ worse water to cut the burn. Arrrr!
But back in the 1930s, a man named Don the Beachcomber took the name and mixed up a true bonny cocktail he was by way o’ callin’ Navy Grog. It be worth the drinkin’ me lads and lassies. Yarrr!
Now, Don’ original recipe be as unknown as the location of Blackbeard’s Treasure, me hearties. The original tiki pirate was powerful secretive with his mixing instructions, since his rivals like Trader Vic were always on the lookout fer ways to plunder him! Don was a cunning buccaneer, who were like to be livin’ the ITLaPD lifestyle every day of his piratical life! Arrrrr!

Regardless, through considerable reverse engineerin’, a powerful number o’ corsairs have worked out what was probably in Don’s Navy Grog. Here be me take on this tasty treat, with a nod of thanks to the hoity-toity rum drinker for help wit’ the brands!

For a sea o’ other Drink Like a Pirate Day cocktails, set sail for me main ITLaPD post fer a treasure map! Arrrr!

OK, to paraphrase Bill Cosby, I told you the last two stories to tell you this one.
If there is one subject guaranteed to excite the juices and light the flaming garnishes of Tiki-philes round the world, it is this:
Who invented the Mai Tai, Trader Vic or Don the Beachcomber?
In my previous posts, outlining the lives of Don and Vic, I deliberately avoided much in the way of comparisons, saving that for here. Let’s first look at a few things about the two, aside from the Mai Tai. Don was first, period, in the tropical-polynesian feel restaurant with caribbean inspired cocktails. Vic undoubtedly knew of Don’s LA operation before he took off for New Orleans and points south to absorb the rum knowledge he wanted to built his own Tiki empire. I think that it’s telling that Vic did not try to imitate Don, and especially his drinks, directly. The Trader set out to assemble the same tool kit that Don had, then built his own design from the same starting point.
Without both of their work and inspiration, Tiki would never have been the force it was, or perhaps a force at all. And I suspect that both men knew it damn well. Both were rivals, perhaps intense rivals, but they knew they needed each other. They were fierce, even nasty and litigious on occasion, toward lesser Tiki creatures, but left each other strictly alone, as far as I can see. But I doubt they much liked each other either. Here are the definitive quotes from each man about the other (Both, not remotely coincidentally, relate to the paternity of the Mai Tai:

There continues to be controversy over who originally came up with the Mai Tai. It has never bothered me that Vic Bergeron took credit, and I have never held a grudge. The plain fact is, there can be no truer form of flattery than when other people claim credit for your concepts and ideas and use them for their own benefit.
-Don the Beachcomber

That is one stunning load of horse manure, Don!

Anybody who says I didn’t create the Mai Tai is a dirty rotten stinker.
-Trader Vic

Gee Vic, who ya talking about?

