“Tiny bubbles. In the wine. Make me happy, Make me feel fine.”
~ Words & Music by Leon Pober but made famous by Don Ho
This week’s cocktail is the Pago Pago and it’s meant to evoke breezy island daydreams set in remote Polynesia. The recipe comes from Serious Eats by way of Beachbum Berry. The Pago Pago goes back to the early days of the tiki bar back in the 1940s. The tiki bar, according to the WSJ, got its start during the height of the depression in the 1930s when it was started by Donn Beach (whose real name was Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt). The year was 1934 and Donn Beach opened his tiki bar in L.A. and christened it the Beachcomber. Donn had an eye for kitsch and decided to decorate his bar in a hip, Polynesian motif that gave people permission to fantasize about escaping the bad economic times in paradise. The combination of fun, fantasy, and rum flavored drinks made the Beachcomber an instant hit.
Soon the Beachcomber had fans from all over but one man in particular was especially taken with tiki-style. His name was Victor Bergeron and after a visit to Tahiti in 1937 he became obsessed with creating his own version of a tiki bar and restaurant in Oakland in the San Francisco Bay area. At the time he already owned a bar/barbeque joint called the Hinky Dinks but he quickly gave that up and converted it into his own version of Polynesian heaven. Victor named his more elegant version of a tiki bar Trader Vic’s and just like the Beachcomber, set about decorating it with brightly colored carved tikis, palm fronds, bamboo, and outrigger canoes.
After the boys in uniform came back from fighting in the Pacific during World War II, the tiki bar craze really hit its stride and tiki bars began opening up in all sorts of odd and out of the way places. The Polynesian schtick ran the gamut from scantily clad hula dancers in grass skirts to fire breathers, Polynesian drummers, and waitresses wearing bikini tops, grass skirts, and Hawaiian leis that served guests heaping pupu (appetizer) platters. Tiki’s heyday lasted until well into the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s, but most of them faded away during the Vietnam War.
Although many of the tiki bars and restaurants are now long gone, there are still a few hold outs. For some reason, tiki mania never completely left the Bay Area and now tiki enthusiasm is not just popular there once again, it has seen a nationwide upswing in recent years. In different parts of the country you can still find some of the old originals, like the Mai Kai and Polynesian village in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida which opened in the 1950s, Trader Vic’s (now in Emeryville rather than Oakland), and Bali Hai in San Diego. These temples to all things tiki have now found new generations of devotées and tiki has made such a comeback, that for the last nine years tiki fans have gotten together from around the country to go on their own version of a pub crawl in the many tiki bars in the San Francisco area. Called tiki crawl, anyone can join the fun and experience their own little bit of Polynesian paradise. Who knows, maybe you can start your own tiki crawl in your area and serve a refreshing Pago Pago Cocktail. To help you with the entertaining I have included the drink recipe below.
Pago Pago Cocktail
Ingredients
3 squares of fresh pineapple (about 1 ounce)
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
1/4 ounce white crème de cacao
1 1/2 ounces Mount Gay Eclipse Barbados rum
ice cubes
Procedure
Place everything except the rum in a cocktail shaker and crush the pineapple with a muddler or wooden spoon. Add the rum and a lot of ice. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass (you may wish to double-strain through a mesh tea strainer in order to filter out the little bits of pineapple. Or not, if you like little bits of pineapple). Serves 2
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