Don claims to have first served his Mai Tai in 1933, an assertion that is repeated as fact by his partisans, and spoken with skepticism by Vic’s gang. No one seems to have any historical evidence of this. Not a menu, a celebrity diary entry, nothing. I suspect that if there was, it would always be front and center in the debate. Vic states he invented it in 1944. That’s a pretty big discrepancy.
We should remember that a well made Mai Tai is the best Tiki drink that ever was poured. Period. Of that, partisans on both sides emphatically agree. Or at least I think so, so that makes it fact.
In the late thirties, these men were the hippest things going in California’s two great cities, and shared a huge percentage of their clienteles. If Don had this killer libation in his bag of tricks and Vic didn’t, why is this not common knowledge, rather than uncommon controversy? Of course, we who live today in the age of the Internet and mass media are a little out of touch with how slowly and imperfectly information used to travel.
Also, while Don was brilliant and creative, perhaps beyond Vic’s powers, he lacked the Trader’s ability to institutionalize his work, and spread it sustainably beyond his own personal reach. I’ll repeat my assertion from last post that Don was Francis Drake, but Vic was Henry Ford. Don may well have served the magnificent Mai Tai for years before Vic, but failed to set it in people’s minds beyond his reach. Give Vic a superweapon like the Mai Tai, and he would cement it in the minds of folks around the world.
Also, there is the famous conversation. Syndicated columnist Jim Bishop wrote a letter to Honolulu columnist Don Chapman in 1989, in which he claims that he was part of a conversation at Trader Vic’s in San Francisco in which the Trader appears to have admitted that Don invented the Mai Tai. I am skeptical. In the 1970s, this would have been a huge story, and Bishop didn’t write about it then? Or, if we go with the idea that he waited until both men had died, it would still have been a story of some magnitude in 1989 at the very nadir of Tiki. Why would one journalist give it to another? Also, these were old frenemies, in their cups. If the conversation did take place as remembered, it is hardly conclusive. Still, it’s a powerful piece of evidence, if you trust it.
So, based on talent, personality, and historical evidence (or lack thereof), we don’t have a convincing argument either way. Let’s examine another feature of the competition between Vic and Don, and their lesser rivals: Secrecy.
If Don Beach and Vic Bergeron had been entrusted with national security, the Russians would have had to come up with The Bomb on their own. These guys (especially Don) guarded their recipes like virgin daughters. We do not have absolute certainty over what was in the original Mai Tai, whomever made it, or when the Mai Tai recipe we think of as definitive actually started being offered under the name Mai Tai. This should muddy the waters, but in fact this is the key to answering who is the father of the Mai Tai.
Here is what Don’s wife calls his original Mai Tai recipe, in Hawaii Tropical Rum Drinks & Cuisine by Don the Beachcomber:

And here is Trader Vic’s recipe for the very first Mai Tai ever made, as found in Trader Vic’s Tiki Party! and first read by me on Rumdood’s site:

Note several differences: First, the recipes are very different; not the same cocktail at all, really. Don’s is general, Vic’s is specific, about brands and the story of its creation. Don probably didn’t even write it down when he first made it, which is why it’s so general. In short, it has the feel of just another cocktail Don invented.
Vic’s recipe comes with story of it’s creation, it’s naming, and the bottles he used. It looks like the result of a great discovery.
Combine these impressions with a central observation that most of today’s cocktailscienti will make: The Trader Vic recipe is The Recipe. Don’s Mai Tai is an OK drink. Vic’s is… Oh Wow.
Don may well have invented a Tiki drink he called a Mai Tai before Vic. I would suggest the evidence leans that way; though that evidence, like most things Don, is deliciously shady.
But I submit that it doesn’t matter. Trader Vic threw together five simple ingredients in perfect proportion, and created a drink that is the apex of the movement. In whatever order these men came up with their Mai Tais, the drinks are dramatically different beasts; homonyms, not synonyms. And the one that matters is Vic’s.

{NOTE: This is part of a three part series of posts. The other Elder of Tiki, Trader Vic, is profiled here. And my examination of which of these two really invented the Mai Tai can be read here.}
If Trader Vic was the Henry Ford of Tikidom, Don the Beachcomber was its Francis Drake. As Tiki month winds up here at the Pegu Blog, I am examining the two great Elders of Tiki. Last post profiled the Trader, and now it is Don’s turn. Of the two, Don was the first into the game, both into the restaurant business and into the tropical theme. He lead a life of high adventure, before and after becoming a restauranteur, and dabbled throughout his life in fiefdom building, the society pages, diplomacy, war, and the occasional act of good-natured piratical behavior.
Don was born saddled with the impressive name of Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt. At age seven, he went to live with his colorful grandfather in Louisiana. From the old man, he learned the art and power of charm. He also learned the art and power of the con. It is likely quite fortuitous for a lot of people that throughout his life, Don generally used those powers for good. As he grew up, he bummed around the world on tramp steamers and by other means, learning as he went the technical skills of cooking and making drinks. In 1933, he found himself in Los Angeles with a few bucks in his pocket and he decided to meld his powers of mixology, hospitality, and the art of illusion to open a restaurant in an abandoned Hollywood tailor shop.
He called the place Don’s Beachcomber, and soon thereafter he came to be called Don the Beachcomber by his clientele. He changed the name of the restaurant to fit the usage, and a legend was born made. He continued to change his name throughout his life, wandering through Donn Beach-Comber, to Donn Beachcomber, and finally coming to rest as Don Beach (I think).
He created a true illusion for his customers, taking caribbean rum mixology, presenting it in a polynesian environment, and ensuring everyone had a great time. And if the register receipts were insufficient for his tastes for the evening, Don would turn a sprinkler on over the front door and roof. He’d point out it was raining and convince everyone to wait it out inside and have another round or three.
When the cuban embargo began, Don’s chief reaction was disgust that it interrupted his supply of cigars. Treating the law as he often did when it inconvenienced him, Don took the long way round. Using his extensive import/export connections, he had cigars shipped from Cuba to the Far East. There he had them relabeled and repackaged as Philippine product and he breezed back into the states with them. He may have been the man who invented this dodge, but many have followed. Or so I hear.
During the Second World War, Captain Beach-Comber was detailed to manage the R&R for General Jimmy Doolittle’s air force. He followed (or occasionally preceded) the allied advance up Italy and into southern France, requisitioning anything that wasn’t nailed down in the name of making things comfortable for Our Boys, and occasionally himself. This part of his life was really pretty fascinating, and you can read about it, as I did, in Scrounging the Islands with the Legendary Don the Beachcomber: Host to Diplomat, Beachcomber, Prince and Pirate It was written by and for a family member, and is a choppy, though pleasurable read.
After the war, Don moved the base of his operations to Hawaii. There he built a new palatial restaurant, and expanded to a wide variety of hospitality initiatives. He had a treehouse private dining room, and he created the commercial luau. Thank or curse him for that.
He fought his fellow magnates who were developing too fast to suit his tastes, and he fought the local government for not allowing him personally to develop faster. He fought to preserve the pristine beauty of Hawaii, but imported non-native species of flora whenever it suited him to “improve” an area. He tried building a floating casino in the Far East, but when various mob figures and British governors foiled him, he made the ship work anyway, as a restaurant.
He was a genius in promoting ideas, and fearless in executing them by hook or by crook. But underpinning it all was his skill with drinks.
He invented madly, producing a huge body of work, including a bunch of the bedrock classics. Many of them are lost in their original form today, because he guarded his recipes so jealously. He even went so far as to pour his liquors into unlabeled bottles, and kept his various syrups and mixes, as well as their ingredients, secret. His bartenders were just trained to make a Zombie, for instance, with 1 shot of bottle #7, 2 of bottle #2, 1 of bottle #47, and a splash of #17…. The mystery surrounding his drinks was part of the magic of drinking with Don.
The man was a savant, with a true commitment to his vision, and to his customers. But while he built a vast array of bars and restaurants and resorts, and was clearly a brilliant businessman, his commercial works did not survive the demise of either himself or of the Tiki era. I imagine so much of the success of all his ideas rested on the personal touch of Don himself. The greatest elements of his ventures rested upon regular performances by the man himself. Many of his businesses were high-wire acts to begin with, and such ventures cannot long survive without the risk taker-in-chief around from day to day. Today, there is but one spot on the map where Don the Beachcomber’s direct legacy remains; a single ember of the flame burns on the Big Island of Hawaii. Lift a glass with me to his memory, and to the flame rising again!

The mere word Zombie is one of the most evocative in the modern English language. Both the word and the things it evokes are simultaneously silly and scary.
What is a Zombie? It’s either a dead human somehow still able to stumble around mindlessly, or a drink that allegedly turns living humans into reasonable facsimiles of definition one.
The walking dead kind of zombies are scary because they’re, well, dead. And they want to eat your brains. An entire motion picture industry revolves around finding new ways to produce zombies and put them on screen.
They’re silly because… they are! In practical terms, monsters that move slower than a walk and have no mental acuity require some pretty mental acuity-free victims to chow down on. Memo to movie chicks: If you’d ditch the fragile, four-inch, come-bang-me heels, and instead wear sneakers or flats, the body-count in your films will drop down to something more on the order of The Wiggles: Hot Potato Live!. (Note: Hello to Twitter heads rolling in here from pyngvild!)
The Zombie cocktail is scary because it generally is brewed up with lots of alcohol, some of it traditionally high proof. Then you cover that fire-water up with fruit juices, and syrups, and crushed ice, and Tiki mugs, and paper umbrellas, and fog generators, laser light shows. Or whatever items among that list that you have on hand. Even wearing flats when drinking Zombies won’t save you from the fate of ending up flat on your face at the end of the scene.
The Zombie is silly because… it’s Tiki, damn it. And because it is such marvelous overkill.
Like many of the great Tiki cocktails, Don the Beachcomber claims to be the Zombie’s inventor, with typically scant evidence beyond the fact that he’s Don. And like many of the great Tiki cocktails, if you order one in 99.44% of bars today, you will receive an undrinkably sweet mess made with mostly 151, if you get one at all. It will likely be closer to the Bacardi Rum Punch you get on the Jolly Roger Pirate Cruises you find all over the Caribbean. In short, a modern Zombie is more of a maximum buzz for minimum pucker device, rather than a real cocktail. Which is neither spooky, nor silly, but simply sad.
The fact is, it is hard to establish what is the original Zombie recipe, since it appears in print from different sources, in different forms, all at about the same time. I will print Don’s (or what is alleged to be his, since he guarded his recipes quite jealously) here as a starting point:

For the record, you approximate Don’s Mix with a 2-1 blend of grapefruit juice and cinnamon simple syrup.
This is not a bad drink. But it is just that, not a bad drink. The majesty of the Zombie comes when you slide into the sweet spot between this bare-bones presentation and the 1990’s debased rum kool-aid.
Last Thursday Drink Night was Zombie Night at the Mixosoleum. I think the Zombie was an excellent choice for the drunken chat room treatment. It is hard to completely screw up a Zombie, if your cocktail heart is pure. Just follow the basic rules of Zombie construction (eat your heart out, Hollywood) as illustrated by Don’s recipe:

• Include several rums, including one high-proof for scare factor.
• Mix in several juices, mostly tart or citrus.
• Add some spices and some sweetener.
• Blend it briefly.

In addition, time and evolved Tiki tradition demands more garnish than Don’s original sprig of mint.
I actually had some recipes ready for TDN, for the first time. One, the Red-Headed Zombie was a finalist for the night (Yay!), but got exactly zero votes (Boo!).

No votes?
You didn’t vote for yourself?

Shut up. I forgot.

All I’ll say about my version is that Canton is awesome in the Zombie application. It is also the genesis of the name. Ginger, get it?
I have pictures of my Zombie that I took. But they stink on (crushed) ice compared to those taken by BOTI member, Rick Stutz. So I’ll rip his off here as I discuss garnish on a Zombie. I have made the case that the Zombie is one of the most over-the-top Tiki drinks there is, so it needs an over top garnish.
Here was my suggestion: Shake while dancing around like a grass-skirted witch doctor and strain into a pith helmet. Add ice to fill. Garnish with a pineapple spear.
Had I had a pith helmet to hand, you’d see the picture, no matter how dark and muddy. But since I didn’t, here is Rick’s picture, which shows a slightly elaborate but visually very appropriate garnish:

Cool, huh?
During Drink night itself, Rick offered a different picture. One which shows why you do not want to get into a knife fight with the Penguin.

Get the idea of what is needed for Zombie garnish?
The garnish I suggested for my other (less awesome!) Zombie will be the subject of a soon-to-follow post on Tiki garnishes themselves.
Stay tuned!